No Arrows in ARR?!

[Bowen]

Ico is art.

Shadow of the Colossus is art

Some indie games like Braid are art.

I would not call Final Fantasy art. It's a great series of games, but it's not art.

I'll just redirect this at you:

Noun:
*The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,...: "the art of the Renaissance"
*Works produced by such skill and imagination.

[Ingolf]

I'll just redirect this at you:

Well it's subjective.

But in my personal opinion Final Fantasy will never be art. Just like Anime will never be art. Feel free to disagree though.

[Bluewhite]

Well it's subjective.

But in my personal opinion Final Fantasy will never be art. Just like Anime will never be art. Feel free to disagree though.

Lol I find it funny to see how this turned into art or not debate XD.

I'm under the impression that Art or not is depend on the content, but not by medium.

By content I mean it's presentation/visual/purpose/theme/skill etc, and how much of an impact it made to our world in different aspect. And usually the real "art" wouldn't put selling the product in mind, because once you try to sell the product, you more or less have to add mass appeal element and follow existing value to make ppl buy it, and a lot of "art stuff" contradicts mass appeal, it's often against existing value, but made an impact in our world.

Art or not shouldn't be determined by medium, but rather determined by the content(of course, whether the content qualified as art or not is another debate) A well written/sophisticated short story can be an art, a poor written short story is not art. A sophisticated painting/photograph can be art, but bad painting/photograph, you won't see them in musium because it's not art. A hollywood movie is usually not art because it has many mass appeal elements, while a meaningful art film in film festival is often considered art.

Thus Video game CAN be art, but whether it's art or not is depend on the content. Video game is a medium, if an artist wants to use video game to express art and achieved it, then it can be considered as art. Although it's usually called interactive art rather than video game, but basically the concept is the same, there are not much difference between an interactive art and video game in terms of execution.

An anime CAN be art, there are many independant animation shorts that is considered art, and shown in film festivals. Anime often referrs to animation with Japanese style, so if the content fits it can be art.

However, majority of video game/anime isn't considered art, because when you try to sell the product, you're limited in many way, and you have to follow the taste of the majority, such as characters have to follow certain style/look good, weapon design have to follow certain style, and you can't make the story too hard to understand and so on. Majority of the video game/anime has to follow existing value to a certain degree.

While real "art", when it has no burden to try to sell, it doesn't have much limit, so there are no limit in terms of how you express it, and can often have more room to challenge existing value, thus easier to be considered "art".

And it isn't unusual for vid game developers and anime companies try to make their product more "artistic". At this age, some of the video game/anime product often try to put the value of "art" into their product.


Games like FF, often sells for millions and millions of copy, due to they have larger mass appeal, it'd be harder to do "art stuff" in FF. Shadow of colossus is closer to art, but it also didn't sell as well as FF.(personally I wouldn't consider SoC true art though, it doesn't overthrow existing value in a video game, but more like a beautiful looking piece of story following existing value in a video game, and made it looked really good, it still has "mass appeal" element everywhere, not a bad thing though)

What is art and what is not, it's really hard to define as many ppl have different values. IMO, real art challenges existing value, and it's highly sophisticated in terms of how you express things, but not really enjoyable by just anyone. There are many anime/video games that is fairly close or tries to be as close to art, and still tries to have mass appeal.

Note that sometimes whether something is an art or not, also needs time. If something stands the test of time and still existed/admired after 200 years due to how it affects human culture/history fundementally, then it may be art. If something is forgetten in next decade, then it's hard to consider art and so on.

Thus saying Video game or anime is art or not is incorrect, but saying X title or Y title is art or not may be correct depending on your threahold on innovation, and how it affects human culture/history/philosophy. There are several anime titles I actually consider it more of an "art" than majority of video games and shitty pieces in musium(not everything you see in musium can be considered art, btw).