TEDxUSC - Kellee Santiago - 3/23/09

Are Video Games Art? Game innovator Kellee Santiago insists that games are more than entertainment.

As a student in the MFA Interactive Media program at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Kellees research focused on game design, interactive narrative, and physical and gestural interfaces for digital media. She has produced and managed a number of interactive projects including Im Gonna Kill the President! A Federal Offense at PS122, and The Angel Project at Lincoln Center. While at USC, she teamed up with fellow student Jenova Chen to develop the student-created game, Cloud. The critically acclaimed game led them to found their own studio, thatgamecompany, which landed a three game deal with Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. to develop downloadable games for Playstation Network. thatgamecompanys mission is to create games that push the possibilities of what games can communicate.


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Category:

Science & Technology

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• TEDxUSC

[nestletreb]

My response to Roger Ebert:

"we are the music makers,

and we are the dreamers of dreams"

My 32-bit dreams are the dreams of gesamtkunstwerk, and of ancient stories, and of the epic poems, and of the music of imagination. We won't waste our time proving you wrong, "for we are afar with the dawning, and the suns that are not yet high."

[EmPtY7even]

Even you don't consider the games themselves as art, you must at least consider that the parts that make up games as art. The storytelling, the visual designs, and the musical scores. You cant compare video games to other art forms just as you cant compare other art forms to eachother. Comparing a piece of music to something visual like a painting is rather a stretch. They may both bring you to certain emotions but at the same time they do it in entirely different ways.

[BanjoSick]

What a bad talk. Watch a John blow talk and you will have much more of it. Yeah games are art but shitty art for the most.nuff said

[BanjoSick]

@TheDuckaDiesel Hi, I have played some of those games and I find them all pointless. Did you ever read War and Peace by Tolstoy or The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann or Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen. That is great stuff. The games you have listed have stories on the level of crappy movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings (not the novel mind you) and other popcorn crap. Yea they are art, I agree, really really bad art. The problem is that games are quite cost intensive>mass market>crap

[BanjoSick]

@TheDuckaDiesel Hi, I have played some of those games and I find them all pointless. Did you ever read War and Peace by Tolstoy or The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann or Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen. That is great stuff. The games you have listed have stories on the level of crappy movies like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings (not the novel mind you) and other popcorn crap. Yea they are art, I agree, really really bad art. The problem is that games are quite cost intensive>mass market>crap

[zbouaerg]

The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management.

Duccio came not by usura

nor Pier della Francesca.

Entertainment ≠ Art.

[Koopaino]

Some videogames are art. And some aren't. That's why videogames cannot be placed in either category; videogames are sometimes to be interpreted through the way YOU personally want it to, (like a painting) or the way the creator of the game wants you to (like a book). Videogames often have near-infinite possibilities and paths, so they cannot be interpreted the same way each time. I believe art is, in essence, something that is made for another to enjoy. Videogames do that. So perhaps they are.

[madddawgg2]

@emmahouli wikipedia is a good starting point for research, but it should never be used as a cited source.

[emmahouli]

@madddawgg2 because you have never looked up wikipedia to fact check?

[madddawgg2]

the moment she quoted wikipedia i stopped the video

[Undkor]

@nemirc A distressing and valid perspective...