Art Games - beyond consumption

Gaming blog Joystiq has posted Artifical's coverage of art games - interactive art installations (downloadable and playable) - inspired by or taking the form of computer games. There's a load in the series, so if your Thursday's proving uneventful and you wish to expand your horizons beyong kicking, shooting and finding coins, here are some pages that should insipre:

Introduction

As a small subcategory of computer games you find Art Games. They are made by artists as pieces of art. Some have ulterior motives, mainly political, others are merely a playful piece of interaction with the user. What makes them art and not just games? For some, the fact that they were made as art, for others the fact that they are exhibited as art - it can all be boiled down to the intention behind them, originating from either the curator or the artist.

Recommendations From Samorost to September 12th and much more in-between.

How-To

Many artists use various types of processes, events, social patterns etc. as controlling or contributing factors in the creation of artworks. Alison Mealey has chosen to base her art on the computer game Unreal Tournament. More precisely, she lets a number of virtual players play the game for approximately 30 minutes at a time and uses the data from the games to produce complex drawings. These drawings are also based on photographic portraits. Thomas Petersen asked Alison some questions about her art and the processes behind it.

From the artist's perspective

I want to suggest in this essay that:

1) artists have not invented computer games 2) that they know better what to do with computer games and 3) that they can tell the future of games