Video Games Considered Art

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Video Games Considered Art Many video games use visuals to mentally immerse gamers into a virtual world filled with seemingly living, breathing people, animals, or cities. According to Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, game designers for Tale of Tales, video games increasingly develop into a true medium of artistic expression (Lamb). In just forty years, video games transformed from an abuse of the new computer for entertainment purposes into a sophisticated form of popular art. The development of video games recently produced results that arguably equal other similar, representational arts. Video games share many qualities with other forms of art, but they are also artistically significant in their own way. “This seems to be something new in art: the representation of the player, their agency, and their aesthetic experiences, within a fictional world – videogames seem to provide an active exploratory aesthetics” (Tavinor 3). Although some view video games as an inferior artistic medium, video games should be considered art because they visually represent art, they use creative media, and they are legally considered so. Video games deserve recognition as art because they visually represent it. By using beautiful forests in Drakes Fortune, the large realistic cityscapes in Grand Theft Auto: IV, and fluid movements in Heavenly Sword, gamers receive insight towards what video games offer as an artistic medium in the current generation. In the 2006 fantasy game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, players are given a fictional world to explore with a character they designed, named, and awarded attributes. This world, Cryodiil, is engrossing and presented with such freedom; it creates an engaging, emotional, and aesthetically rewarding exp... ... middle of paper ... ...as the ability to rival and be compared to recent or past famous paintings. When in regards to video games, consider them as art because they creatively represent art in a completely unique way that no other entertainment medium has the ability to. Works Cited Birmingham, John. "Video Games as a Genre of Creative Expression." Sydney Morning Herald - Business & World News Australia | Smh.com.au. 2 Apr. 2010. Web. 26 Oct. 2011. Funk, John. “Games Now Legally Considered an Art Form (in the USA)." The Escapist. 6 May 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. Hall, Stefan. "Video Games as Collaborated Art." Phi Kappa Phi Forum 2008. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. Lamb, Robert. “Are Video Games Art?” Discovery News: Earth, Space, Tech, Animals, History, Adventure, Human, Autos. 25 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. Tavinor, Grant. The Art of Videogames. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.

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