From the mailbag
I just got done reading Chapter Nine of your Theory of Fun for Game Design and I think it suffered for not having a functional definition of ‘art’. I’ll throw you the one that I developed and hope that you find it useful as it is very applicable to systems in general. “Art is a manifestation of Genius.” This definition does more than just separate ‘good art’ from ‘bad art’ subjectively, but allows art to spread accross a wide swathe of mediums and fields. Yes, a beautiful mathematics proof can be art. Computer programs (and even games) can be art. It makes art reflect upon the creator and context. One’s regard for Duchamp’s Fountain, for example, is based on whether one thinks it a cute idea, a clever idea, or a manifestation of genius. The definition also rids us of the notion that art is somehow about communication. The only thing that art universally tries to convey is ‘Look what greatness mankind has wrought’.
I have offered up a few definitions of art in the past, and the one that is probably most notable is in the essay The Case for Art, in which I offer up an extended distinction between art and entertainment, with no handy statement as to what art actually is.
But you can extract some elements from what I say there:
- Art tends to be well-crafted
- Art tends to have an emphasis on communicating something important powerfully
The pithiest version I have offered up is in Video games, and online worlds, as ar
Mere entertainment becomes art when the communicative element in the work is either novel or exceptionally well done.
So you can see that right off the bat, I am in big disagreement with you. I think all the arts are about communication. I also think “Genius” is far too vague a term to hang the definition of art on. What’s a genius? Some think that John Cage was a very smart quack. There are still folks out there who cannot appreciate Jackson Pollock.
I prefer to think that these are cases where the viewer or listener is simply not in a frame of mind to hear what Cage or Pollock are telling them, rather than make value judgements about whether or not Cage and Pollock were geniuses.
Which reminds me of this neat article I recently read on when geniuses tend to peak.
Dear Raph, First, thank you for taking the time to read this email. I am in the middle pages of your book ‘A Theory of Fun.’ Your book is my introduction to the world of gaming, in the sense that you cover in your enthralling book. I am both enjoying it immensely and ‘learning’ a great deal from each page. This, according to your theory makes total sense. I also am enjoying the pattern of being able to ‘read’ the book entirely from the right side of my brain in pictures as well. I purchased your book to gain some insight about how to teach what I do with people, in person, in game form. When I purchased the book I didn’t realize just how to that point your book would be. On page 72, you mention, “There is a whole genre of game that is about . . .” then you list these human relation type modalities. I went online to look for such type a genre mentioned somewhere, and could not find. I’m wondering if, when you have the time, if you could point me to that genre? I am quite intrigued with where the book is going so far. Especially, as you seem to be exploring other horizons for learning via games. For years, I’ve taught people, mainly young people all manner of human relations practices using games, interactive games between real people. And, an intuition, somewhat confirmed by your book, is telling me that there might be benefit in creating a game that might do the job as well. Thank you for your time, and for this great great book. José Angel Santana, Ph.D
I am glad you are enjoying the book. The exact quote you are referencing is
The skills needed around a meeting room table and the skills needed at the tribal council are not so different, after all. There are whole genres of game that are about husbandry, resource management, logistics, and negotiation.
There are actually several genres of game that point to those human modalities. Let me list them:
Fish Eat Fish
- Husbandry, as in being a steward of something, can be seen in all those Tycoon games, particularly the Zoo Tycoon series where you have to breed animals. There’s a variety of strategy games with limited resources where this is important as well.
- Resource management is such a basic element of games that you see it all over. A very pointed example of resource management can be seen in the Reiner Knizia boardgame Fish Eat Fish. In this game, you have a boardgame about capturing other players’ fish. Combat is resolved by each player taking one card from their hand, and adding together the card you played plus the size of your “school” of fish. But you only have 1 of each denomination of card, and must carefully manage the limited resources you are given, since once played a card is gone forever.
- Logistics rears its head in the more complex wargames, as well as in the economics games in MMORPGs and many other places. Those are the most obvious places I can think of to look, though.
- The best example of negotiation is of course the classic Diplomacy.
Hi Raph I take a chance you will have the time to read this in your probably big inbox. My name is Henrik and i come from Sweden (hence my english is not perfect). I did not spend much time with games until i tried SWG. I simply loved it and was stuck until it started to change to become like the other MMOs out there. I base that opinion on that i tried to find a game i like after that without success. I have come to think after reading a bit about it, that the initial ideas you had about the game was the reason i liked it so much. Anyway to my question, you got some questions in a previous blog about the old PRE CU code, or CU code. Among other things you said: “it’s been overwritten, since once you commit to going in a direction, you don’t leave the old code path in there, that’d be sloppy. It may exist in an ancient code backup, but likely very difficult to integrate.” As a developer myself (altough rather junior) i was suprised. Isnt it possible to just get an old “image” of the code as i guess SWG development team used some Version Control System? I dont try to say you are wrong, as that would probably just prove me wrong :), but just curious to how it works in a big game development project. And of course i still have a fading hope of playing the old swg again, even if i know it is not your area these days. Btw, I will follow your next project with interest. BR Henrik
I am glad you enjoyed SWG.
