Mr Lasastryke posted...
Why doesn't the presentation of a game make it art? It seems like he wants to make a clear distinction between "mechanics" and "presentation" - he's arguing that the mechanics of a game are unable to make a game art, and that the presentation doesn't "count" because that's not an actual part of the game itself...? I don't get it.
That goes back to an argument between ludology (the stance that games must be analyzed in terms of their gameplay) and narratology (the stance that games can be analyzed entirely by traditional literary analysis techniques).
Which is also his rebuttal to your other points. Can you make a game that's basically a movie or basically a book and have it be art? I suppose so, yes. You could make a game where the entire game was "press A to start an FMV that is the full movie Gone with the Wind"; maybe you could even pause the movie and have your character and go for a bathroom break--extra agency! But what's artistic here is the movie, not the gameplay. It doesn't say "games are an art form" so much as it says "you can inject other art forms into a game". Kind of like Judge Judy opens with Beethoven Symphony Number 5--does that make Judge Judy art?
His argument goes that in order for games to be considered a new art form, distinct from movies, plays, and books, the gameplay has to be a big part of what makes an "art game" artistic.
--
Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision