State of the "Art"

[Alex Ros]

While discussing the state of art, first of all, you had to point out what is art and what is not. Another thing and a lot more important thing you had to point out, which art forms are evolving and vice versa which are petrified.

Do you mean "have to" instead of "had to" (as in "we have to individually determine our vocabulary before we talk about subject x")? Or do you think I should`ve given my own definition on art beforehand to open a more specific discussion?

Well, my English is not as good as I dream it to be, so sorry if some or most of my words are hardly understandable. But yeah I meant exactly "had to", like you say "definition on art beforehand to open a more specific discussion?"

Anyway. As for games as art there's one single big problem. All forms of art are somehow based on being "framed" or "edited". Author is making accents, managing consumer's attention. I mean that we see, listen, read, etc... only those things which author have decided to include in his work. Everything that is not needed for that nominal art work is cutted off. I mean that author is controlling what and when a consumer would think or imagine. But with games the most important thing is a freedom of a consumer to choose by himself where to move and look. No "frames" and no "editing". Even the rhythm is not controlled by author. Etc. As a result you, me, anyone who would like to transform games into the new innovative art form would have to solve the unsolvable (heh) problem of how to save the freedom of a player and at the same time how to nearly fully control his, player, thoughts.

At the right moment the biggest problem is an absence of really innovative decorations or environment design. There's a lot of simply good and beatiful examples, but there's no artists talanted enough to create environments as new in terms of art as... uhhhm... as for example Hans Giger. Just for a example. What would be "Alien" without Giger designs? Anything but art. And as I believe and that's my personal opinion, I do not insist I am right, there's no artist in game development industry as talanted as Picasso, Dali, Caravaggio, Da Vinci, etc. And that's a big problem. I presume studios like TheChineseRoom would solve the problem how to control thoughts of a player without making linear restrictions like in Dear Esther. But they would not solve the problem of "decorations". There's just no artist in the industry who is genius enough to build up new worlds priceless in terms of art.