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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

I consider video games contemporary art, particularly when they come from small (or single-dev) studios, you can really see there's a conscious effort to extrude some sentiment or story through this medium, and the results is usually amazing!

A couple personal favorites to add to your list:

- Cuphead (ok, this one had a big budget from the start but I wouldn't consider it AAA)

- Crypt of the NecroDancer

- Factorio

- Fez

- Getting Over It

- Journey

- Monument Valley

- Stardew Valley

- SUPERHOT

- Sword & Sorcery

- VVVVVV

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Vídeo games are not just contemporary art - they are THE dominant contemporary artwork of our age.

Yes some people choose to ignore it but having studied the arts - painting, writing, even filmmaking at this stage are more and more subservient to videogames. Virtually everything that’s new and exciting in art in the last 20 years have been videogames.

If you’re brilliant and you want to make art these days you generally go for videogames I’d say.

As a Filmmaker myself it’s interesting that reading the history of film it similarly wasn’t recognised as the dominant artform of its age / in fact quite the opposite it was considered commercial product only. It was only with a Frederico Fellini film being banned for instance that freedom of expression was allowed in film. That was because in breaking with precedent courts decided that film was art! It took Fellini to make them do that. Or so goes the history I’ve heard.

Kentucky Route Zero

Just want to add Outer Wilds to the list of “video games as art”.

Coincidentally, it has a fantastic VR mod called NomaiVR. Just do yourself a favor and avoid all spoilers before playing it.

Definitely in my top 5 games of the decade and one that I wish I could erase my memory to play again.

>Outer Wilds

Thanks! That looks like the kind of game I'd enjoy!

Factorio finally got its hooks into me lately - the first two times I played it I bounced off it. Now I'm hopelessly addicted, scribbling train tracks in my notebook... What a game.

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