Submitted by PureSophistry 695d ago | opinion piece

Educated Gamer: Is there True Beauty in Games?

Art is in the imitation of nature (Pere Andre Batteux 1675-1764) uniting the beauties of nature is what an artist does, and a game unites more than any other (Pagano 1748-99).

Although undoubtedly some games could be construed as visually beautiful, what is beauty? Where does it come from?

The beauty of art comes through the senses, all of them, so food becomes an art because of the beauty of taste as well as hairdressing and tailoring through the senses of touch and sight, perfume making through smell. All become arts because they give us pleasurable sensory information but beauty also is undefined. There is no rigid definition of beauty, it’s regarded of as is religion, that it is so obvious it doesn’t require discussion, which is obviously just a lazy explanation. Then why isn’t hairdressing and architecture and cooking and video games considered an art? Surely video games should be a super art because it gives off so much sensory information more than any other form of art, more than all the arts combined because that’s what games basically are. (Culture, Mirror's Edge, Okami HD, PC, PS3, Xbox 360)

Picnic  +   694d ago
It's a combination of being a luddite and being a snob who doesn't truly have a full array of aesthetic sensibilities.

Like some people reason that if it's something mass produced that you can buy for only £40 in a supermarket it can't be art.

If they wanted to, videogame creators could create limited editions of games and give them to well known art galleries. But they'd probably make a loss on the cost of creating the game that way and there would be the time or inclination for visitors to understand the full conmplexities of the game in that time.

The people who create videogames would be seen as eccentric by most people, even by most so-called 'artists' some of whom merely repackage what has already been done 100 years ago.

Videogames may be sold at a mass market level but it still requires a niche intellectual level to actually make them.
Sadly, our educational system doesn't look likely to caught up to understanding or teaching what that is soon.
Some must view videogames as unreasonable chaos, nothing more than a fun distraction. After all, practically every other entertainment form has been regarded in this way by the so called 'upper echelons' of academia as well.
They just don't know how much they are denying what should be a serious area of artistic study.

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