Commercial appeal alone can't disqualify something as art. Look at Andy Warhol's work.

Art is about indirect messages. This could be something as simple as, "I love my mom," or as complex as the reason the Mona Lisa smiles. However, the more interesting the message, the more interesting the art.

To me, art is 'good' when the piece elicits a response that the artist intended. Bad art is when the message is lost or the message was unintentional.

The question that really gets me thinking is if bad art is the fault of the artist or of the audience.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I, personally, don't think most video games can be considered art. Or at least not good art. Like Pleiades said, art is more about expression than visuals. It's the same issue you run into with many big-budget movies: a lot of it is so commercialized that 'artistic expression' hardly factors into the production of the thing. If the end goal is to sell the product to as many people as possible and to keep the audience entertained at all costs, I don't think the end product can really be considered art.

That said, the one game I've encountered that I think could make a strong case for 'video game as art' is an independently-produced game that wasn't widely distributed. It was realllly trippy and appeared to be based off of the creator's dreams. I forgot the title, but my cousin introduced me to it, so I just asked him about it. Will update post if he ever responds, lol.

EDIT: The game is called LSD, LOL.

Roger Ebert needs to get his head out of his butt.

anything that humans make and display as their handiwork is art, it just takes recognition to get people to notice the masterpiece.

Wow. I always thought video games were art. I'm glad that their funding it! Art is such a beatiful thing. Especially when it's in action. I believe video games are like motion picture, a story(considered art) and has created grapics/pictures(art) even if their CGI it's still art, just a newer version of art. After all I want to go to a college that specifically has "Game Art and design" as a major. A musuem of video games? That seems intresting, I want to go see it one day, whenever I visit england! I am so looking forward to it. I should probably look up to see if I can find any in the USA too.

Oi, the Roger Ebert bashing.

Guys, the man is respected in his field for a reason. He's an expert in the cinematic art and people know his opinion is valuable. On films. I agree he had no right to run his mouth off on a medium he clearly has no knowledge of or interest in, but that doesn't invalidate him as a human being or as a critic of the medium he's devoted his entire life to.

Look at it this way, someday you'll be the crotchety old coot yelling at all the kids to get off your lawn, and the entire world will think you're an idiot.

More thoughts on it.

As far as I can tell, the people involved in the project, 2Player, distinguish between "game art" and "art games". What 2Player is interested in is the latter, art games. Here, the actual experience of playing and engaging with the game as pure entertainment (in the commonsense meaning of entertainment) is incidental. What art games try to emphasize is the art itself, where that art might be its graphics or narrative or structure alone. The gameplay that the average gamer enjoys isn't the actual issue here. Common gameplay isn't what art games are primarily interested in. Art games are works presented as art. As such, this seems to distance itself from widely marketed games that you buy at, say, Wal-Mart. (Perhaps this distinction rules out those games entirely, something that needs further thought.)

Doing some quick research, I wasn't surprised when I came across others mentioning the works of Marcel Duchamp and how his works relate to art games. At the "Art History of Games" conference in 2010, guest speaker Celia Pearce cited Duchamp and how he focused not on the object itself, but on the process or procedure of "doing" art itself. Here we find the idea that the actual physical object isn't too important, but the creative acts behind making or presenting art are what really count - art is, so to speak, "in the head".

I'm not sure what to make of all this. I can see things in here that are both helpful and cloudy. Giving distinctions and citing how art games fit within preexisting genres or movements (here, modern or conceptual art) certainly provides a helpful contexts in discussing these issues. Thinking from something is far more helpful than thinking from nothing. However, by having the Institutional art world be the contexts in which the discussions take place, it seems that everyone involved in this discussion should start learning about Wittgensteinian Family Resemblances, Kantian aesthetics, and Open Concepts. And here, you find plenty of clashing ideas that don't cohere with one another. Sometimes it gets so cloudy in this theoretical framework that some examples drawn from it are absurdly amusing: Is it desired conceptual art, or just a missing cat?

To tie this in with a previous news item here, I wonder how far the idea of the relations between freedom of expression, games, and art have been thought out. If, like Katana rightly points out, all games are granted the status of being art, that even includes questionable games like Ethnic Cleansing, JFK: Reload and Super Columbine Masssacre RPG! If they're not in itself art, there needs to be serious justification why they're not art and why freedom of expression is not being suppressed. Of course, once that's been done, it seems to undermine the original unqualified position: games are art. And here's where Roger Ebert and related arguments should be understood as providing helpful attempts to give justifications for why some things are not art, and this is entirely reasonable. Without those discussions, we risk having an overly broad conception of art that's specious. And avoiding that, I think, is a part of 2Player's game-plan.

So, yeah, funding modern art exhibitions won't settle any of these issue by itself, since that's not what it aims to do. 2Player and the forthcoming "The Art of Video Games" exhibition by the Smithsonian American Art Museum encourage, rather, more discussions - something meaningful art should do.

Yess! YESS! Take that all you skeptics! >:D This makes me very happy!

Games like Mario Galaxy are something of true art. Everything fits perfectly together, the use of gravity, the style of the rendering, the light and airy yet artificial feel that you'd think of as space...it's beautiful and inspiring. This can be true with movies, music, dancing, sports, etc. Everything is art if there is a certain passion put into it.

