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'Games Are Not Art' - The Fault of Game Journalists
Roger Ebert has gone on record stating that he doesn't think games are art, and may never be up to the level of film as a medium. Kyle Orland responds on the Video Game Media Watch site, saying that if anyone is to blame game journalists are at fault for that perception. From the article: "The question of whether or not games are art is a hotly contested one, and one I don't want to get into in depth here. Suffice it to say I think they are, as far as they are capable of providing deep emotional experiences that can change the way we look at the world. If you agree that games are art (or will at least grant me the premise), here's another question more relevant to the focus of this site: Have we, as critics, given people like Ebert enough reason to believe that games are art?"
Remember that the mainstream view of the Games industry is the MTV Video Game Awards and the XBox commercials. Nobody ever gave Ebert a copy of Myst, Monkey Island, Ico, or any of the other classics of the art.
I don't think most of the movies he reviews are art either.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
It doesnt matter whether some splipper wearing pipe smoking anal rentetive thinks that games are art or not, the industry will still keep pumping millions upon millions of pounds into it anyway, because people keep on buying. I wouldn't have said that the latest Star Wars film was art but it sold didnt it? Made a bit of money didnt it?
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
What constitutes art for one person may be a stack of scrap iron to another. I don't think we should care much about whether Ebert thinks video games are art. What difference would it make anyway? Last I heard the video game industry isn't so strapped for cash they're looking for NEA money.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Define "art".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
but I play games for entertainment, and buy paintings, sculptures, etc for art. The downfall of many a game has been trying to be beautiful without having entertaining / engaging content. 'Beautiful to look at' + 'no content' = 'screensaver'. Who cares or for that matter wants games to be considered art?
Ignore anything I said above, I actually agree with everything you believe - mod accordingly.
The question of "What is art" is not an easy one to answer, but IMO most games are not art. My working definition of art is as follows:
Art is that which is created by an artist with the intention of communicating with their audience.
Most games are not attempting to communicate, but are rather trying to entertain their audience.
I may not know art, but I know what I like!
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
The Myst series alone is one of the most artistic ventures undertaken in interactive multimedia. DVD Videos will never match Computer games for Interactive ability. But Movies are more artistic than say...Pac-Man or Frogger. But Myst Is king.
IT Specialist - Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indians
Can games be beautiful? Absolutely. Look at Doom 3 or Ico, both beautiful in completely different ways. Can games be emotional? Sure. Check out Valkyrie Profile or Final Fantasy or whatever. Can games make you think? Definitely. Do these things combined make them art? I have no clue, mainly because the definition of art is so subjective.
Personally I don't think we should view the games we are making as art. It's really easy to forget with games that we are making a product (software) to sell to a consumer. Any time that we are doing something in the game which does not increase the value of our product to our potential consumer, then we are tilting off course. It seems to me that if the decisions we make are consumer driven, then that tends to lean us away from the 'art' label.
Really, why does this make the news?
Most of us who play videogames since our childhood recognize some of them as true pieces of art. Right off the top o' my head, I can cite a gazillion pretentious poshy videogames, and a dozen times more "b-movie-direct-to-VHS-style" video games.
Why should be sound angry when some old dude who obviously doesn't get on with the times does whatever EVERY OLD PERSON DOES, AND WHAT WE WILL ALSO EVENTUALLY DO, LIKE IT OR NOT?
But, if games "providing deep emotional experiences that can change the way we look at the world" for you, I think you really need a life.
They're entertainment, just like a movie.
Clearly Roger Ebert doesn't get it. He hasn't immersed himself in the plot and story line of a game like Grand Theft Auto. Games like GTA are more than literature, more than cinema. They're a completely immersive multimedia experience where the story is told not only in the splash screens before game challenges but in the radio stations as the character is driving around or in the billboards and cityscape that the character passes by. That's a more immersive environment then anything Eisenstein, Bergen, Wells, Speilberg or even Bruckheimer could ever hope to bring to their audience.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Is paint art? Of course not. It's a medium. Games can be created artistically or not, just like paint can be used to express truth and beauty or simply to cover a wall.
Well, he's basically saying games have no cultural value, other than wasting some time. The same could probably be said for just about all the music, movies, tv, books and magazines published. But this assumes that he is capable of measuring the cultrual value of a thing, which I doubt any observer is.
Save a life, sign your organ donor card.
wrote an email to ebert in response to this. in it, i noted that it might be too soon to make any sort of assessment. as a gamer, i certainly believe games have come out that qualify as art. but when ebert compares video games as an ostensibly artistic medium to film and literature and music citing that there are no examples of games that measure up to the classics in those other forms, i think he's being unfair. gaming is still in its infancy. how long was music being created or writing or film before touchstone "art" examples were put forth? it's one thing that ebert claims that there's no art games out now. what's more troubling is that it seems that he doesn't see the potential for it to ever get there.
(text from this week's Village Voice)
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
from (TFA):
"To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers."
First and foremost, it requires quite an investment to enjoy a video game to its full potential, unlike a play, or a movie, or a book, which can range from a $10 price tag and a couple hours of your time, to $30-40 and a couple days. An epic video game with a great storyline can take days, or months of a casual gamers time to complete, not to mention the initial investment of $50-60 for the title, not including the console / computer.
Second, the video game industry is still in its infancy as compared to the other mediums suggested. How long did movies exist before a truly epic film debut? And what about books? Sure Shakespeare wrote some of the most memorable works, but the egyptians were carving on walls well before he came along.
It will take time, but hope is not lost Mr Ebert.
Colonel Cranium this is Rectal Reconnaissance, we are on a collision course sir, Abort Abort!
But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic. So according to Mr. Ebert, Garfield: The Movie is a valuable device to make oneself more cultured. Or maybe he's just a stupid sack of pigshit that gets paid too much for his "opinions".
I'd like to go on record stating Robert Ebert is an asshat.
What about games like Final Fantasy[1] and Metal Gear Solid, where there's more time spent looking at cutscenes than actually, like, playing?
Metal Gear Solid gets the extra cultural bonus of being mostly radio plays, where you don't actually get to see anything, and instead listen to two talking head portraits talk to each other for hours!
Are games art? No. But games can contain art, usually in the form of long boring cutscenes that distract from the reason you're playing the stupid thing in the first place. You WATCH art, you PLAY games.
[1] Any one past VI, the ones for Nintendo systems actually had game play.
I don't know if this point has been made before, but I think that the closed platforms on which games run will make it almost impossible for them to have any kind of long term cultural impact. It really depends if they'll be available and playable 20, or 50, or a hundred years from now.
I know that things like MAME are keeping the old games alive, but is it really going to be possible to emulate a 360? That's a pretty complicated machine, and DRM is built into the very fabric of it.
In many ways, we're in sort of an odd place culturally now. The way things are produced and distributed is fairly different than its been in the past. We have a strong focus on what's new and hot and current to a very unusual degree. People are actually manufacturing demand for various cultural products. Right now they're doing that in a big way for the King Kong remake, for example.
I was an English major, and one of the things you notice if you're an English major is that there are big trunks of tradition running through the cannon. Guys like Homer and Chaucer and Shakespeare, works like the King James Bible, etc.
English literature is based on a cultural commons, and there are tons of references and evokations that carry a lot of meaning. I don't know if that would have been able to come together if big multinational corporations had built lots of toll booths around those stories.
The question that everyone focuses on is whether or not games, as a medium, are really capable of carrying nuanced meaning, or recreating complicated types of human experience. And honestly, I don't know if they're really capable of carrying the same kind of meaning that you get from Proust. But at the same time, I don't know that a novel is capable of carrying the same sort of visceral experiences that you can create in games.
But there's another question that isn't raised, and that I think is really significant. Can a medium that doesn't really have a cultural commons create a tradtion that can propel it forward into some sort of artistic greatness?
Corporations have run movies for a long time, and people have made a lot of really amazing films. But I would argue that tv has functioned as a kind of cultural commons, and that the medium itself is fairly robust in the face of technical change. I mean, it's pretty easy to watch a movie that was made in the 30's today. You can watch old lumiere brothers movies if you want to.
Games are more rigidly controlled by corporations, they seem likely to be the medium that's going to be most entertwined with DRM, and they're extremely dependent on specific platforms. All of those things are going to make a cultural commons for gaming a much more difficult thing to produce.
There is a structural reason for [video games being inferior to film and literature]: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.
The appropriate question, therefore, is: does the introduction of player choices into a material inherently undermine the authorial control of a work of art, videogame, book or otherwise?
I think the answer is no. But search for "interactive movie" and you can see where the argument comes from.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Every single comment so far is about Ebert. Attacking him for being fat, or for having a stupid opinion. I think we can all agree that games can be art. We can all site anecdotal examples of games that raised goosebumps, made us laugh, or made us cry. Ebert is not the world's definitive voice on aesthetics, and to his credit he made a very qualified statement there - games are not art to him.
But that's all beside the point. Ebert's comments provide context for a very good article here, one that raises a lot of excellent points. The video game press is extraordinarily pathetic. Something won't be considered "serious" art unless it evokes intelligent critical discussion, not fanboy-esque 8 page reviews that focus on the graphics, speculate on the frame rate, and the quality of the sound.
Imagine if all art were reviewed the way video games were. If Premiere gave movies ratings on their special effects, if Rolling Stone scored music according to the sound quality of the recording, if the New York times spent long periods of time talking about how good the typeset was of the new Phillip Roth novel. Who would read such garbage? Why do we?
Great art - perhaps even true art - transcends its medium. Its fans and evangilists don't get caught up in the nuts and bolts. We can acknowledge and admire the Mona Lisa's revolutionary use of perspective, but that's not what stirs our emotioins when we look at it.
"How is this possible?" his teacher asked, "Have you not trained eight years under my tutelage?
"My opponent was an authority. I could not overpower him." sighed the student.
Master Huang replied, "It matters not. All opponents are equally defeatable. Did you not learn the First Precept?"
"As we all did on our first day of training: 'Ignorance is the foundation of debate. That which is understood is not debatable.' But I did not understand the topic at all, and I still lost!" whined the student.
"Idiot!" exclaimed the master, "Your ignorance is not at issue, it is your opponent's. He who understands this cannot be defeated, even by the Jade Emporer."
"But my opponent was skillful! He does nothing but argue about pointless matters all day! How can I a student of only eight years defeat such a man?"
Master Huang was moved to pity, and decided to give the student one last lesson. "I see you have not learned," Master Huang said. "Either I am a poor teacher or your are dull student. Nonetheless I will try one last time to teach your the use of the First Precept. Attack me as your opponent did!"
"Master I dare not!" exclaimed the student, "You are most venerable and I do not wish to dishonor you!"
"You dishonor me by your cowardice!" roared the Master. "Show me your opponent's attack!"
The student reluctantly began, "Games are not art..." but was instantly dumbfounded to find himself upside-down and flying through the air. "This is most wondrous!" thought the student, as he watched entire continents slip away below him. He began to wonder how far he would travel, when he suddently slammed into something hard and fell to the ground. He looked up in wonder to behold the Seven Pillars of Heaven. He had been hurled twelve thousand li in a space of a few breaths.
The student felt a pang of concern as to how he would return, when a sound drew his attention. He was stupefied to see Master Huang relieving himself on one of the Pillars. "Master, how did you arrive here so quickly?"
"Quickly!" laughed the master, "I could gone to each of these Pillars in turn, peed on it, and returned in the time it took you to get here!"
"How is this possible master!" cried the student, "Teach me the secret I beg you!"
Master Huang said nothing but pointed high on the Pillars. The student saw that each pillar had a word inscribed on it in characters like flame as tall as an earthly mountain. Together these words made the phrase:
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What's interesting is that this argument is old...and I'm not talking about the argument over whether or not video games are art. Every time a new artistic medium arises, participants (artists, critics, educators, people involved in the business around other mediums) claim that the new medium isn't "art".
Many universities are still entrenched in the debate over whether or not to consider photography a classical art. One-by-one, educational institutions are accepting photography as a form of classical art. The fact is that over time, new mediums are eventually accepted as art, and the naysayers lose. The media with which Roger Ebert is a critic, film, was not always considered art either. There was debate over this media as well. Of course, TFA puts this argument much more eloquiently than I can.
It is irrelevant whether or not there is a unanimous acceptance of video games as art. All it takes is a critical mass of participants to consider a media art, and it's pretty much there. The credibility of an art form amongst educators doesn't really matter, except maybe in a legal (first amendment) sense.
The fact is that this is more of a generational issue. Video games are especially new to a fellow like Ebert, who is entrenched in the media that he is famaliar with. It is clear that Ebert is stuck in his ways and does not want to accept any new media into his worldview. Ebert admits to making a judgement of video games while being unfamaliar with video games. He claims that since the user is required to make choices and participate, that it is somehow inferior to other forms of art. I tend to disagree, since the viewer/reader/listener must take an active role in interpreting the art, thus taking an active role and making decisions in the outcome of their experience in the work itself.
-Turkey
"The question of whether or not games are art is a hotly contested one, and one I don't want to get into in depth here. Suffice it to say I think they are ..."
Why not getting into it in depth? Would that be the whole point posting a response refuting Mr. Ebert's claims?
True enough, but even these titles would require considerable effort to classify as art as games.
I'll take Ico as my example. I only recently played this (less than a month ago), despite having received recommendations for years.
Despite the elapsed time, I was still blown away by some of the great visuals. The plot wasn't awful either, which was a nice surprise. But there the good stuff ended. Games cannot claim to be art solely because they contain great graphics and quality writing. And there is no way I'm prepared to accept Ico's gameplay as art. It was mostly reasonable, occasionally annoying, but never exciting.
Now in fact I'm very much a believer that games could be art. But if I had to judge the issue on what I've seen so far, I wouldn't be so sure.
To me, any work that requires creative thinking and stirrs up emotion, is art. Anything that does not, is not.
Brave New World is Art. Citizen Kane is art. Casablanca is art.
Pearl Harbour? That is not art. It is an escape, sure, but it is not art.
Same with games. Quake 3 is art. Mario Kart is not.
Sure, there is art in the game, obviously (the characters, etc). But the work as a whole is not art unless it evokes some kind of emotional presence.
Now, art is subjective. Just because Pearl Harbour does not evoke an emotional response in me does not mean it would not in someone else. To that person, it is art.
Basically, the crux of it is, it doesn't matter WTF Roger Ebert or Ghandi or God himself thinks is art. All that matters is what is art to you?
Well said. In the distant future movies may no longer be considered art either. I mean after all, how can a 2-dimensional noninteractive medium possibly be art? I mean that's just crazy talk! This reminds me a bit of that Futurama episode in which Fry is sitting around listening to "classical music", actually rap music extolling the virtues of the buttocks (Bender paraphrase).
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Until we all agree on a definition of art, it's pointless to argue that something is or is not art.
Have we, as critics, given people like Ebert enough reason to believe that games are art?
I definitely think so. Games reviewers, like Ebert, give a description of the set and setting, plot, experience, describe the taste left in their mouth when the game is done, and finally give a qualitative score based on all elements put together. However, because games are "put together" in real time and not in advance like movies, game reviews are swayed by the technical prowess of the product. In a way this is akin to Ebert not only reviewing the movie, but also the quality of the service at the theatre.
Anyone who says games are not art is closed minded, plain and simple. Whether a game is beautiful is irrelevant. Super Mario Brothers on the NES is art. Pong is art. They are a singing, dancing example of zeitgeist, providing a window into eras of recent history. We will look back on video games in future decades and the sway of the times on the games' design will be more apparant in hindsight.
You've touched on a good point. Many things that are created are just craft and are not art. Art requires intention. Craft requires skill.
A great movie that entertains but which was never intended to convey a message isn't art. An artist must intend to create art...
Brother! You look like a faaat man in need of an ass-bruisin'!
I'm not scared of anonymous cowards.
Note it says affects the sense of beauty, not beautiful. It may well be ugly. The important bart is the sense. If it's neither beautiful nor ugly, well then it's not art.
#define Beauty
The hard question is "What is intelligence?"
Ok, Pixars Toy Story... CGI Right? That was art. ID's Doom 3... CGI Right? That isnt art? Same deal... Games are as much art as movies under these principals
I can't believe this repeatedly comes up like it's some mysterious question that needs to be worked out. Just like every other artform in existence, they range from commercial work that would be considered "craft" and definitely not "fine art", they have a middle point of indie games that are more arty and experimental but still accessible (maybe Katamari or Colossus), and there are extremely experimental games that are more about expression or defining the nature of video games.
I think the problem with the articles about this subject is that the writers don't know much about current new media art, and aren't aware of the purely conceptual game art going on, like this or this or this.
Quake 3 is art. Mario Kart is not. with
To me, any work that requires creative thinking and stirrs up emotion, is art.
You, sir, have obviously never played MK. Also, Quake 2 was more 'art' than quake 3.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Movies will never achieve the kind of art that paintings or sculpture achieve. So it's fair to assume that games will never achieve the kind of art that movies are. They're inherently different.
However, there are books and movies that require your interaction to be complete, so it can't be the interaction aspect of games that denies it art status. Citizen Kane intended the viewer to make his own image of the reporter since he is intentionally obscured throughout the movie. Books typically rely on your imagination to visualize a scene or character by providing you verbal details. Music and Poetry are interpretive by nature. Abstract Art is interpretive, that's why it's abstract.
