44
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
44 points (95.8% liked)
Games
21250 readers
264 users here now
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
Rules
- No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or transphobia. Don't care if it's ironic don't post comments or content like that here.
- Mark spoilers
- No bad mouthing sonic games here :no-copyright:
- No gamers allowed :soviet-huff:
- No squabbling or petty arguments here. Remember to disengage and respect others choice to do so when an argument gets too much
- Anti-Edelgard von Hresvelg trolling will result in an immediate ban from c/games and submitted to the site administrators for review. :silly-liberator:
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I actually have come around to games not being art, but my argument is very different from the vast majority of people.
Games aren't art in the same way a piano isn't art and a guitar isn't art and a paintbrush isn't art. It's an instrument to create art, and while we can engage with pedantry over whether pianos, guitars, and paintbrushes can themselves be art, nobody seriously considers them art beyond "good craftsmanship automatically becomes art." It's the music being played by the piano and the painting being painted with the paintbrush that is art.
So what is the game equivalent of music and paintings? It's essentially every single instance of the game being played by the player. That is the art. The any% speedrun is the art. The speedrunner is the artist. The actual game is the instrument in which the speedrunner the artist brings forth their art the speedrun into the world.
It's stunning how games map so well with musical instruments, especially with PC games vs pianos:
game dev = composer
game engine = physical construction of the piano
level design = sheet music
saving = playing the piece at a particular measure instead of the very beginning
mods = writing on the sheet music
speedrunning = playing the piece with a much faster tempo because you're bored playing the same piece over and over again at the same andante tempo
sound and visual from the game = sound and vibrations from the piano
keyboard and mouse = keyboard and pedal
gaming chair = piano bench
videogame player = piano player
"I play videogames" = "I play the piano"
You could probably set up a rhythm game played on a PC keyboard and a piano program also played on a PC keyboard with identical keystrokes and identical music being played. But the miscategorization would have people believe that the rhythm game itself is the art and not just an instrument like the piano program.
if games are musical instruments then the act of playing games is musical theater. ergo its art
under that paradigm, a game isn't someone playing the game. A paint by numbers isn't a painting until you paint it.
i'm also dubious of calling the emergent thing art, we participate in games in a way that's unusual and impossible for other kinds of media. A hymn is art, singing it in the congregation of a white church doesn't feel like participating in art.
Music is art but singing as part of a larger communal experience isn't? At some point you're just idealizing art as something detached from the everyday human experience. What is it, really, that made you detract here? The lack of mystique in an everyday social environment or the baggage that made you feel the need to clarify that 'white' churches don't feel artistic?
Give it a hundred years or two and you'll have experts on the reconstruction of the tackiest most commercialized megachurches known to humanity - and it won't be just because of the historical importance involved. It will be a part of a larger attempt to understand the culture of a people, the americans of the 21st century, which will include aesthetics, musicology and so on.
i've done music in several other contexts. the white congregation and the ritual ingests art and spits out something else that is definitely not art.
I do realize that saying 'singing as part of a larger communal experience' is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But there's such a thing as shit art, fascist art and soulless art as well. You can criticize even an AI picture beyond the fact that its bad or incompetently put together. If the worst most commercialized megachurches out there are where humanity goes to die, that makes them a cemetery of sorts. There's a something to be said about turning a congregation - you know, a third space - into a grave.
it's not baggage i just didn't want to step in something or speak on what i don't directly experience. Maybe somebody with a different background feels the same way, maybe it's exotifying for me to make a definitive pronouncement.