Video Games as art.

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The National Art Museum in Washington D.C. announced this:

http://www.americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/

Discuss.

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And to make things better... it's not only in that one place... they are traveling around the country. Try to make it to one of these! I will hopefully be at the D.C. one.

http://www.americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/#tour

[Dirge Inferno]

Of course it's art, you want your game to look beautiful don't you? Quake 3's Gothic architecture is a good example of art.

[qbism]

Most creative designers make a big deal of the design process and iteration, and exhibits that expose that give more depth to the art. We see a lot of the process in movies, "the making of" type stuff, even well before the actual movie comes out. It would be great to see game design shown at level at the Smithsonian. I expect it will be wildly popular.

[Entar]

My take on the "Games as Art" discussion: http://entardev.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/games-as-art/

[goldenboy]

Putting together the mechanics of the game and whiteboxing the levels is more engineering/design than art, though. The artwork just makes it look pretty and interesting (creatures, items, environment art etc). Not without reason are there such things as "art passes" in game making.

There are games that get by without any graphical art (roguelikes come to mind). However the art may be in the storytelling or something like that. And there is such a thing as ASCII art, as well.

[qbism]

The exhibit is "The Art of Video Games" vs. the topic of this thread "Video Games as Art", completely different subjects.
Art of Video Games - traditional or digital art which as byproduct of making games.
Video Games as Art - a new classsification of art unto itself.