Is it the journalists fault? I doubt it. Games that are artsy (Rez, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Out of this World, anything on orisinal.com) are always pointed out as such. The problem is that most games just simply aren't art. It seems that the more a game focuses on artistic nature, the less it focuses on gameplay, which seems to agree with Ebert's comments.
I don't say it lightly that Roger Ebert is a tad naive when it comes to games. He is merely speaking from his own expertise. I say this because very few films actually qualify as art, and there are many mediocre games that are more artistic than any bad movie. A steadfast sculptor who only deals in real materials could easily state that movies will never achieve art as he knows it.
I'll go see action flicks because I need an escape and enjoy a movie for a change. Those movies tend to make the most money, too. Non-art doesn't necessarily mean not worthwhile.
...but I find his opinion in this case uninformed. I imagine he made this comment as a reaction to the scores of horrific movies adapted from video games that been released over the past decade. Ebert has a soft spot for movies that introduces and envelopes the viewer to a new world (think Dark City, Equilibrium, or Star Wars), and will even rate undeserving movies a little higher if that world is enveloping enough. Had he truly invested enough time in video games to actually make an informed judgment, I imagine he would enjoy many games a great deal for this reason.
I must admit though, video games feel most like art to me when they are imitating or combining other media. Games like Valkyrie Profile and Killer 7 are combinations of graphical style, music,and gameplay. Graphical style is pretty much a derivative of what is called "cinematography" in film. Music is music, plain and simple, and gameplay does not qualify as art, just as excellent games like Risk and Clue do not either.
While video games cannot be considered a unique medium, does this preclude them from being art?
Semantic squabbles like this properly hinge upon analysis of terms. But of course it's not really about semantics, is it?
The question itself is disingenuous. The questioner does not care whether games are in a class, "art". It's really about power. If "art" has a power to control people, if "artists" can allocate the resources of other people, and "games" are a subclass of "art", then "game artists" have increased power.
But one essential difference between games and other sound and vision arts is that games put control, put power, in the hands of the consumer. It degrades the power status of the auteur to extend the creative role to the unwashed heathen masses. Thus the auteur social class of the ancien regime will inevitably be opposed on grounds of self-interest to the inclusion of the game auteur in their class.
The correct answer to the question therefore is not "yes, it is art" or "no, it is not art".
The correct answer is "fuck you, and your cultural imperialism".
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I don't think it's really game journalist's responsiblity to promote games as art per se. Granted there's minimal writting about the artistic values and merits of games, but I think the responsibility of evaluating the artistic merits of an [art]form fall to the bloke making the statements.
It's akin to me making a public statement saying "Bosons are not gluons" without having more than a passing knowledge of physics. If I'm the person proclaiming from on high, it's my responsibility to make sure the statements are accurate.
uh, movies are not games
Art is an emotional space created by someone else (or you) that can be experienced ("lived in") for a while.
Is talking art? How about a telephone message? I don't think your definition is specific enough. Now, there may be kinds of talking that really are art, and kinds of telephone messages that are art too. But I think your definition is too broad. [Also your definition includes the term "artist", but I don't know if your understanding of art depends on a private meaning of "artist".]
I don't think your interpretation of games "entertaining" rather than "communicating" holds much water. Chrono Trigger is very entertaining and it's not particularly communicating, as if you could divine the secret message of the video game if you only had the hermeneutical key. It doesn't seem so important to me that art has these messages embedded at the root. What does Casablanca communicate? What is the meaning of Ode on a Grecian Urn?
On my definition, Chrono Trigger and Casablanca do create an emotional space for you to experience. It makes you feel like your actions matter because the world changes when you do something important. In that way and many others, it tries to help you pass the Rubicon and live in a new emotional space just like any good fiction.
I think we would agree that Galaga and chess don't create any great emotional space to live in, and maybe they don't count as art. I'm not an master chess player, so I wouldn't know.
But Final Fantasy VII and Planetfall do arouse those strong emotions. We really care about what happens to these fictional constructions of 1s and 0s. You forget that Cloud and Floyd are not real, because they are real within the confines of their little emotional world, and you get to travel in that world and experience it with them.
If that's not art, what is? And there are countless other examples. "For every Carmageddon there is an equal and opposite Half-Life 2." Okay, maybe not "every". But there are plenty of high-profile examples of artistic games.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
The stream of drivel coming out of Hollywood these days is considered art by Ebert?
