I know of one game that takes existentialist philosophy as its subject. It's an adaptation of Camus, a freeware called Sisyphus Reborn:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1863/ .

It's a short but overall cool and very well crafted game. The visuals and the sound are amazing.

Yes, this exactly.

So if someone asks if games are an artform, I could only say "they could be".

Some games are more like sports, e.g. any online FPS game. When I played Quake Teamfortress, I never felt like I am looking at a painting or seeing a movie, but more like playing football with friends (e-sports).

Of course, it is not only how you define "art", but also how you define "game". Is a visual novel a game? Some consider it as one, I on the other hand expect games always include some kind of challenge or impediment factor. It doesn't have to be that big challenge, it may be merely about needing to try different options you can do in the game, like in The Stanley Parable. Not sure about Minecraft in Creative mode... maybe it is a game for me too, barely. It has the survival mode too, which has the challenge part.

Very interesting post, and according to these definitions the conclusion that games are an art form certainly makes sense.
My only issue with all this is that the variable "artistic" is itself not defined. So while everything you wrote makes sense and one can certainly do math with unknown variables, I would certainly like to know what exactly is meant by artistic. Under the premise of OP, we are agreeing to see games as an art form anyway so that's not even the big question of this thread, the question is which games form the canon of this particular art form and in order to decide that we'd need to know what makes art artistic or not so we can rank the games accordingly. Your post makes perfect sense in drawing the conclusion to include games as an art form but without a definition of what artistic means, ranking one game against another is somewhat difficult if not impossible.

Is a game the sum of its artistic parts in terms of how skillfully crafted they are, meaning that the game with the most skillfully executed graphics, code, music and sound effects is the highest art? Or is artistic to be understood as creative in which case the most original games would take precedence? Or are games defined by the one factor that sets them apart from other art forms, and that is interactivity? So the games with the most engaging gameplay would be the most relevant in the games art form?


I doubt anyone but you and me is following this part of the conversation here but it's a good example of what happens when someone tries to be a smartass towards someone he perceived as a smartass and then an even bigger smartass comes along and points out that the second smartass doesn't really have a point. The second smartass gets angry because he wanted to be the supreme smartass in the thread so he tries to turtle up by saying he doesn't need to prove anything because having to prove anything is shifting the burden of proof which Wikipedia says is another one of them fancy sounding logical fallacies. This is so nonsensical that the third smartass has just about no reason to let that count. Now the second smartass gets even more angry and claims that the third smartass is dumb - the seemingly only way to escape this conundrum, or so the second smartass thinks. This incidentally makes the third smartass automatically win whatever silly fight is going on because the second smartass lost enough composure to resort to kindergarten tactics and there isn't much need in refuting that. Makes for a funny story though, and if everyone involved could have a jovial laugh about all this (or, Heaven forbid, learn something from this) then it might even have been worth it.

Regarding the definition of "art", I might define it simply as "creative work"--that is, a work produced via creativity. To my mind skill is not a part of the determination of whether or not something is "art"--whether it's good art, perhaps, but not whether or not it's art at all.

This does mean that "art" is a rather broad category, and that the determination of whether a work is "art" is subjective, but I don't see either as a problem: Regarding its broadness, to my mind "art" is a super-category, with various sub-categories of various types. Regarding its subjectivity, I note that "beauty" is also subjective, and is nevertheless a useful term.

(I suppose that my definition is somewhat the inverse of awalterj's: instead of defining "art" as the superlative of the field, the "masterworks", I define it as the field itself, with sub-categories further dividing it.)

Regarding "classical canon", I don't think that anything that is art need be included; inclusion would presumably be a matter of selection by the relevant culture, hopefully skewed to those works that are considered to be the medium's masterworks, and presumably to those that survive time and changing technology.

Your definition of art is of course just as valid, if you see art as a super group of fields then of course all operas are art in the opera art form and all games are art in the games art form (which under the pretext of this thread we automatically accept as a valid art form) and one has to decide which fields are art forms and which fields aren't and I've yet to see what exact criteria is mandatory for any field to be art. "outlet of expression", "creative outlet of expression", what exactly?

I personally define art as a -level- that can be achieved within any field so I don't limit art to certain fields, as I wrote earlier I consider certain sushi chefs artists, pastry makers can be artists, florists can be artists, anyone who takes their craft to a level above mere technical expert level. This usually requires some form of creativity, even if you're a marksman or stunt driver which aren't things that people usually consider as creative as e.g. pastry making.