Yes, of course version control is used. Perforce is one of the most popular solutions these days. You can always go back to an older version of the code. But keep in mind that in the case of an MMO, code operates against a database full of data. When you go back in versions, you lose not only whatever bugfixes you may have made, and any improvements you added to the game, but you also may lose compatibility with whatever new elements have been added to the database. Of course, every MMO operators also keeps backups of player data, but most players wouldn’t want a multiple year rollback.
In general, I think giant multiple-year rollbacks of MMO servers is a highly impractical notion for anyone to contemplate.
Shortly after getting this email in the mailbox:
I know you’re busy but you seem to be the best person to ask and I dont know where else to ask. I have searched all over the web but didnt find anything. Has the MUD-Dev email list died? I have not gotten any emails from it since February. I have tried signing up again under different emails as well. I even tried writing the moderator. Nothing. Are you still getting the emails?
I got this one:
Hello fellow MUD Dev’ers, As all of you are aware, the MUD-Dev mailing list on kanga.nu has not been available as of February 2006. I am not aware of the reasons but I have found that the discussions the users were having were very interesting and worth continuing to have. In lieu of the MUD-Dev Mailing List, I have made another mailing list available so that we can continue to discuss the topic of MUD/MMO Design. I have tried to extract as many email addresses as I could from the MUD-Dev emails I had in my archive. There are many others missing, so please forward this message to all that may be interested. The link below is to sign up for the MUD-Dev mailing list. It is a goal to have the same style and quality that was done before so please provide your inputs and comments. For those on this list, I will send an invitation to join the MUD-Dev2 mailing list. It will be a separate email, sent shortly after this one.
Thank you all, Nick Koranda
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev2 mailing list
[email protected]
http://mud-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/mud-dev2_mud-dev.com
This is great news. I haven’t joined the new list yet though. 😛 But for those who have been missing MUD-Dev, go check it out!
For those wondering what happened to the old one — I did some digging, and it does look like at least I can report that J. C. Lawrence, the moderator of MUD-Dev, does appear to be OK. (I was getting worried that a health problem or something ele bad had happened!) I haven’t spoken with him, but I have seen him active on BoardGameGeek, so he’s still around.
“I tend to ‘see’ game designs in my head as shapes. I couldn’t draw the shape for you to save my life, but when I think about features, I see them as interlocking pieces. The vision doc is my stab at turning the shape into words so that others can kind of see it too.” Hi Raph, Just a quick note to say thank you – it was such a relief to read about somebody else who is blessed/cursed with this sort of mental process! My picture is more like a 3D circulatory system that I can see and understand perfectly – but cannot seem to find any way to effectively, fully communicate through pictures or words… It’s a comfort to know that it is a frustration others experience as well. Keep fighting the good fight. There are plenty of us out here who greatly appreciate what you are trying to achieve in the worlds you design. Can’t wait to see what’s coming next!
I find that I often cannot translate these shapes into something I can draw for people on paper, either. Do you have that problem?
Dear Raph! I would like to ask for your permission to translate the three parts of your article: UO’s resource system to hungarian. The translation would appear on mmogames.hu, a shortly starting hungarian mmorpg portal. Yours sincerely, David Nagy
I tried replying to this via email, but it bounced for some reason. In any case, yes, you have my permission to translate them and post them, as long as I receive due credit, and ideally a link back.
You might know about such things already, but a friend of mine pointed me to a website which he described as “the guy Shakespeare stole [insert a line here] from”. It describes itself well enough. I thought you’d be interested, so, catch! http://www.princehamlet.com/burghley.html (It was significant to us mainly because we’ve been doing collaborative writing and dancing all over the Internet to call in mythological and historical references left and right.)
I don’t see quite so many similarities to Polonius’ advice, but it’s still a fascinating document.
I live in Argentina, is there a way I could buy “A Theory of Fun for Game Design”?
Hmm. Well, Amazon will in fact ship internationally, but I imagine that could get fairly expensive. There is no Spanish-language translation of the book (nor French, nor in fact any European languages!).
I want to keep this short. Koster´s Part: Hi there, I´m a big fan! When are you going to visit Brasil? 🙂 Webmaster´s Part: All the Habitat related links are broken in this page: https://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/links.shtml Links 2 to 3 are now in this site: http://www.crockford.com/ec/ (The first one should be somewhere here too) Link 4 is here: http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html There´s a possibility that the links aren´t broken, but I won´t sing-up for the site if the content is avalible elsewhere. 🙂 Thanks.