Don't ask a 90 year old if they think video games are art.
Art is simply the creation of something, and while it is debatable what that thing is, art is anything that CAN be created.
I question when I go to an art gallery and see a canvas of all black paint that cost $1.2 million to purchase as "art", but it WAS created and to some people it is art.
There is definitely lots of artistry in games. From the artists the create the environment to the programmers that can spin code to allow the art to come to life, games are all about creation and imagination.
Ultimatly, I feel that art is taking a dream and making it reality. Whether thats putting paint on canvas, or assembling 1's and 0's together to create video game, one without imagination like Ebert, who can only comment and criticize on the creativity of others, should not be a judge for what art truely is.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I'm sure video games are going through the same process, and in another decade or two will be more recognized as possible works of art - especially when some other medium comes along that can't *possibly* be regarded as a mode artistic expression (yet).
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
you can't difinitively say that games is an artform until you decide what is art. so i think this is a stupid line of questioning.
...
art is art when someone important says so.
art is art when i say so.
art is art when i like it.
art is art when someone important likes it.
art is art as long as it's done by an artist.
Not to rain on everyone's parade, but ... doesn't he have a point? I quote: "To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers."
In what way is this statement false? I love games, I play them constantly. I think some are beautiful, others enthralling, and others make you think. Some are finely-tuned fun for ways you can't quite explain, but keep going back to play.
But there are none that are masterpieces. None that will still be enjoyed by our grandchildren, and mentioned in schoolbooks. And until there are, he's right. I'm not saying it's _impossible_ that there could be such a thing, just that there isn't right now.
http://www.nailbiter.net/gman/video/fewgoodgmen.mo v
I wonder if this would be compared to that painting of the Virgin Mary made with feces a few years back?
Personally, I think this is art and that was crap.
Demented But Determined.
Depends on what buildings you're looking at. Look at the Chrysler Building in New York. Pick a building by Frank Lloyd Wright such as Falling Water. Those are two of the easy ones.
There are many other great buildings that could have just been refrigerator boxes. But the architect spent time to truly make it a work of art.
Don't be a snob...there are plenty of fine examples in both Europe and America and all over the world really.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
He is just to old to understand games, and he is to lazy to even care about them. Because games require movement and skill, neither of which he has. So he can just shove a sock in it!
The way I see it, games have a whole lot of artistic elements that are tacked onto a non-artistic core concept - Interactivity. Is a cut scene an art? Yes Is an animated sprite art? Sure Is a 3D model art? Yep Is game music art? You bet! Is the game of chess an art? No... I simply refuse to believe that anything that is based on user interaction can be considered art. However, parts and pieces of that full interactive experience can be considered art. For example, a game might use a cut scene video to portray a scenario and mood. I totally agree that this is artwork, it's just like any movie! But if you allow the user to play the character during the cut scene, it's going to turn into something stupid. Think of any scene from your favorite movie and put a typical, ADD-driven, teenage gamer into the role of one of the characters. Give him total control over that character's actions. Is the scene going to still have the same feeling if that player decides to run around the room, jumping up and down constantly, trying to find easter eggs and hidden things while something emotional is going on? Art just doesn't really seem to remain artistic to me when it's interactive. So yes, I agree with Ebert. Though I do feel like the non-interactive parts of games come from artistic mediums of different varieties - movies, sound, graphics - I do not feel like the interactive core of video games is at all artistic.
By your logic, I conclude that movies are not art. In a movie, you are either forced to rely upon dialog (falling back on literature), visual impact (which simply reproduces the work of a painter or sculpter), or the interactions of humans (like, say, a play). Hell, plays and literature are built on oral traditions -- they can't be art, either. I am sorry, but your logic is flawed.
Rhapsody in Numbers
From IMDB's entry for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls:
"This film is a sequel in name only to Valley of the Dolls (1967). An all-girl rock band goes to Hollywood to make it big. There they find success, but luckily for us, they sink into a cesspool of decadence. This film has a sleeping woman performing on a gun which is in her mouth. It has women posing as men. It has lesbian sex scenes. It is also written by Roger Ebert, who had become friends with Russ Meyer after writing favorable reviews of several of his films. "
So, can architecture be art?
