Are Video Games Art: Art And Art

Video games have quickly risen to a sprawling media since their first conception nearly fifty years ago. As they grew, video games have become an incredible new medium for art and design. However, video game developers, especially large ones, have collected several core problems that misconceive the potential of games. Further, this problem represses this potential by suffocating this potential artistry merit with meaningless traditions and poor business practices. These observations have led to the assertion that video games as a media are ineffective as an art form compared to other art mediums due to several problems stemming from the structure and values of the video game industry. The majority of the video game industry does not sort

Aaron Smutz 's academic article, “Are Video Games Art?” was able to more or less prove video games to be capable of art by any modern definition, but admits that not all video games should be called art. He further explains “Without masterpieces, arguing that video games can be art seems premature. "Max Payne" and "Halo" are two of the best games ever produced, but they are not great art.”(Smutz) . With this in mind, Smutz essentially asserts that games have not fully developed into their art, and suggests that they may one day grow into their own art form. However, Smutz made this declaration ten years ago, and his argument still holds with today 's video games, which indicates a stagnation in the artistry of games. While exceptions do exist with artful games within the indie game community, the majority of produced games still fall under the category of not

Triple-a video games are so well marketed that they are allowed to not have quality, and not have art. Developers are given no incentive to make games with these merits. Instead they focus on less structurally important motives such as more realistic graphics, which can be harmful for games as “limiting themselves to conventions established in other media, game designers have neglected the realm of possibilities which abstraction has to offer”(Wolf 47). This practice leads to a never-ending cycle which decidedly makes games that have largest budgets worse and makes designers trying to make these games worse at designing