I believe the wonderful Kristen fixed these as you suggested.
As far as Brazil — I was invited to a conference there last year, but wasn’t able to go. I’ll probably only go if someone pays my way, I hate to say. 🙂
I have the orignal Atari 2600 and would like to hook it to my HD tv. The problem is that they don’y have the antenea connectors. I tried the local Radio Shack but they were no help. Can you make suggestions?
The RF adapter I had had the antenna connectors on the top end and a regular RF cable jack on the bottom end. So you could use that to go into the TV, through a VCR perhaps. A quick Google search shows that you could also obtain an RF modulator.
I hope you haven’t already read this. http://beesbuzz.biz/art/words/smb.php A new look at an old game. 😛
Ha!
Lastly, I got several posts asking for a job. I don’t yet have the means to hire anyone, sorry. 🙂 And once I do, I am likely going to start very small, looking for just a server programmer. I’ll probably announce here on the blog once I am getting going.
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I don’t know about the original poster, but myself, I can’t draw at all, and seem to be highly deficient in visualization skills, so I have never realy tried. Once I have distilled the original ideas enough, sometimes I can make a flowchart. But often I find myself with an arrangement of ideas in my head that defies any and all attempts to share with others. Sometimes this is a simple lack of common referents, especially when I start talking about emergent phenomena, if the person I am talking to doesn’t already have a gut-level understand of emergent systems, nothing Ii say involving emergent effects is going to mean anything to them.
For me they aren’t shapes, though, probably because of my lack of visualization skills. Rather, they are patterns of ideas, that have loose ends and want to stick to each other. If I juggle them around long, the gaps in the pattern suggest the nature of what should fit into the holes. But the patterns are definitely hyperdimensional, once the pattern is complete I may be able to create a projection that fits into 3 dimensions or two (flowcharts/graphs), and once I really understand all of it’s ramifications and intricacies I may be able to create a 1 dimensional projection (a linear explanation in written form).
Sometimes an assemblage of ideas is mostly self-contained, and the amount of important details that have to be kept in mind to use it is very small. Other times it is not, usually this means that it’s very incomplete. To me, generally finding the right answers is finding the right questions to ask. If a question seems un-answerable, it’s because it’s the wrong question.
–Dave
Oh ye gods, not the art definition thing again. I continue to stick to the classical deifinition as taught in freshman year Art Theory (and since I have already beaten this horse to death in my own blog at great length, I will spare you all a repeat). There are many manifestations of genius that have to do with investigation and discovery that involve no making, whatsoever — which would strictly disqualify them as art.
Raph, the genius article you linked is very interesting. It’s a good read for me, given that one of my high school buds went on to be wildly successful and rich beyond the dreams of avarice in his 20s, as I just plodded along. It is sort of a kick in the stomach. Like, what the hell am I doing?
But, then, he practically has to have his secretary schedule appointments to hang out with friends. I’ll take my own life, thanks!
Is someone a genius when they become a slave to their money?
Mike Rozak wrote:
Money cannot enslave people. That’s physically impossible. Think about it. 🙂
Jason Della Rocca of the IGDA wrote about the genius issue as it applies to the games industry using industry demographics in his weblog. He asks:
Don’t punish them for working 8 hours a day if they want to.
Fire them if they don’t try hard enough during these 8 hours.
Their careers will last longer on average.
Kids go into game development with stars in their eyes, before they get salt in their wounded dreams.
I tend to use Scott McCloud’s definition of art from Understanding Comics, namely that art is everything that isn’t hunting or gathering. (Well, that’s not exactly what he said, go read it if you haven’t.)
It’s simple.
Stuff I like = art.
Stuff you like != art.
True for all values of “you” and “I”.
[…] Comments […]
Different system, different problem. The thing i’m working is very much a world. As such, it lives in my head and explaining is only a matter of describing what i see.
The problem comes from assuming that the same is true for the rest of the team.
/sigh
I’m not a video game designer, so I definitely don’t think of video game design elements in my head — but I have long known that I think visually. When I think about how to get from one place to another, it’s a flash of images of the things I’ll see along the way. When I think about a person, it’s a flash of images about them. Raph for instance: the beard, glasses, and, oddly enough a smile (which is a good thing).
I do GM table top RPG’s from time to time, and my ‘design’ for that is all visual. Not visions of my players at a table listening to my compelling stories, but a vision of heroes, villains, and the events that may occur. Then when I am in the active part of GM’ing that’s all I do. I see everything that I’m describing… even when I lack the words.
Oh, and art: It’s that stuff that makes people in New York excited, and makes folks like me go “…but that’s a row of toilets… TOILETS!” 🙂
>Art tends to have an emphasis on communicating something important powerfully
Once you begin to assign any sort of social role to art (or games design, or journalism), it ceases to become art. Or at least, *good* art.
