>>79568931I think when a lot of people talk about art there is a bit of a schism between quality of art and the degree to which it is art, which both get tangled up when people talk about what is 'good art'
Art's entertainment value or, at least, it's ability to engage the audience determines whether it is 'good'. Insofar as good is engaging or entertaining.
Art's ability to express and decompress ideas in an elegant or provoking way is another metric by which art is described as "good" Though it's considered somewhat more pretentious because you usually have to have experience and exert effort looking over a piece of art to 'get' how 'deep' it is.
Many AAA video games are longform media which means they have to sacrifice the latter for the former because if engagement drops off then the audience puts down the product. Longer experiences tend to be less efficient in message or theme, especially when the audience has the option to deliberately or accidentally subvert the theme. It's no accident that many video game themes involve conflicts of choice.
If I enjoy playing Candy Crush for 300 hours and learn nothing, was it good art? If I read a short story that was a slog to get through but changes the way I think about the world (I can't think of any off the top of my head, maybe "Three World's Collide") was it good art if I didn't enjoy the read itself?
There's nothing preventing a commercial work from being more thought provoking than a piece of fine art. Or a piece of fine art being more entertaining.
>>79568891Rountree's analysis misses this point in most regards Is a piece of art more effective in making you understand if you had to spend 20 times as long invested in it?
