Are games art? Well, Fallout 3 is getting there

Per

Per

Vault Consort
Staff member
Admin
Over at the prestigious London Review of Books (I'm assuming they can't be anything but prestigious with that name) they kick off the new year with a tl;dr type piece called "Is it Art?", dealing with that age-old question: is it art? Towards the end, Fallout 3 is mentioned.<blockquote>The other way in which games might converge on art is through the beauty and detail of their imagined worlds, combined with the freedom they give the player to wander around in them. Already quite a few games offer what’s known as ‘sandbox’ potential, to allow the player to ignore specific missions and tasks and just to roam around. (Many people’s favourite aspect of the Grand Theft Auto games involves their sandboxiness. A favourite sandbox activity in the California-set Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was simply driving to the coast and watching the sun go down over the ocean.) I think more and more games will make this central to the user’s experience of the game, and one straw in the wind here is Fallout 3, a new game from the producer Bethesda. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic 2277, and your character begins the game living in Vault 101, a bomb shelter set near the ruins of Washington. The game has the usual props and targets, but one of the most striking things about it is the opportunity it offers to explore the bombed-out, desolate, intensely evocative city. This is something which, once you’ve done it, I suspect will be difficult to get out of your head – and it is a glimpse of what games can do at their best. The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists; if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we’re going to have a whole new art form. At a moment when there’s less good cheer than there should be, it’s something to look forward to.</blockquote>There's something in here for everyone to shake their fist at (Peter Molyneux etc.).

Thanks to Ausir.
 
As to videogames they ARE art... I can name you several games more worthy of such a title than half the hollywood output per year...

Anyways, I do agree with this when it says its a good sandbox to explore and marvel at how good a recreation of a bombed out Washington DC it is...
 
If I were a furry, I would be laughing my whiskers off right about now.

You know. Furry. Because they're gay. like art.

Oh, wait. Where were we? Ah. Teh hypezor.

The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists
Click to expand...

And just WHERE is F3 on this scale? Let me guess.
 
I am just going to read through this article...still I want to call bullshit on B-soft before doing such....

if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we’re going to have a whole new art form
Click to expand...
please....
 
Post Tired - Sped Read

Post Tired - Sped Read


At first reading not as annoying / ego mantic as might seem.
Lots and lots of connecting the dots ... always a risk taken for a grander view.

Nice tie in of the latest retreaded Ann Rand fashion statements, Alan Greenspan the market - credit collapse
and later the once and future money men vs art geniuses of the LUCRATIVE video game entertainment industrial complex.

Watch for it. With this buzz about art and video games we may see history rewritten. Again.
Funny how a lot of design decisions that were first justified by financial concerns, but, may be later revised as artistic inspirations.

Todd's splatter humor, Emil's limping main quest, Pete's techno hysteria about the FO's as FPS, will take less double think and hardly more double speak
to transform these rock stars of collaborative self expression into billion unit art commodities.


NMA ninjas, you did get Pete H. to autograph your press passes, right?

Yes? Then. Memorabilia auction ftw!




4too
 
TychoXI said:
As to videogames they ARE art... I can name you several games more worthy of such a title than half the hollywood output per year...
Click to expand...

Planescape:Torment, American McGees Alice, Max Payne, Arcanum (was much more artistic than this mediacore Fo3), Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey/Exodus.

The guy who wrote this article doesn't seam to quite understand that games are not mainly about visuals. Games are not like painting, or movies, or music...they are all of these crativities put together, so to judge is the certain games is a piece of art, you have to consider everything: music, visuals, gameplay, the setting, etc. Then look at them as a one piece, a puzzle, and see if they all fit right together.
 
Why the hell is everyone exploding in their pants over this pile of mediocre bullshit?

He was right about one thing though:

This is something which, once you’ve done it, I suspect will be difficult to get out of your head
Click to expand...
 
Fallout 1 is art.

Fallout 3 is a product.

Thats how I see it. The developers of Fallout 3 treat their own game like a product and thus its not art in my eyes. Why? They are not afraid about to butcher and cut it as soon there is even the slightest chance that it might hurt sales in any form [See: Japanese version of Fallout 3 that got the Megaton quest and any nuclear reference to the Fatman cut out cause of fear some japanese people might feel "insulted" even though when no one ever forced Bethesda to do it. See: the Singapur version that (I think) got all chinese references cut out]

I dont know any serious artist that is so fast (even when there is no reason for it) with cencorship when it comes to his own work.
 
If films are art, regardless of quality, I think video games qualify too. Their mean quality is lower than that of films in terms of writing, story and so on, but as someone else said, there are video games that outclass many films in this department.

