An illuminating analysus.

Games are entertainment. Perhaps we should ask the question, "Are films art?" (the category of "art films" notwithstanding). If we answer "Yes", then we should also affirm that games too are art.

The big problem with games is that there are so many different kinds and the fact that they are interactive. A film, a book, a sculpture are not, by their very nature, interactive. A game, on the other hand, by its nature, is. So it becomes more difficult to identify, by its interactive nature, whether or not it can be considered art. If we do deem it art, we have to concede that the user is part of creating the aesthetic, and not simply an observer.

Yes, it will take a long time to answer the question definitively. For now, the answer is very much subjective.

Was that a giant whooshing sound I just heard?

Either Frecklefoot suffers from a severe deficiency of growth hormones, or his head is bizarrely aerodynamic.

YOU CANNOT QUALIFY FON

FON IS JUST A WORD

Reading this was so much ert, I would almost call it fon!

We have many good examples of ert games, such as the Cake Mania, or Diner Dash (gasp!) FRANCHISES.

Games can be fun, and imaginative while, still, being artistic. Nintendo, Capcom, Warren Spector, Lexis Numerique, Konami in its early years, Sierra before the days of F.M.V, Namco, and a wide variety of other companies, and designera have shown that games can be fun, strange, varied, and inspire our imaginations. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and Robin Hood: Conquests of the Longbow were well-written, intelligent games.

We need to mix great writing with grand imaginative worlds. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was the perfect example: Its world was very weird, showed a lot of imagination, and had a lot of strange twists. I think it should be the precedent for future games.

Problem is, repetitive games are becoming increasingly common: Madden, Halo, Gran Turismo, rhythm games, casual games, W.W.II F.P.S.s, all, sell millions--and companies would much rather make a guaranteed giantic profit than take a chance on an obscure game. These companies do, occasionally, make concessions to the hard-core market by producing games like Beyond Good and Evil 2 and A Boy and His Blob; but I suspect that such games are, only, made in order to maintain the illusion of variety, whether to appease us or their stockholders, rather than because the executives care.

This has the potential for a crash, just, like in 1983 and '94--in those days, companies had produced a lot of shitty games, the market was oversaturated, and imaginative title were buried under piles of terrible shovelware--sounds familiar?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9joAb4XMaUs&feature=related makes a good point: Microsoft and Sony are trying to appeal to the masses--jocks, casual gamers, older players, etcetra--but, unfortunately, the common man is fickle. Their audiences will, eventually, move on, and when that happens, the X-Box, and Playstation will become unprofitable, and be cancelled, while their creators return to creating things like business software, and televisions. Nintendo--having focused on video games--will be the last source of hardware, and, though this sounds like a good thing--since we will not have to worry about exclusives--but it is a terrible likely outcome. Nintendo will be angry at the companies who supported its competitors, and refuse to allow them to develop games for its sytems. We might, very well, find ourselves with, either, very few games, or an impossibly large number of competing consoles, each with a, completely, different set of games. Each console, in the latter case, would be made by a game company--and the more resources a company puts into hardware, fighting the competition, and marketing for the hardware, the less it has for software. This is very disturbing.

But when you think about it, what is ert anyway? Isn't everything ert? Andy Werhal made this clear when he declared a can of sorp ert.

Ert is in the eye of the beholder.

You are so my favorite game blogger. Anybody who writes or talks about "Games as Art" from this point forward needs to be strapped into a chair and forced to read this over and over like Alex in A Clockwork Orange. That would save us about a decade's worth of pointless, repetitive blathering.

Frankly I find is disgusting that people would try and hijack a sophisticated discussion of the ertistic nature of games with such crass questions about the 'A' word.

i found the perfect art game! ITS SFIV

was playin SF4 the other day with my older brother and i challengd my brother i never loose SO we were playing and then i started to lose then my brother said i was a failure and dispointmnet to him so i started to cry

SF4 made me cry so it must be the citizen cane of video games also the graphics are good

The Rohrer uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of video game properties, like ert and fon, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision.

