'Systems-As-Art' In Games

GameSetWatch has an interesting essay about the relationship between games and art. Matthew Wasteland discusses the difficulty in translating other artistic creations to video games, giving Moby Dick as an example. "If Melville had so much as allowed for any possibility at all where Captain Ahab 'wins,' no matter how remote, the work's message and its interpretation of the world completely changes. Instead of destiny and fate, we would now speak of probability and chance." He then goes on to examine whether the logic systems and rules that define a game can achieve the status of art. "Distancing the work from the 'entertainment' of popular games is fine, but even the most artsy, obscure and difficult works must connect with an audience somehow. I am not sure a system of rules by itself is the best method to achieve that. If rules are art, could not one just as easily publish a rulebook, and leave it at that?"

Re:Rules are regularly a part of art

[utopiandelusion]

Rules are created after the artform has been around long enough to be studied and compared to a large amount of works. Picasso did not define Cubism as a set of rules and then create his paintings, he worked from his ideas which were later defined as Cubism, using him and a few others artists to cite. The same works for music, most emerging forms of music were created in order to make a sound that was different, strange, new, interesting, etc. They were not created because someone followed some set of guidelines. All art forms are a result of someone finding an appealing and interesting idea, a new way of doing things. Would you design a better software algorithm or car engine by following a guide book?

Re:A company I know

[Anonymous Coward]

Another good example was Planescape: Torment. It conveyed a story almost in a book-like fashion. The gameplay was built around the story, not the other way around.