So that way the criteria of the classical gaming canon wouldn't be dependent on any vague definition of "artistic", yes that sounds reasonable. In that case, we can select games according to their historical relevance, the milestones so to speak.
I'm a bit conflicted when it comes to deciding between e.g. Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM or Dune II vs Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn or Warcraft 1 vs 2 etc. Do we select the newer more widely popular title that is more evolved or the earlier titles that closed a wider gap innovation wise? It's a tricky question because many people will vote subjectively based on which titles they knew first, meaning that in the case of Wolfenstein vs DOOM most people will say DOOM is more of a milestone because it was much more widely known than Wolfenstein and put the FPS genre on the map for the masses.

The medium is the message. Different forms require completely different handling. Your question is like asking 'Where is the oil painting of Handel's Messiah?' We could make a painting of a bunch of angels and the birth of Christ, but it's not at all the same as listening to the oratorio.

Also, note that most cross-medium works

1) Depict a subject out of copyright. When a site can be DMCA'd off the internet without recourse, copyright law has a huge chilling effect on anything not clearly in the public domain. Few if any video games are out of copyright.

2) Use time-tested methods in the new medium, which we don't have in games yet. The field has moved too fast.

If you really want this, check back in 50 years. In the meantime, enjoy the classic games we have for what they are.

Some of the obstacles in the way of that which I already mentioned are that we don't yet have to tools to analyse games, and that the field is too young to help define "classics". But I want to continue in a constructive direction, so I'll try to do what I did in my previous post and come up with a subset, some guidelines by which we might judge. Of course not everyone would agree, but it's better to come up with some reasonable argument than go in the "we each have our own definition" direction.

So lets look at what one web page tells us about why "Gone with the Wind" is a classic. I went for this movie because it was mentioned before, I went with the top page on the Google search, and so this isn't necessarily (and probably isn't) the best discussion of the subject, but let's see if I can draw some conclusions from it. The page is "10 Reasons Why Gone with the Wind is Still Awesome".

It's important to note that I'm not trying to define what's art, I'm trying to define what can be considered a classic piece of art.

It's also worth noting that deciding what is not classic art is a worthwhile step towards deciding what is.

The reasons the page lists are:
1. Costumes
2. Production design
3. Music
4. Victor Fleming’s direction
5. Casting
6. Vivien Leigh’s Performance
7. Entertainment value
8. Universal themes
9. It looks great for its age
10. Lasting impact on pop culture

I'll start with point 7 (although in the article it's more 10, really), which I think is a worthwhile distinction between "piece of art" and "classic piece of art". A classic needs to be good entertainment. It needs to be something that a significant number of people would enjoy even a long time after its creation.

The other thing which I think is worth talking away from this is that a classic needs to have gotten many things right. If you look at a piece of art and you can't find several things about it which make it better than average or make it distinctive, then it won't be a classic. It's probably also possible to say that if it has major flaws it's not a classic.

(As a side note, point 9 is interesting. The article talks about the great restoration and colouring the film got. That would be equivalent to a remastered edition of a game.)

I won't try to get more out of this at this moment. I'll quote some definitions of the adjective 'classic':

a. Belonging to the highest rank or class.
b. Serving as the established model or standard: a classic example of colonial architecture.
c. Having lasting significance or worth; enduring.


By the way, I thought about it and find it strange that Shakespeare's plays are judged as classic literature. That's probably because plays are considered a minor art form, that most people don't care about, and so these and other plays which are considered classics (Oedipus Rex) are bundled into a form that's better regarded.

That's the spirit! If there's anything I'm not a big fan of lukewarm stuff like "meh I guess we'll agree to disagree" or the even more useless notion that "all opinions are equal", that doesn't get anyone anywhere. Props for putting your arguments forward in depth, this is something one can work with.
I can't use my own definition of art (art = craft taken to expert level and beyond) because I've been unable to define the beyond part to a degree where it's a quantifiable property. Even after decades of giving thought to it, my definition can't be used for debate in that form so I'd propose that we try to leave art out of the equation and come up with a measure to decide on the classics of gaming, more reasonable because the term "classics" is a bit better defined than art - as long as said definition doesn't include the word "art". Soon as we include art we're back to square one :)
Stuff like this sounds reasonable enough:
classic = "judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind."

How about just "classic piece" because that way you can cut the uncomfortably unknown variable (art) out of the equation.

The purpose of virtually all games is to entertain so that's a good criteria. Probably the most important one. I just don't know how to quantify that?
There are 5 star games that didn't entertain me at all and there are games that entertained me very much and other people give them two stars or even less. It seems that entertainment value is a very subjective property, even if it is the most important thing we seek in games. So I'm not sure if we can use it for ranking.

A classic definitely needs to positively stand out from the average, yes, but I think this is achieved by the overall sum of points a game gets and not so much by the absence of flaws. I've played some games that had no apparent flaws but were rather unmemorable and on the other hand a game like UFO: Enemy Unknown had quite a number of flaws (e.g. unintuitive UI, wacky glitches and bugs) and yet it manages to win enough points overall that it's safe to say it belongs on any remotely legit canon of gaming classics. Same for Dungeon Keeper, a game with notable flaws and glitches and lousy AI but overall a definite contender for a canonical classic. Some of the most legendary games are chock full of flaws, making this a pressing criteria would weed out too many genre defining and widely acclaimed titles.
So to summarize I think we should be forgiving in the flaws department and put more emphasis on the overall outstanding side of things.

A very good point, after all classic is another word for timeless so it's a super bonus if a game has as we call it "aged well". Personally, I define "aged well/looks great for its age" more in terms of gameplay, meaning that I still consider Civilization 1 entirely playable and enjoyable. I might not find it as exciting as when I played it for the first time and that applies to every game but my opinion of Civ 1 is still the same when it comes to its value and how high I rate the game because good gameplay never gets old.
A majority of people seem to define "aged well" in terms of presentation though and that's problematic because those people would in many cases pick later iterations of a series rather than earlier ones,even if the earlier one is a more accomplished game in aspects other than presentation and even if the older game looks just as good (or better) for its age.
To bring up the example of Dune 2 vs C&C Tiberian Dawn again: C&C looks much better than Dune 2 but for its age, Dune 2 has better graphics, it's a whopping 3 years older than C&C after all. In terms of gameplay, I think most would agree that C&C has aged better even if they are fans of Dune 2 and still enjoy it.
But despite the danger of people interpreting "looks great for its age" according to different criteria, I still think it's a criteria one can use - with caution.

All these make a lot of sense.

a. here we can use game ratings which can usually be translated to 0-100% and therefor allow for ranking, so the all time highest rated games (preferably by users not press) would qualify.

b. at first glance seems to be congruent with a. but b. doesn't require a game to have the highest rating, just that other games have tried to emulate it and that it is seen by a majority as a standard. Super Mario is a good example, I don't think anyone would check for percentage ratings before adding that game to the classic canon, it's an established standard to which some games try to live up to, even nowadays. I never liked it much because I suck at platformers but I consider Super Mario a classic nonetheless.

c. that's a good one, because it (hopefully) weeds out games that are temporarily popular but will sink into oblivion. I0m hoping Halo to be one of those. A great example of an enduring game would be Starcraft 1, even its sequel didn't render it irrelevant, even today people are still playing Brood War competitively.
On the other hand, there are games that get forgotten due to being hidden gems that never reached significance in terms of defining where the genre went. Not talking about games like Herzog Zwei which made an impact on the genre before sinking into obscurity, I'm referring to games like Albion and The Neverhood

+1
Ironically it's called "Konstruktivismus / constructivism"
"Jedem das seine / To each his own" my ass.

I like to blame the popularity of this stance on Paul Watzlawick and his colleagues...

Which is what I'm trying to get at. It's not fair to judge games against film, TV or books because it's a fundamentally different artistic medium with a (generally) very different dynamic between audience and author. Take any of your favorite books, or the greatest books from across literary/cinematic history...with some very few exceptions, I doubt that they'd be any good as direct game adaptations outside of games based in a given book/movie's universe.

Planescape: Torment would likely be a very poor novel or movie, yes. Does that detract from its artistic value as being an excellent (or even classical) example of narrative and story in videogaming? I don't think so.

The guy kinda reminds me of myself: Lots of analysis and not too many solutions. The difference is I don't get paid!

Another difference is that I at least have the sense to stop myself -before- I write an entire book, maybe some walls of text here and there. And then I switch to practice mode where theory is set aside, not discarded but the hamster wheel that spins new theories is put to a temporary stop. It's not quite noticeable here on the forum because forum is talking and talking belongs to the realm of theory, making us all look like little Watzlawicks unless we don't post but according to Watzlawick, even not posting is posting!

