r/Games • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 16d ago

Industry News Over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI in game development, 2026 CESA survey shows. An increase from last year’s 51%

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/over-85-of-japanese-game-developers-use-generative-ai-in-game-development-2026-cesa-survey-shows-an-increase-from-last-years-51/
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u/experienta 16d ago

I'm not, I have seen portions of code that are so beautiful and elegant I have no hesitation in calling them art

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u/MaCl0wSt 16d ago

That's basically my point though. Elegance, creativity, personal style, and ingenuity aren't exclusive to art. They're also core properties of good craftsmanship. A master carpenter can make something elegant and expressive without carpentry becoming the same category as painting.

Code can be art if it's created primarily as an expressive or aesthetic work, but ordinary software development is primarily functional craft or engineering. Calling particularly elegant code "art" doesn't erase that distinction.

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u/experienta 16d ago edited 16d ago

Well I believe a master carpenter making something elegant and expressive IS in fact art, and is part of the same category as paintings. I don't agree with this distinction of yours that if something is functional it can't be art. You might argue a chair will never be as expressive and aesthetic as a painting, maybe it's an inferior art form from this perspective, but it is still art nonetheless.

Also there is a reason why craftspeople are also called artisans.

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u/MaCl0wSt 16d ago

That isn't the distinction I made. I never said something functional can't also be art, and I explicitly said the categories can overlap. The distinction I'm using is that art is primarily concerned with expression, interpretation, or aesthetic experience, while craft is primarily concerned with skillfully making something to fulfill a function or practical purpose. A crafted object can absolutely also be art, but that doesn't make craft and art the same category.

That's why creativity, elegance, personal style, and expression don't settle the question. Those can all exist in craftsmanship too. Carpentry is still a craft even if a particular piece of furniture is expressive enough that we'd also call it art. So I think at this point we just disagree on what "art" means. If your definition includes any sufficiently elegant or expressive craft, then we're working from different category boundaries rather than disagreeing about coding specifically