DIGITAL GAME AS AN ART FORM

Abstract

Consideration of digital games developed as a form of interactive media articulated to cultural industry and pervaded in daily life with its relation to entertainment culture in an art space initiated a theoretical discussion. Was that possible to reconstruct digital games, a part of digital media, as a tool or form of digital and interactive art? This discussion was prolonged in an era where 'big' games were massified and categorized by industrial genres, with the experience of some 'small' games described and categorized as critical, alternative, artistic or independent. This research focused on determination, classification and crystallization of the existing relations between games and art. Beyond Are digital games art or not' discussion, qualities of this relation are analyzed. As a result, artists using digital game medium as a part of their artwork or experience; artists producing interactive or non-interactive 'game art' transforming/de-constructing by modifying an existing digital game's software and/or hardware and artist / designer or collectives producing directly 'artgames' are founded. Separating digital game works as 'a tool for artistic expression' and works as 'an art form' from each other, this research comes up for discussion the aesthetical categories which constitute the language of this new art, when we accept digital games as an artform.