You seem to be big on the idea that “fun” is the endorphins released when a pattern is recognized or achieved. What if the pattern is only symmetry, and has no grander meaning? Every snowflake is different; there may be no grander meaning than that the patterns are all different and beautiful for that reason.
Art might communicate something important; it might not. It might be different things for different people. Its meaning might be lost down through the ages or recovered. Burdening art with a didactic or functional role may destroy its form.
I used to have a lot of trouble getting stuff on my head out on paper, and sometimes I still do. For me, I find that it usually works well if I just dump whatever’s in my head on paper the first time through. So I end up with a big list of bullet points for the most part, but then I can go back and move things around, flesh them out, and so on. It ain’t perfect and there’s a lot of times where I’ll sit there and stare at my notepad or screen and go “uhhhh”, but it’s been successful so far in actually putting together some semi-finished documents (after several revisions).
He said they become a slave to their money — he didn’t say how.
People enslave themselves to their money (to the job that pays their salary, anyway). Its partly a cultural thing, but mostly a greed/self-interest thing. Like most rational behaviours, it can be detrimental if you take it too far.
I am quite happy working 8 hour days for good pay writing boxed software for a large corporation. Not the kind of software I would choose to write for myself, but there are a lot of complex problems that come up which keep things interesting anyway.
That is a grand meaning.
Art is not communication. Art does not engage users in the communication cycle. For those who are familiar with the communication cycle, feedback is required to flow from the message recipient to the message sender. If the message sender does not receive or cannot receive feedback, then communication has not occurred.
Art cannot receive feedback. A painting cannot receive feedback from gallery visitors, and a painting cannot elicit a response based on that feedback. Art is a medium of expression, which is not necessarily emotional expression. Art can express concepts, ideas, and even models of that which is real or fantasy. Expression can facilitate communication. Expression can be used as material in the communication cycle to deliver a message, but expression is not communication.
When art is viewed by the so-called "receptive" audience, the individual members of the audience internally process the art. They process the art in a way that resembles communication, but this not communication with something else. This is "communication" with themselves. We call this… thought. Thought does affect perception; therefore, art can appear to respond to thought which may appear to be feedback, but remember that perception is independent. Perceiving the world, or art, in a different way does not change how everyone else perceives the world, or art. Art does not respond to thought. People respond to thought. A person responds to thought.
Interactivity is communication. When a user presses a button, something happens. Yes, the user may perceive the button as visually impressed and/or depressed, but that’s still in the realm of art. Art and communication are often cohesive partners in helping us understand reality, but they should not be confused as being the same. Pushing a button has a functional effect. Communication has a functional effect. When the button is pushed, something happens that responds to the user with feedback that indicates the button was successfully pushed. Games, being inherently interactive, are modes of communication. That is sufficient reason for the academic community’s intense interest in games as teaching and learning tools.
Games are not art. Games are something different. Not something better. Something different.
By that definition, Morgan, a book cannot communicate, a TV cannot communicate, and a letter cannot communicate.
I think that by adhering too rigidly to the diagram you present, we forget that communication is often slow. Much communication is iterative: the same message presented multiple times until the cycle kicks into gear, the same message getting refined until mutual understanding is reached.
In the case of a letter, a message is encapsulated. It may never reach its recipient; perhaps it takes years to get there. It may reach a different recipient. They may or may not reply.
In the case of a game, someone makes one, thereby encapsulating information. It may never be played by its recipient; perhaps it takes years to be found. It may reach a different recipient. They may or may not express an opinion on forums.
Defining art as something incapable of receiving feedback — ALL media are incapable of receiving feedback, by your definition here. The feedback that a game accepts is predetermined, just as the feedback that a sculpture accepts is predetermined. A mobile is designed to be pushed on; a sculpture may be designed to be touched. The mobile itself is not changed by these interactions any more than the game is; it merely moves into different states.
Feedback always goes back to the creator of the artifact, be it a painting, a sculpture, a letter, or a game. The medium chosen by the person giving feedback may be entirely different — they may respond to a painting with a sculpture, to a book with a letter, or to a game with a thread on f13. Communication is sequential turn-based expression.
All expression communicates something, therefore all forms of expression can be used for art.
In what way are games exceptional or different, that precludes them from triggering thought or being used for expression?
Raph, re: “That is a grand meaning” and the snowflakes. Unless you’re willing to concede that the variety of patterns of snowflakes are a message from the Creator telling us of His Infinite Wisdom and Beauty — and I’m quite prepared to allow for that option — then I don’t know what you mean. Whose grand meaning? Communication from who to whom?