PS: Sorry to be pedantic, but that's not what "beg the question" means.

Whenever I hear someone say games must be fon and screw ert I tend to think they're the sort of person who just doesn't like ert in the first place.

I mean most people don't even get what Werhal's Sorp Can screen prints are about and yet they're perfectly willing to dismiss them as a meaningless stunt. Why? Because instead of just admitting that they don't understand it they prefer to believe that it can't have any significance or greater meaning. No Werhal's the problem, he's the one who's stupid (or a liar, or a scam artist).

Of course you're going to argue games should be just fon if you can't appreciate ert.

Matt Wasteland is wrong here--the real debate is whether or not games are Bert & Ernie or The Fonz?

Are games roommates that play with rubber duckies in a bathtub, or is a game a high school dropout-cum-former bike gang member-cum-Mayor of Cool?

And here I always thought games were best classified as Arzt.

HOW IS GAM FORMMED?

To the evolutionary theorist, there is no such thing as ert; ert is merely functional. To the Germans, there is no such thing as fon. True, they occasionally have fön, but that's not the same thing.

In my own observations, I find the concepts of fon and ert to be inseparable from the larger concept of norfte. Who here would deny that without our cultural norfte we would be barely more than savages?

So but also the main purpose of the symposium was not to debate art and games, but to showcase three commissioned games by some of the most provocative designers working in the medium. And there is actually a lot to talk about in those designs, and in their own unique ways, each of them does something genuinely powerful with the form and presentation of games.

Gonna be pretentious and claim that art is partially defined by the beholder, so games or a game may be art for some and not for others. Same way that some people think Avatar is art where I think it's shallow tripe.

You know, most people around here are pretentious enough to make the case that they're only making games for ert and fon. But deep down I suspect that all they want are sax and muney =)

Words aren't enough to encompass ert or fon, much less both together. That's why I created this diagram: http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2010/2/11/129103845190748915.png

I think it lays out the problem very well. Now to find the game, or anything really, that fills the region in the center. Such an item would be so great it would make Obart commit suicide in remorse. Then the rest of the world would join hands and sing in harmony.

Brilliant. You make it, just like it sounds, an utterly arbitrary and ridiculous thing to discuss. Thank you Matthew, made me chuckle :)

Empic pist. gamez are ert.

All art is interactive. The issue is perhaps that while a great film will change the wittness, a great game will be equally changed by the wittnessing. Perhaps then it is the act of interaction created by the game which is 'art' not the facets of traditional media within it.

What? Games as ert? Under no circumstances will games ever become estrogen replacement therapy!

OMG I seriously cannot stop laughing. What is it about chaning a single letter that makes this so damn fonny?

It's funny, I found this blog by searching for information on Tim Rogers that would be used in an article that already asserts games are art, no question about it, but the press and industry has yet to analyze and dissect it properly.

Now I feel a bit silly, but at the same time, the argument of art is convoluted. The concept of art is expression, people say, and then others say it is to illicit a response. Then people speak as if all games must somehow be high art when not all books, films or paintings are the highest form of their respected medium.

It's all so convoluted when the actual topic is so simple. It never crossed my mind that games aren't art yet because...well, why wouldn't they be?

Video games.

Did you just read that article from the famous critic of a certain popular form of ert?!! He said that games can never be ert!!!

He was responding to a speech, by this girl? She started by giving a definition of ert. Then she talked about why games were ert!

This critic guy tore her APART! Of course the first thing he did was talk about why her definition of ert was wrong! His is totally different.

He actually mentioned a couple of other definitions of the word "ert" too. And then, he talked about why they were wrong too! And then he talked about how games could never be ert.

He didn't actually give his definition, of course, because that would ruin the fun!!!

I think it's all super funny! Everyone knows what "ert" really means, but no one ever says it out loud! It's a fun game to play, isn't it?

But I have to wonder about that game: is it ert???