Are videogames art?

Are they?

I downloaded NFS The Run the other day but it didn't work so I can't tell

Do you think my computer is not good enough for the game?

Are animated gifs art?

"Here I come to ruin the day!"

Before we could answer the question at hand, shouldn't we first ask ourselves what exactly we understand by the term 'art'?

Depending on how you fill in that notion, videogames will either be perfectly acceptable pieces of art or you'll have to consider yourself quite a madman for even considering the question.

Plato was fairly towards (graphical) art.
There's an interesting textfragment, I believe it's from The Republic but not sure, in which he speaks about the craft of the artist. The has to do with his ontology: for Plato we all have a singular idea of what a bed is. This idea is the blue print the carpenter uses to make the beds - not longer numerically one - he makes.
But what does the arist? He represents the bed, either visually or verbally. But these representations (mimesis) no longer have the functionality that make up the whole essence of what a bed is - you can't lay down in a paint and sleep in it!

Plato, who sought ways to move intellectualy toward the Ideal word, art as an activity implied an (intellectual!) step back. Traces of this attitude can easily be discerned in various periodes of medieval culture when art was sometimes perceived as frivolous and thus depraved.

One might argue that we could consider video games with Plato's attitude towards mimesis.
I think this is more or less the basis for the claims of people who think that youths get more violent in real life as a result of the violent video games they have been playing: their prolonged exposure to a mere representation of the world has made them blunt for the reality of the real world.
(Just to be clear: I'm not saying that I think such a vision is the only correct interpretation, but simply trying to show how it uses the basic premisses of a Platonic theory).

Aristotle was much more positive toward representation. He saw an important political role for the ancient Greek theater plays in that it helped people in a khatarsis-like proces. The viewer associates himself with the characters on stage as well as with the hyperbolic display of drama and emotions but also of the negative effects thereof.
You might find some ressemblence to this scheme when people say that video games help them work out some frustrations.

I can't imagine video games ever going the way of the avangt-garde with non pictural displays, attention for the media itself and so on. So art-theories which have departed from the mimesis-notion might have less to say about videogames. Which might be funny: there a lot easier to consider from the perspective of antique theories than from (post-)modern theories.

not sure if it's dealing with art gives it any artistic value but who cares. It's like soooo crazy!

http://thejailbreak.com/2011/03/24/jeff-koons-must-die-videogame/

I'm that kind of person who clicks on ads! So I got here: http://graphicnovel-hybrid4.peugeot.com/start.html

It is not a videogame. It is a "graphic novel" (comic?) where you scroll down (with some ambient sounds and music to it). It is just an ad (they're selling you a car), no big story, but it took me back somewhere when things were amazing and it didn't require an effort (no need to force yourself, not a bit) because it was that good. I remember getting that exciment towards videogames.

By the way the ads here are fake. At least the interactive ones. I wanted to burst those bubbles, if I have to burst four bubbles I'll burst only three of them, I've done that before... but guess what, they didn't let me burst them, one click took me to their site

Why not ? Some people think Frank Zappas music was art.

Don't get me wrong...I dig Franks music, I just don't think it rises to that level.

Unless you think rock can never be art, why wouldn't Zappa's music be art?

random ego of otro nombre wrote:Unless you think rock can never be art, why wouldn't Zappa's music be art?

With a few exceptions, I do not think of rock music as art.

When it comes to music as art, I save that for opera and classical.