Regarding the reiterative issue — fairy tales have a structure called “triadic repetition of the narrative”. The first pig who built his house of straw, the second pig built his house of sticks, the third pig built his house of bricks, etc. This triadic repetition of the narrative is not only for repetitive value needed in narration for educational purposes, it is also believed that the three times (or more than three times) are required to reach the different “brains” of the human being, that is, there is the perceptions through mind, through heart, through soul, or however you might want to label these different faculties.
I’m not getting why there’d be a view that a lot of content would be hidden or inchoate or not perceive in a *game*. Are you saying you hid Easter Eggs all over the place that players never found?
In the case of a natually occurring snowflake, there may not be a message at all. However, when a human intentionally creates a snowflake shape, they are almost certainly making it a snowflake (and not some other shape) with some degree of intent.
It may be that they don’t have anything in particular to communicate when they do so. In which case it’s like empty words — they may sound pretty, but not convey very much on the speaker’s part (though they may prove highly significant to a listener).
But when an artist makes something snowflake shaped with intent, they probably are saying something about symmetry.
I am not sure where the question of hidden or inchoate content came from… but as an example, let me offer up the assumptions implicit in a simulation game, such as the issue of whether SimCity has a bias towards public transport, or the take on religion as a function of a culture that is depicted in Civilization. These aren’t explicit, you have to dig a little to find them. They are there representing something of the creator’s worldview.
I figured it was only a matter of time before it devolved into the usual result of these kinds of debates:
Art is anything that gets people to argue about what art is.
I’ll just go back to reading my Kipling, and listening to pieces that Bach composed for churches and dedicated to the glory of God.
And to playing / designing computer games. 😉
Raph wrote:
I didn’t say that. Since my response is article-sized, I’ll just add what I was going to write to the article I’ve been working on.
Art is such a tricky idea, since it’s tangled up with our idea of quality and worth. It’s awfully tempting to define it in those terms, but quality and worth are complex ideas that depend very much on a person’s attitude. There’s no way to even make an objective evaluation of either one.
I’ve settled on “anything made with inspiration” as art, where inspiration is of the aesthetic variety. I want to include even objects which weren’t consciously intended to be art (after all, our subconscious mind decides what to do before ever telling our conscious mind), but not objects which weren’t made by anyone (i.e. a rock). I also want to exclude objects made with only function in mind, although very few things are produced with no consideration given to their form.
As for judging art (while I’m on the topic), it’s futile to attempt to reduce our evaluation down to a single metric like quality or worth. I like to consider whether if accomplishes its goal as art first. Does it look/feel/sound/taste/smell as intended, and do its properties arouse whatever the artist intended them to? Interesting to think about, but the answer to those questions is much less meaningful than whatever more specific comments I could make about a work. A work’s value is so subjective that it’s more meaningful to simlpy describe what I notice about it.
By my definition, games can be art, and most are. This makes sense to me. Drawings, sculpture, music, and architecture are all considered arts, aren’t they, so why would their conjunction (plus other stuff, which may or may not be art) cease to be so? Does a game just contain the art? If the game could not be what it is without a work of art, then that art must make up a large portion of what the game is. If a large portion of the game is a work of art, then how is the whole thing not art?
It all revolves around whether an experience can be art, or if only things that can be considered from a distance are art. It seems to me that all art is an experience, and games are just a way to craft it more directly.
Maybe art could be anything we experience rather than encounter. Experiencing it would be when it moves us to thought or arouses feeling. As per every other definition, I guess only artifacts are eligible for consideration. An artifact would become art as soon as someone (including its creator) experiences it, as that constitutes proof that that thing can be experienced.
That gives me an idea though. From now on I’m not talking about art, only about things which can be experienced, artifact or not. Personally, I care not at all about whether something meets a standard and qualifies as “art” or whether someone made it or not. I care about its potential to affect people (which I refer to as “experiencing” that thing); more specifically, I care about the degree to which it does so, since almost anything will affect people. I know it’s a fairly obvious idea, but I like it because no matter what other people agree is art, I get to think about what actually matters. I just need to make up a catchy name for it. If only all the short words weren’t taken.
I think Art induces self-communication.
First: you can communicate with yourself. We call it thinking.
Second: Art can cause you to do it. We call it inspiration.
Howzat?
I disagree completely Raph. I don’t think art is some bland arbitrary term that blankets anything and everything, though I do feel art is highly subjective but to a certain degree. I think art is human communication, and that the abstract definition of what communication is: is a human thought or idea made manifest, however the message has to mean something to the creator, and it is that definition of which defines the context of the art.