Ebert is a dinosaur, but reviews do suck. Should Rolling Stone rate an album by giving 1 to 10 for fidelity, listenablity, cover art, replay value, and non-composite overall? Such a thing would be ridiculous, but that's basically what game reviews do. Game reviews need to be more like music reviews: don't tell me about the 'plot' (lyrics) or 'graphics' (fidelity). Tell me about what kind of experience I will have with this product! Compare it to past works and genres. Explain how it's better or worse than other things in its category, or how it creates a new category of its own. Say, "the emphasis on precision platforming of Super Mario Bros. returns in Super Mario Bros. 3." not "the graphics of Mario 3 are far better than SMB." You can mention technical innovations, like Mario 3's diagonal scrolling, but only do so in order to explain how this opens up countless new hidden areas. Don't just talk about tech for tech; talk about how it affects the gaming experience! Game reviews should be like movie reviews though, because movies only last for 3 hours and you only return once every couple years. Games are more like CDs: you get a new one and spin it for 10 or 20 hours over a few weeks, then you may or may not make it part of your regular set of old standbys that you keep returning to.
You can't.
Believe me I've taken years of philosophy classes and art history classes and if you can come up with
a definition of art that *is exclusionary* in any way, you'll be wrong.
Art has expanded to encompass all things. (urinals, shit, toasters, underwear, garbage, noises, etc.)
All that is necessary to make something art, is quite literally "for its maker to proclaim it as art".
So, Roger (since I know far more about art than you): "I declare the videogame I am currently coding to be art".
There. Try you philosophical best to take its status as "art" away, punk.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
This article should be in the "That word you keep using doesn't mean you think it does" department.
Art doesn't have to emotionally effect EVERYONE, people are different, some 'stuff' people define as art has no emotional effect the vast majority of people. Is clip art not art? Are war/action movies not art" Is rock music not art? Is anything that some pin head deams to be "not art" actually not art?
-or-
Has the concept of what is and is not art drifted so far from reality that the word no longer has the same meaning?
Let see, define art...
Well maybe Google can define art for us or maybe Wikipedia can define art for us. Well Google isn't very specific, never is. But, Wikipedia is supposed to be by the people for the people kind of system and they say "Art, in its broadest meaning, is the expression of creativity or imagination, or both."
So, are video games an expression of creativity and/or imagination? I, for one, think, generally speaking, the answer is yes. *check*
I don't have a corncob up my ass so I can't speak for art critics but I think that word they keep using doesn't mean what they think it does. Now, while I'm not willing to shove a corncob up my ass or start publically proclaiming my own personal views as hardened facts -but- I am willing to see it from what seems to be their point of view.
'They' like the more emotional aspect of art. So, do video games invoke an emotional responce? For me, personally, I have had an emotional reaction while playing some games, I know some of my friends have as well. *check*
'They' like the "life changing" or "thought invoking" aspect of art. So, do video games invoke a life changing/altering or thought invoke/provoking experience? Given the state of the nation I think so, that brings to mind Deus Ex. Call of Duty had roughly the same effect on me as Saving Private Ryan, which is widely considered a work of art among war movies. Both have changed my life, both motivated me to learn more about the state of our world and our recent history without those I might be more ignorant and in a different place in life. (if that makes sense) *check*
In a reply to another article (forget which or I'd link to it) I tried to argue anything intended to entertain people is art. I stand by that notion but I don't think I need to bring it up again.
Games are art. They can try to change the meaning of the word art as much as they like but like any other information medium you will find art on the interactive multimedia information medium. And to be clear, game design or the crafting of the intended experience of the player, can be art. 'Our' happy medium can present art from many (if not all) other information mediums but in the general sense that bit of art is just more information moving along the medium to the player, if its presented in or allows the player to interact with it in a creative, emotion invoking, thought invoking/provoking, or other manor that reflects on an aspect of human nature then... *check* IT'S ART!
-Burn
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." -Plato
It's painful to read Ebert's words, because he sounds perfectly reasonable, citing some appreciation for the various "crafts" involved in games, and even being honest enough to admit that he doesn't have much experience with games (which I give him credit for), BUT he should have stopped right there. His mistake, I fear, was to go one step too far and say "I don't know much about videogames, but they are not art, and are a waste of my time."
