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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 5640319" data-attributes="member: 3887">Yes.Mind you, this is the exact opposite of what my position was over the past few years, but... whatever... consistency is the 2 HD hobgoblin of little minds.When this question gets asked as "Are RPG's art, or an art form?", I'd usually answer "no, RPG's undeniable contain art, but they aren't themselves art, or a form, and anyway, it isn't particularly illuminating to consider them in that light". But the more I questioned my position, the less tenable it seemed. I started asking...... what about interactive fine art art installations where the audience is meant to "play with" the art object? If these art-toys are art, why not games, or the product of using game-like formal processes? ... what about art that's created using a series of rules, essentially algorithms, like the process-oriented paintings that my own wife makes? The presence, or even priority of, "rules" doesn't disqualify something from being art.... why is the (implied) existence of an external audience for the art required? A play performed only for the players is still art. Ditto anything created solely for the creator, like the work of outsider artists like Henry Darger's collages, or <a href="http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring04/throne.cfm" target="_blank">this guy</a>. It's the flip side of Duschamp taking a piss out of the art world with his urinal; art is still art even when you remove it from the gallery or performance venue.... and finally, and perhaps most obviously, how can an activity based around creating fictional characters and moving them through stories --be they heavily scripted, lightly scripted, completely emergent, and/or solely based around killing things and taking their stuff-- not be a kind of art? If you decide certain modes or subjects of storytelling disqualify a work from being art, then quite a lot fiction and film would also cease being art. So yeah, tl;dr version: role-playing gaming creates art. (it's positively awful art most of the time, but find me a discipline where that isn't true)</blockquote>

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