There is no such thing as “bad art”, just the bad presentation of ideas. And I also disagree 100% that video games are art (because they aren’t.) Video games taken back to it’s basic of roots is just that, a game. Like pong, basketball, Monopoly, a set of rules in which those involved move through to a (hopefully successful) end. Modern video games of today can “contain” art, they’re merge themselves with stories, visuals, music and sound which all can be defined as “art”, but that does not make video games art. Likewise a mathematics proof isn’t “art”, ,its just a means to an end. It’s not saying anything, it is a map. A mathematics proof can contain beautiful handwriting which in itself could be saying something about the nature of the algorithms and equations of which it represents, but then the mathematics transcends itself and becomes a metaphor for something more (thus becoming art.)
The problem with Andy Warhol, Duchamp and the rest of the pop-artists is that their ideas were so profound and abstract that most non-artists who haven’t taken the time to study art, art process or art history seem to think art is now some term that’s up for grabs, and that anything is art, which is nonsense. “Art” by itself is a word used to define something. Words are finite and mean one thing or another (depending on who’s using said word and the context of the conversation,) but at the end of the day art has to mean something.
To many people who aren’t artists think they can go around and make up any old definition for the word to try and put themselves on a pedastal. Not that I’m accusing you of this, but the evidence is working against you.
Nevermind what I wrote above, just realized I was responding to a quote, not you directly.
The term "art" originally meant something different. In fact, the term continues to be used similarly. I hail from a background in graphic design and so I use the term "art" interchangeably with the "artwork" we use in our designs to communicate with the respective markets.
I was gonna say, 6one… seemed like a lot in there that I actually agree with quite vehemently. 🙂
I definitely don’t think that art is a bland arbitrary term.
I do believe that video games can be art, however. I happen to believe that games of any sort can be art, because a game can communicate, elucidate, impress, inspire, provoke thought, challenge, comfort, and basically do any of the other things that we demand of what we term art.
FWIW, my credentials on the ‘art’ front involve a Master of Fine Arts degree and college study in writing, music, and visual arts. Honest, I’m not talking out of my ass. 😉
I see a standard divide here on the question of what is art. Some people seem to think that unless it’s not easily understood or created it’s not art. I’ve never understood that. If little Tommy draws a picture of a cow how can you say that’s not art?
From the Kipling I was reading — relevant to the discussion. 😉
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Conundrum_of_the_Workshops
By the way, does anyone know — is this where the term “wag the dog” was coined?
And that, my friends, is what we call an “argument from authority.”
In more familiar form it runs “I have a degree, so I don’t have to bother with the same standard of argument/proof that you ignorant folk do.” In another familiar form this argument runs “Only two people saw what happened, you and the cop. You say you didn’t. The policeman said you did. So we believe the policeman.”
In other words, Raph, with all due respect, you’re talking out your ass.
I think you need to go look up the definition of that particular logical fallacy. It is a common mistake to think that it means “authority” is actually useless in a debate. It becomes a fallacy when either a) the authority is not actually an authority, or b) the authority is presumed to have absolute knowledge.
I started throughout the above phrases like “I think,” “I believe,” and so on. So I am not claiming absolute knowledge, and I did in fact make a case above. In fact, I am not even appealing to my own authority in the argument; the comment was in regard to the sentence from 6one which in the next post he recanted, “To many people who aren’t artists think they can go around and make up any old definition for the word to try and put themselves on a pedestal.” It was an establishment of credentials against an attack.
The only other choice for making it a fallacy is for you to make the claim that I do not in fact have any amount of authoritative knowledge on these issues. And I provided the credentials.
(I used to teach argumentation and rhetoric as part of my freshman English class when I was a grad student).
So let’s get logical then.
You said, in the context of bolstering your “I do believe” and “I definitely don’t think”, that your credentials should provide the reader with the assurance that you’re not talking out your ass.
You are correct that in the context of, say, a discussion about two options for fixing a car, that the guy who says “Look, I am an auto mechanic, so let’s try my suggestion first” is not guilty of a logical fallacy.
You, however, are. You were basically saying “My definition of art beats yours, because I have an art degree.” That is a classic example of argument from authority, and I’ll explain why.
We’re not talking about a subject on which there is a “body of expertise”. We are talking about the definition of art — which is something that no two art theoreticians agree on, let alone two people.
In fact, it’s an subject that people with Masters of Fine Art degrees should recognize — in fact I believe they teach you this in first year at good schools — has no “final answer.” Art is, for want of a better phrase, art. You seem to have made the secondary classical error of mistaking a system of classification (ie. most of the stuff you learnt in your Fine Arts degree) for a definition.
So there is, in fact, no “authority” for you to claim. So your logical fallacy falls under a) in your own definition.
Your last sentence (the bracketed one) is somewhat amusing in this context, I feel.
You guys are arguing from two fundamentally different rhetorical positions, here.