Though I'd suggest Braid is far more 'arty' than Fallout 3, as it's genuinely doing something new and something more than its function as a computer game; FO3 gets its neat ideas from the prequels but lowers the standard of writing and characters (though its subquest design deserves commendation).
 
Yes games are art, but like all works of art there are good and bad. If you smear a canvas with pig shit, is it art? Yes. Just like fallout 3 is art.
 
People are just starting to list general gripes now. The article compliments fallout 3 for its depiction of a nuked-out D.C. and saying that walking through there will be a memorable experience. Just talk about that, because the writer didn't praise its combat, story, or anything else. Only visuals.


It's surprising that a piece like this would run in the London review of books, and it seems they don't have competent reviewers. I mean their reviewers probably know nothing about games, the piece is well written and all that. Who would you have review something like this before publishing? All I can think of is NMA/Codex people and below LRoB' radar.
 
There are plenty of artistically inspired moments in Fallout 3, but I'm not sure it's especially revolutionary.

Any product requiring someone's creative talents should be considered art. A lot of the art in games is under the hood, so to speak.

Different games are artsy in different ways. For example, the artistic direction of Fallout was brilliant, and Fallout 3 merely copied a lot of that. But at the same time, the original could never deliver a moment like looking out at the DC ruins in the morning, from the top of the Washington Monument.

As the technology changes, the efforts of the creators are put in different directions, so it's difficult to compare different generations of games.
 
The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists; if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we’re going to have a whole new art form.
Click to expand...

The next decade is going to see another Great Depression and WWIII. The moneymen will win those as well. Games as art will not be a big concern.
 
Ixyroth said:
The next decade or so is going to see the world of video games convulsed by battles between the moneymen and the artists; if the good guys win, or win enough of the time, we’re going to have a whole new art form.
Click to expand...

The next decade is going to see another Great Depression and WWIII. The moneymen will win those as well. Games as art will not be a big concern.
Click to expand...

Yeah, totally! The battle between moneymen vs artsmen in games was already won by the moneymen in the last 10 years. Fallout 3 is a example of this disaster.

Because of the moneymen, the next WW is coming :drunk:
 
EnglishMuffin said:
Yes games are art, but like all works of art there are good and bad. If you smear a canvas with pig shit, is it art? Yes. Just like fallout 3 is art.
Click to expand...

well sure... there's nobody there who can (or should) say what IS and what IS NOT art. But we can all have our own rules and rulers set to what we ourselves, subjectively, consider "art". As other people say, the average quality of video games is much lower than average quality of films (just to choose one of the established "arts" and the one that, in my opinion, is closer to videogames) but the masterwoks of videogames (ie. Grim Fandango) can surpass even some masterwors of the film industry...
 
How about... The art of surviving the atrocity that is Fallout 3? :D

I can only think of one game that, to me, seems to have some artistic qualities and that's Arcanum. But in the end, one has to be honest, and one has to agree that games are just entertainment. Seriously. The days of finding everything to be art or finding art in everything are long gone. And that's a good thing.

The look in my eyes when I have been sleeping quietly for hours and someone thinks it might be fun to wake me up for no reason whatsoever - that's art. 8-)
 
Art unabashedly disregards revenue. Given that, none of these games listed are art.

Directly addressing the bombed-out-D.C.-as-art suggestion in this article: no. Goggling 'Failure' to find Bush is more artistic. Bombed out D.C. is what you might call shilling to the media. And even if those images themselves are art, I'm warming up to it, they still compose < .1% of Fallout 3 and are trumped by classic Shelley.
 
alec said:
How about... The art of surviving the atrocity that is Fallout 3? :D

I can only think of one game that, to me, seems to have some artistic qualities and that's Arcanum. But in the end, one has to be honest, and one has to agree that games are just entertainment.
Click to expand...

The art can be entertaining too, just like an entertainment can be artistic.

Those two work with each other nicely.
 
TyloniusFunk said:
Art unabashedly disregards revenue. Given that, none of these games listed are art.
Click to expand...

Interesting so the "The Last Judgment" on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome isn't Art. Artists in time periods before now tended to fall into 2 groups. The starving artists who might fit your description. And the kept men & women who produced art for their patrons.

Michelangelo had a low opinion of painting and only started painting it because the Pope was convinced by Bramante and Raphael to commission it.


What Art Is & Isn't.... is going to be debated from now until the end of time so I wouldn't get too worked up about any group telling people what is Art. Decide for yourself and try to look at each new experience with fresh eyes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top