Is that like Roger Eberts evil twin?

Well said, Steven. Time to put that whole stupid debate behind us.

agree. the whole idea is being enjoyable WHILE being artistic. that will also solve the problem of people not taking games seriously as a medium.



you can put it any way you like, games offer a very limited emotional spectrum. we can do a lot more and i know we will.

If Artists don't create "art" then what do they create?

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All people who construct a 3d model (for example) are artists? What if the model is constructed from referenced concept art? What if the concept art has gone through several revisions at the behest of an art director or game designer?





The point is, there are distinctions between types of art based on the amount of creative freedom the "artist" has. There are distinctions and some people think those distinctions are important. It's like saying all food is food and all cooks are equal. The fast food french fry and burger cook is equal to the gourmet chef at a five star restaurant. It doesn't make you a food snob to appreciate the very real differences.



Maybe you would prefer a division of grades? Michelangelo was a grade 1 artist, Joe First Person Shooter Character Modeler/Animator is a grade 79.

I've meet many "grade 1" artists in the industry, their skill and depth is right up there with the best sculptures or craftsmen but they work in digital clay vs marble or paint. Their work gets seen by millions if not 10s of million of people so who is to say they are "grade 79" vs "grade 1" another quite artificial criterion. Studios do not hire people just learning their craft, most studios hire experienced people who have plied their craft for many years and have reached a high level...



I would agree that artists within the industry do have to subdorindate their vision to the overall theme of the game.. but that doesn't dimiss their creation as being non-art. Even Michelangelo had to work on commissions..

Right. Art isn't just about the creator's vision. Fine art is art created expressly for the enjoyment of the patrons.

When an artist works on commission they still have full creative freedom. In fact when you hire an artist to work on commission, you WANT them to have full creative freedom because they are the artist, not you and so you trust they will know better than you what to create for a particular space and how to do it.



An artist who takes direction from the person paying him is doing for hire work and not commissioned projects.



EDIT: And going back to an earlier point, is everything resulting from the placing of brush to canvas art? What about crayola? If that's the case then the meaning of art is very low indeed since any expression becomes art whether it's intended to be art or not. Maybe you say it requires training first? How much training? Who decides when you've had enough. All of that sounds a lot more arbitrary than judging the degree of creative freedom.



But if on the other hand _not_ everything an artist "creates" is art, then we can begin to agree that not every model or texture is art.

Well the analogy doesn't apply since not even every act of Michelangelo qualifies as "art".. does every minor brush stroke or minor chisel strike quality as art? It is the sum total of said actions and ultimately the finial work which has to be considered. Sure companies employee alot of 3D artists whom as part of their job model trivial things, paint trivial textures, animate trivial animation but that is not their "art". It is the final result their own vision constrained within the themes of the game, uniquely expressed as part of a larger whole.



Meh, I'm not trying to define "art" for people, if you think art is any creative expression independent of skill, sure any act will quality, but that is not what "game" artist do though which is what this discussion is about. Games make art and thus are art, whether Houser appreciates it or not doesn't really matter.. but his statement seem contradictory since Rockstar is one of the foremost studios for defining such striking look and feel in their games..

You're missing his point. He would say investing in the look and feel of games is part of their pursuit of making the games entertaining. Whether or not you consider that art is immaterial to how much people enjoy it.



Also, there is definitely a difference though between FPS modeler dude, and say a character artist for a Final Fantasy game. The artistic skill of an employee can be negated or enhanced by the "vision" of the game. Its an important point that many games these days don't really value visual aesthetic.

"And with regards to collaboration invalidating a work's artistic status, that's just silly. Let's stop that argument right here, shall we?"



It's not an argument i was making. Collaborative art certainly exists. The question is, who is/are the artists? Is the person(s) who constructs the set for a ballet stage that was designed on a computer by a set designer an artist?



Clearly they are an integral part of a creative collaboration, but for some that's not enough... they must be artists. I think there's a bit of conceit in that perspective.

"I'm sure there's been many works that portray bad things in a way that advocates those bad things... but I'm not sure I can think of any such works that are generally revered."



There's no shortage of notable examples, though in many cases we are too divorced from the culture that produced the art to see it. For example, Hieronymous Bosch is one of my favorite painters. His artistic skill is held in extremely high regard. But his paintings advocate a world-view of ultra-conservative religious subservience. On an intellectual level I know that's there, but I'm so far removed from that mindset that it's impossible for me to consider them any kind of persuasive work.



On the other end, most people are without the critical context to deal with modern art because they are too close to it - see most any discussion about discrimination on Gamasutra.



The most generally obvious are in cinema where we are culturally close enough to understand them but far enough to be repulsed. D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation; Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Both these films are technical masterpieces but are vehicles for horrifying ideals.

sorry, clicked on the wrong reply.

@dylan: yes, there is just too little of that. i am tired of always bringing up shadow of the colossus and the marriage when talking to no gaming people. ;-)