Classic rhetoric posits three types of appeals — the appeal to authority, the appeal to emotion, and the appeal to reason. (That’s in the order of decreasing persuasiveness, by the way, according to Aristotle. To be perfectly honest, from what I’ve seen of human nature, he’s right.)
Another way of looking at it is instead of Authority, it’s Credibility. Does this deal with assumptions about the value of the credentials? Yes. Is it entirely logical? No, it’s a different sort of argument. But it’s valuable as shorthand for a long epistemological debate about the value of credentials, which in the end I don’t think you would win.
In fact, looking at your argument here — “they teach you in first year at good schools — has no ‘final answer'” you’re using an argument from authority to “disprove” the argument from authority. Whether or not a school is authoritative and credible (i.e., a “good” school) depends on whether it say straight out that it has no authority or credibility?
That’s a logical fallacy (paradox) under anyone’s definition.
I like the way you think, Jim! That bit about good schools was indeed a cheap shot.
Although that wasn’t the crux of the argument, as I’m sure you see.
Pointing out that no two experts agree is not an appeal to authority, but rather a ridiculing of the notion of “authority” on this particular subject.
Although it will walk me straight into No True Scotsman, I’d be willing to say that no person who truly learnt anything in their Fine Arts degree would be caught dead arguing about what art was and what it wasn’t.
Hence my original post on this very topic, way up there at number 8.
You are mistaken to imply that because there is no “final answer” for the definition of art that therefore there is an abandonment of discussion of the term or no authority. In fact, there are multiple authorities representing broad currents of thought. (In fact, different schools will typically have philosophical sympathy with one position or another). It may be a futile debate, but it’s very much alive, and not discarded in the first year of grad school. 🙂
What we have here is not an effort at persuasion, at least on my part. I was offered a definition by someone who thinks very differently than I do about the subject. I replied with my own thoughts. Others added in their own thoughts, and we’ve each mostly elucidated those thoughts for others. I haven’t seen anyone say “you’re wrong.”
You are also mistaken to reduce my statement down to “My definition of art beats yours, because I have an art degree.” I didn’t say that my definition of art beats anyone else’s. In fact, my statement was in response to this statement, as I said before: “Too many people who aren’t artists think they can go around and make up any old definition for the word to try and put themselves on a pedestal.” In other words, I was simply establishing that I do regard myself as an artist, and have training in it.
As part of what I do, I have had to arrive at a definition for my own personal purposes, and it serves as a linchpin for numerous other beliefs and philosophies I hold; something I take for granted, even. It does not need to serve that role for anyone else.
Personally, I interpreted Raph’s mention of his credentials as, "This is the background from which I am approaching the issue of games as art." I’m approaching the issue of games as art from a graphic design background. In graphic design, the term "art" is typically used as a synonym for "artwork", which is essentially nonfunctional content that can be integrated with design to add value to the message.
Al Ries, a notable thought leader in advertising and marketing, wrote a book titled The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR in which he dedicated an entire chapter and part of a page from the prologue to discussing advertising as art. From the prologue, he writes:
Since Raph holds a degree in Poetry, I thought these would be interesting. 🙂
Introducing the chapter Advertising and Art, Al Ries writes:
And I just can’t resist this quote…
Morgan — It’s kinda tough to rhyme “ammonia”, isn’t it? 😉
Although “The motion of a particle in a conservative vector field” has a kind of neat rhythm to it, if you synchopate it right… (iamb-amphibrach-dactyl-dactyl-dactyl-amphimacer)
—–
If we can’t build one from the top down, let’s try from the ground up.
– Bach’s music is Art. Even the exercises he writes get very close to Art.
– Kiplings poetry frequently approaches Art, and occasionally even achieves it.
– Picasso’s Guernica is Art. The grotesqueness of Cubism helps bring into focus the grotesqueness of firebombing, without descending into crassness.
– Not every Picasso is Art; there’s only so far Cubism can go before it obscures and obfuscates more than it reveals.
– A row of toilets is not Art. I mean, come on. An exercise in symmetry at best.
– Any given portrait Rembrandt painted is Art. Try to tell what they’re thinking; generally you can, with his subtle and not-so-subtle hints.
– MacLean’s “Miss American Pie” is Art; there are few people who’ve managed to express so well youth’s energy, melancholy, randomness, and obsession with ephemera / trivia to the point of putting it on the same level as the truly sublime.
– The movie “American Pie” is not Art. Whatever it manages to say about teen desire gets lost in the over-the-top grossout humor. Some judicious edits might salvage it, but probably would have cost it most of its box office appeal.
Has any give video game ever managed to be Art?… I can’t think of any offhand. Anyone have any nominees?
Sure, half a dozen off the top of my head:
A Mind Forever Voyaging — particularly the way it contrasted memory with experience.
Elite — think of how barely, sparsely, this was crafted and yet how deep the gameplay.