Your second paragraph is a pretty good definition of art, really. Creating an meaningful experience and telling compelling stories are some of the general goals of art.

People also commonly associate aesthetic beauty with art - although modern art fans strongly disagree with this - and video games have that in spades as well.

You are correct, I believe, in pointing out that artistic works are not limited to a specific set of sub-fields. Hmm... Looking back at my previous definition, I feel that I perhaps expressed myself poorly, or forgot a point in the writing. :/

(In my defence, let me say that I've been somewhat under-slept of late. ^^; )

For me, art is a broad field, but inclusion in that field isn't made on the basis of being a work in one of a set of sub-fields, but rather on the basis of being an expression of creativity.

For example, a beautiful sandcastle is, to me, a work of art (and no less so for being potentially very much ephemeral). However, that doesn't mean that any moving of sand from one place to another is art. Art is in what's done with the medium, rather than in the medium itself.

Honestly, pretty much that. It's hard to produce an accurate, non-subjective definition of the phrase "outlet of creative expression", but that is nevertheless pretty much the criterion that I use.

I agree; this seems like a good turn for the discussion at this point. ^_^

As to the selection of classics, to some degree the job is not entirely up to us: a work is a "classic" in a medium because a given culture considers it to be one. Thus I might claim that, say, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is a classic--but if the culture at large disagrees with me, then it is not a classic. For another example, I would argue that Planescape: Torment is a classic--not because I particularly like or admire it (although I do both), but because, by my impression, at least, it is considered as such in the circles in which I've seen it discussed.

However, that doesn't mean that we have no say in the matter. Games become considered as classics, as far as I see, by virtue of being discussed and recommended, ensuring that they remain in cultural circulation. Thus, our discussions and recommendation of games that we enjoy or admire may act to increase the cultural status of that game. In essence this is a sort of democracy: our speaking in favour of a given game is in essence a vote for that game, as well as an argument attempting to convince others to "vote" similarly.

(One could also go the opposite way and claim that we each have our own classics, of course, but that might be less useful.)

I disagree. PS:T would make for an artistic novel or movie (I won't try to define "artistic" exactly). Which is to say, it will probably not be a best seller, but a lot of people will claim it's an important piece, as with the game.

No one would expect PS:T to be adapted as is, the pacing of a game is not a match for either film or novel form. Also, the goal oriented nature of game design (find stuff and use it, make decisions, solve puzzles to advance the story) is not a good fit for another form. Branching design would also have to go (the game may be "linear", but there are quite a few dialogue and solution choices and choice of companions).

But the core of the game is great. It has a good setting, interesting characters, an unusual plot that involves self discovery, a human touch, and interesting ideas. It would not be easy to adapt, and could end up pretty bad, but it could also end up very good.

There are in fact several novelisations of the game. One of them, by Ray and Valerie Vallesse, is being sold on Amazon and is considered pretty bad. Another by Rhyss Hess (free download) is supposedly much more faithful to the original, and another, edited by Logan Stromberg (also free download), is expanded from Hess' version and more online materials.

To make such a novel into a work of art would require a good artist, so I wouldn't be that any of these versions are that, but I think I'm intrigued enough. Goodreads has three reviews of Stromberg's version. Two say it's great, one says that it's too long and Hess' version is better. The Hess version has 10 reviews and a better score, though it's supposedly mostly the game's text. Because I don't want to commit to a 1200 page novel I think I'll start with the Hess version.

awalterj, you posted some good points for further discussion, but I think I devoted too much time to thinking about this, and I already started to peter out on the previous post (had some more thoughts, just didn't feel like forming them into something coherent). It's an interesting subject, but not interesting enough for me to seriously attempt to study it further. Still, I always enjoy your posts.

Unless you mean what are some examples of artistic video games, I think you are asking the wrong question.

Art does not equal old or classic. Art is something that is novel or that makes you think. And I don't mean makes you think in terms of a puzzle but pushes your boundaries and makes you think beyond the box i.e. Bioshock, Psychonauts, Flower, Braid, Ico

A Theory of Fun for Game Design makes this notion very clear. Video games are different than other art forms because they are interactive and it doesn't need to convert works of Shakespeare to become art, because it already is a form capable of becoming art.