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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Video Games. Art or Entertainment?


Many people call video games a form of art, while others call them mindless entertainment. I am part of the video games ARE art group and I do everything in my ability to convince you to think the same.

You may not be able to hang them on a wall and stare at them for hours, and you may not pay tens of thousands of dollars for one, but video games are art just the same. The following is a dictionary entry of the word art.

art [aart]
n (plural arts)
1.  creation of beautiful things: the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works, e.g. in painting, music, or writing
2.  beautiful objects: beautiful or thought-provoking works produced through creative activity
3.  branch of art: a branch or category of art, especially one of the visual arts
4.  artistic skill: the skill and technique involved in producing visual representations
5.  study of art: the study of a branch of the visual arts
6.  creation by humans: creation by human endeavor rather than by nature
7.  techniques or craft: the set of techniques used by somebody in a particular field, or the use of those techniques
 8.  ability: the skill or ability to do something well
 9.  cunning: the ability to achieve things by deceitful or cunning methods (literary)

Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Do video games not fit almost all of these descriptions? If you don't think so, then take a look at the video below. You don't even need to watch the whole video to observe that video games can be beautiful.



Who still thinks video games are not art? As stated in the dictionary entry art is in branches. Video games are a branch of art. Depending on what kind of art you prefer, it may be a small branch, or a large branch, but it is a branch all the same. Comments you're thoughts in the box below.

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