Doom — or, at least, the first game that made you jump. Doom did that for me. No game had previously.
Myst — the ultimate “glass tunnel” game. You were on rails (like most games) but almost never felt it.
Sim City — not art for everyone, sure. But the way it made you realize “cars/roads suck” was art.
Shadow of the Colossus — unless your gamer heart is stone cold, the sense of growing loss in this game is something quite brilliant.
And this is the point, really, isn’t it? Your list of “art” Jim comes down to “stuff you like”. As does mine. Your “over the top grossout humor” is another person’s “funniest movie ever” — and thus art.
We can point, and suggest, and classify — and with Raph’s particular education I am sure he can do those things better than I can — but in the end that is all “authority” offers to this discussion: better systems of classification; taking words like “effective” and whoring them out for ten cents a throw.
Tell me a reason why any one thing isn’t art, and I’ll show you a thing that is art because of that very reason. And the converse, show me a thing that is art because of Reason A, and I’ll show you a thing that takes Reason A to the next level, throwing into question your definition of the original thing as art.
And it isn’t this debate that’s continued after first year Raph, it’s “what I like v. what you like” dressed up as this discussion. Nothing about having an education immunises people from sophomoric wittering — in fact there’s rather a correlation, wouldn’t you say? 😉
Shan-
There are a lot of things I like that I have no intention of categorizing as Art. I like pretty much all of Kipling. Some of the ones I think most approach Art are the ones I like the least, and some of the ones I like the most I wouldn’t say are Art at all.
Let’s take a different medium– webcomics. I like PvPonline. A lot. I read it all the time. But is it Art? Nope. As he himself has freely admitted, Kurtz is a frickin’ hack. But he writes a very funny comic, which (worth saying twice) I like a lot. So, at least half your definition of Art is bunk. 😉
Shan, if we ever meet, I challenge you to look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face that the movie “American Pie” is Art, no matter how much you might like it. And after that, say you think someone whose opinion is worth paying attention to thinks the music of Bach is not Art. That’s just being contrary; nihlistic, even.
(Aside: Is Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic” Art? Approaches it, definitely. Genius might be a better word though.)
I think you may have hit upon something useful when you say “a thing that takes Reason A to the next level”… it’s often not Reason A that’s making something Art. It’s the “taking something to the next level” part that makes it Art. And no, “over-the-top” doesn’t count as a level.
Thanks for the nominees, though, by the way. Got me thinking. 🙂
– I’d replace Sim City with Civilization on that list, but in the end my gut says it only approaches Art.
– Making you jump isn’t Art, really, so I think Doom’s on shaky ground. Although making you jump better than anything else might qualify; any of the newer Doom knockoffs take that to the next level? (Start with the one whose characterization as a “Doom knockoff” offends you the most. 😉 )
– The rest of them (almost embarassed to say) I haven’t played. I’ll have a look for them next time I can come up for air with my family / work schedule as it is.
I liked that movie “Attack of the Post-Modern Relativists Commentary on Definitions of Art” It warmed even my cold cold classical objectivist soul 😛
Are you defining “Art” in games as how it made you “feel” and your “reaction” to such? Or as the rendered content what you “interact with” past the “plot and storyline” of the “game”? Please differentiate how you view these…. so I can understand where you (Jim and Shan) are comming from. Because I’m not an expert on Art, but I always viewed them as two separate things….for me where immersion is optimized is where the two meld seamlessly….I would say thats an “Artfully” executed game, where they dont, well I guess you can have an artistically beautiful game lacking plot symmetry and vice versa.
This is just my laymans perspective on “art” in games though…
Indeed. This entire thread, including the original “mailbag” letter and Raph’s response and all the subsequent posts could possibly be summarised thus:
How much artful makes art? Discuss. 🙂
I’ve been trying to say “This is a silly discussion.” But that’s never a popular position, even at the sort of kegless parties that I attend. 😉
Shall we simply paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart? “I can’t define art, but I know it when I see it.”
Touché.
I defintiely agree that we are dealing with a spectrum here. And really, I am not trying to define a threshold so much as just a few axes on the graph.
I would concur that Shadow of the Colossus (and Ico) are art. I also think Katamari Damacy is. I’d offer up many of the games on Orisinal as being games as art objects.
Are they all GREAT art? No, that’s definitely in the realm of a value judgement. But to me they are communicating something, and they are doing so in a way that is novel. So I class them as that, whereas the last Tomb Raider game was exceptionally well done and quite enjoyable to me, but I saw it as mere entertainment. Note: I probably sank more hours into the Tomb Raider game than I did into Katamari! Enjoyment and art to me are completely separate issues.
Incidentally, Raph, there’s a debate on the MUD-Dev2 list on Sirlin’s article on what WoW teaches. You might be interested.
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