Comment by DavidPiper
6 hours ago
This article seems to be more of a rant about bad critical analysis, rather than whether video games are art. Or even a misunderstanding of the purpose of critical analysis.
> And so, good art game criticism can only be understood by those who have no need of it; a hand may point at the moon, but once you see the moon, you no longer need to look at the hand.
This seems to be the primary point of the article, rather than anything specific to video games. The author argues that art can be created in any medium, but there is a difference between whether critical analysis of the content is transformative in its own right.
> An artful video game cannot be described, because it is not a description but a transformation.
While the author goes on to say that "passive" art forms tend not to have this property, they offer only a few counter examples without touching on a whole library of classic literature that scholars are still arguing about hundreds of years later.
> Game art criticism only works when it conveys the transformativeness on the player (ie. reviewer/critic) ... Given the commercial realities, perhaps this cannot be fixed, and we must accept that timely reviews are ultimately the “Cliff Notes” of games.
Also true for "passive" media.
Critical analysis is not supposed to be a replacement for first-hand experience of any "art" in any medium.
I saw two good points:
1. You can't criticize a game without actually playing it. Or even review it for that matter <looks at modern game reviews>.
2. It reminded me why I refuse to try Factorio :)
Yeah I found this article quite sloppy and disjointed, and frankly just wrong.
> they offer only a few counter examples without touching on a whole library of classic literature that scholars are still arguing about hundreds of years later.
Basically, the article is "other kinds of art have property A while video games have property B" over and over by cherry-picking examples and ignoring the multitude counter-examples.