by Jon Lackman | 9 February 2010 | Uncategorized
Charles J. Pratt, a freelance game designer and a researcher at NYU’s new Game Center, writes a two-part review (1, 2) of the recent “Art History of Games” conference in Atlanta, GA, asking first of all, are games art?
“It’s interesting that we have to justify this question in the first place,” said co-organizer, author and IGF Nuovo Award finalist Bogost (A Slow Year) in his opening remark … “Is the art of games found in the visual arts?” [John] Sharp asked, adding, “Another place we can look is that the art of games is in their worlds. This lends itself to thinking of games as sculptural.” The speakers pointed out that, of course, games can also be enjoyed from a technical point of view … “[Or] is the art of games in the game design?” Sharp asked … Sharp laid out one final way that one could claim games are art. He pointed out that the act of play itself has creative aspects. “Is the art of games found in the player’s performance?” he mused. “This suggests that the real power lies with the player rather than the designer” … Sharp pointed out that “you don’t usually see games in a museum. A lot of our historical understanding of games comes from representations in art. There’s a sort of paradox there” … “If we look at a definition of art we can see that games meet most criteria,” Sharp said. “Games have the potential to deliver deep meaning, just not in the places we’re used to looking” … [Game designer Frank] Lantz argued that perhaps the trick is not to change games to make them more like our conceptions of art, but to change the way we think about art in light of games … if aesthetics cannot take games into account then we should re-engineer our ideas about aesthetics: “The way we think about aesthetics needs to change.”
