Art critics of other mediums don't need to respect games for them to be art. All the people actually consuming games don't even need to respect games for them to be art. Games will be taken seriously as art by the people that they matter to in that way. That population will grow as the medium ages if it continues to flourish. All that it should take for it to matter is that YOU respect games on their own merits as a piece of art. They sometimes are compromised art. They are sometimes failures as art. Sometimes they might not even be art and be a completely consumer based product. I personally am certainly not going to let a bunch of regressive artistic conservatives ever hold me back from consuming the weirdest fucking games I can get my hands on to see what new things someone is trying. Of course people that want games to stay the same as they were 10 years ago decry anything different as not art. The Avant Garde is always where art is going and there is always people that will decry it as "Not Art".
I know I'm posting in an old thread. I'll cut out my re:feminismstillrelevant re:sexismsickandtiredofbeingtiredandnotsurprised re:insidiousgamerculture re:internetandaffect responses. And in the typical pitiful manner of being in graduate school, I learned about GG in Adrianne Shaw's Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gaming Culture text. Sigh. I'll leave re:GG out as well, because I am still quite ambivalent about the appropriation of "social justice" for commodities. But I want to respond to you, Grefter.
I have a huge philosophical issue with the identity of things, and am not concerned with qualifying x in an either-or-binary. What's happened, however, is that there are scholars, critics and writers in academia. They're attempting to expand the identity of "art" as transcending traditional fine art mediums. Art History is a classed field of resources and has been slow to respond. After The Art of Video Games exhibition, meaning museums sanctioned the material, now academes are grasping for ways to engage . The field of Visual Culture developed in response to Art History's tried and true ways in the late 90s, and now people are looking at things "visual" as historical documents with a greater lens. Ivory Tower vanguards are now incorporating.
The author is absolutely correct when they said "Photography" was not Art until the 60s, and honestly, it's more an 80s situation in the United States. It does not matter if the technology, device or style existed for thousands of years. What matters is that the art-not-Art difference has continued without much disturbance by elite consumer group who finds value in collectibility, shareability and profit. You could not profit from video games as Art until video games hit the mainstream and people began searching for some teleological history of Greats (something "avant-garde discourse" perpetuates as well). I don't agree with high/low culture differences, but capital-a Art is still a prime commodity of classed tastes, and our cultural industries are not doing enough to quit pretending some reified idea of Art is for all.
I'm disturbed by the co-optation of video games in the museum and art spheres, especially since it's pushing a good moment of gaming into a Historicaltrash.bin. You don't have to be a painter to appreciate a painting, you don't have to be a gamer to appreciate gaming, but the experience of being a "User" definitely helps intensify the understanding of craft. What's great and relief to me, however, is that I have yet to see a widespread response of the gaming industry as catering to the cultural institution of Art. That's cool.