To me, art is something that inspires, and video games DEFINITELY inspire.

And I've never liked Roger Ebert, he's a terrible movie critic...I'm still mad about him giving The Green Mile the same rating as Antz..."orz

This reminds me of the episode of Saved By the Bell when Lisa tries to impress a intellectual hunk by asking, "What is art? Are we art? Is art art?" lol

Yep, it's art. It's a combination of all art forms (mostly)

Some game are cruddy and some are epic, some art is like that too.

Writing- stories, poems are some of the oldest art forms.

Music- there are tons of diffrent generas, I belive there are enough songs that EVERYONE on the planet likes at least one song!

Graphics- from 2D sidescroller Mario to the rough looking guys in Gears of War to the anime/realism of The FF serise!

Most game have all three, but what makes a game diffrent from looking at a piece in gallery is you get to be part of it when you play!
I have to admit personally I love games with aweome graphics and soundtrack, but an exellent storyline can make or break a game.
Speaking of that so can the controls.

Here are some games I like, that are really diffrent:

OKAMI
Platform PS2 & Wii
Graphics- Unique and beautiful
Music- I could listen for hours!
Storyline-you play as the Japanese Sun Goddess! Saving the world from evil. A very common storyline, but somehow it seemed diffrent.
Playabilitiy- really good
Difficulty- not too hard. I actually would have liked to figure stuff out on my own instead of Issun telling me what to do.

ARMED AND DANGEROUS
Platform PC, xBox & others?
Graphics- Silly-well the game is kinda old, but we got it in the cheepo bin so it may have been behind the times.
Music- OK
Storyline-Good, really funny. Alot of it was what you'd call british dry humor, still I liked it. You play as Roman, a rougue type guy, saving the land from the evil king.

Jonsey: "Steal from the rich and give to the poor?! Whose idea was that?"
Roman: "The poor people I presume."

Difficulty- No puzzles, but there are diffrent difficulty levels to play at making the enemies stronger each time. And some really good unlockable cheats
Playability- Standard not hard to master controls
I could go on, but I think I already typed too much already.

Ahh, sounds like my first art history class, which almost ended in people jumping rows to punch out one another...

Though I am bit confused why the NEA granted money to an exhibit in Europe. I guess 'cause there's Americans involved. Does that mean we'll be getting the show too? I'd love to see it (though with my luck it'll end up in New York).

But I also want to play a bit of devil's advocate on this topic. People are very passionate about this, both gamers and artists, but you have to remember that by calling video games "art", you're granting that title to every video game. Using the shining examples is fine and all, but for every good game, there's so many more that are "meh" and others that are just terrible. I can understand people who think they shouldn't be art, as games started off as simple and became sophisticated in a short span of time (relatively speaking, 30 years is nothing), but still struggle to be unique. Forging your own identity is what makes art stand out.

And don't get me wrong, when the art on a game is amazing, I take notice. It's why the Golden Sun series is my favorite - the graphics and music are mind-blowingly spectacular, especially on the GBA, and it doesn't hurt that the story is good too.

There's some interesting ideas at work here. The 2Player project seems to be presenting computer games as extensions and mediators of communication. Simply, how do we engage with one another? From that perspective, they seem to be pushing the whole games-as-art discussion in a better and far more enlightening direction than the average discussions usually go - i.e being wowed by pure processing power and pretty graphics. Of course, that idea of art-as-pretty-things has been abandoned long ago by the art world, and it's about time this discussion explores territories beyond the one it's foundered on. The exhibit's description itself shows they're no longer playing that game:

The games designers in this exhibition are all resolutely low-fi. Their interests and style are all in opposition to the mainstream computer industry and reacting against the multi million pound texture mapped hyper-realism of contemporary games.

That said, now the hard work begins. Let's face it: being funded does not alone settle this issue, and its being funded should be seen as encouraging further discussion - not closing the issue as being finally settled. Remember, this is the art world we're talking about, and this is a place which had to struggle with things like Marcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., Bicycle_Wheel, and his notorious Fountain. I bring these up just to give the average reader an idea of how tangled the art world can be (notice that Bicycle Wheel wasn't really "art" until years after Duchamp decided it was a "readymade"). Maybe, at long last, instead of looking at fantastic graphics alone (which implicitly assumes art is merely pretty images), gamer artists can finally start clarifying the concept of art with the rest of the art world.

Lastly, concerning that whole Ebert discussion back then, I found it odd that he was criticized for not giving a proper or workable definition of art, yet gamers failed in doing so, too. I think that was a direct result of looking at games too narrowly, as if a collective gut-feeling were enough to make something art.

Gotta love puns lol.

This is pretty awesome. Video games have evolved from pong to elaborate interactive stories - sounds like it would make a fascinating study.

As for Ebert - does anyone even listen to his opinions anymore? The dudes a tool!

well if music is considerd art then then video games should too
thank you to the NEA for putting
up a a great fight for future artists

I feel like giving a standing ovation to NEA. And socking Ebert, if at all appropriate.

Of course Video games can be considered art. Artists design the levels, the characters, the interface.. Blah blah.. this debate is a no brainer.
Edit: Take that Roger Ebert!

//laughs - Playing field.
You win with puns.

Otherwise, this is pretty cool news.