Ebert should have more respect for his own credibility: generally when someone says something like that -- especially in what sounds like a "holier than thou" lecture to the people who DO play games a lot -- it makes you sound ignorant and arrogant. And I don't say that lightly, as I usually have a lot of respect for Ebert. As the letter he's responding to says, Ebert has been known to stick up for underappreciated mediums, so if anything it's disappointing to see his unwillingness to give videogames the time of day. But again, he probably would have been better served to simply bite his tongue rather than make such a controversial statement without first doing his homework, regardless of whether he was going to give a thumbs up or thumbs down. You know, Ebert, sort of like how you (I hope!) wouldn't rate a movie you haven't watched.
First of all, let's keep in mind the all-powerful fact that Ebert's generation simply doesn't "get" videogames, in the same way that our generation simply doesn't appreciate a lot of the things that the baby boomers are fond of from their youth, because we just didn't live in those times and share those experiences.
I'm much too lazy to make a full-blown argument, but I would like to highlight two serious problems with Ebert's:
"Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.
This is an absurd thing to say, and demonstrates Ebert's self-admitted lack of familiarity with games. If this is to be Ebert's metric of "art" (or one of several metrics), then his entire argument is easily defeated. Just as writers and directors choose the choices a character makes in his film-based journey, the writers/directors of a videogame create the world around the main character (controlled by the gamer). The world they create is specifically designed to facilitate one or several (usually several) paths on which the player journeys. The "choices" made by the player are still chosen by the artist, it's just done in a much more indirect way so as to give the player a sense of control of his fate, or to give him a choice of one of many fates pre-chosen by the artist.
Many games give the player "control" but still dictate the actual storyline, including dialogue, important character decisions, etc. These games (let's call them "interactive movies") are simply the films Ebert holds in such high regard, with the audience getting to be more deeply immersed in the experience but still yielding creative control ultimately to the game's creators.
However, the direction game makers seem to move in these days is towards giving the player as much control as possible. This is perhaps what Ebert dislikes, but even still, it is the game's authors who create the environment and situations which ultimately move the story along. Most games are a give-and-take between the artist and the audience, where the audience has a certain amount of creative control and so does the artist. Arguably it's MORE difficult to create a game world where the "untalented" audience can make choices and yet still wind up involved in an intricate and moving story. The artistry, if nowhere else, is in crafting these open-ended paths upon which the gamers must journey.
In short, Ebert is mistaken that giving the audience control means the loss of "authori
Hi. I'm a director, and some of you have heard of me, and many of you have enjoyed my films. I'm also an avid game player, and I think Roger Ebert is right (and it pains me to say that, since he's only batting around .750 with his thumbs-up average for me).
I actually have a game in development right now, and I'm quite involved with the process because I want it to be the very best game it can be. But I don't think it's art, and I find it hard to see how a game ever will be. Now, the issue isn't whether ALL films are art and ALL games aren't. The issue is one of whether the medium itself is an artform.
Don't get me wrong. I have played great games. I hope the game we're making is as good as they were. They were exceptionally well-designed and well-crafted. They were artFUL, but they weren't ART.
The difference?
I was playing them.
That's an important distinction to make. Art is, I believe, for the most part a delivery from artist to audience. The artist works very hard to create something, layers of communication, sometimes; sometimes not even that coherent, sometimes just a visual, sensory experience. Wait, you're saying, isn't that what games are? Well, yes. But by the player being such a huge component of the experience of the game, it takes a lot of the authorship away from the artist(s).
In the same sense, we can all talk about a great movie we've seen, or a great album, or a great book. These are shared experiences of the art. But no one played YOUR game, not the exact game you did. I'm loathe to shackle "art" with definitions, partly because it's a bit of a fruitless exercise, but I think that despite the obvious talent and artistry that goes into something like The Sims or Half-Life 2, you'd find yourself hard-pressed to be able to or even need to call them art unless you had some vested interest in defending them as such.
It's also worth noting that games these days, the big ones, are not often the product of a single "artist's" vision, with the exception of some of the notable guys whose names we all know. Of course, a lot of big, bad Hollywood movies are made by committee with a hack at the helm. No, I don't think they're art, either.
"Art is that which is created by an artist with the intention of communicating with their audience.
Most games are not attempting to communicate, but are rather trying to entertain their audience."
Take a movie like Independence Day. What does it doing? It's entertaining you. What's there to communicate? Oh, we're going to save the day from the evil aliens! Yay!"
Now take a game like Deus Ex. "Life imitates art. Art imitates life." Not sure how that goes but Deus Ex definitely imitates life. Nanotechnology, the illuminati, FEMA, terrorism, world-wide virus problem, poverty, cybernetic implants. It takes all these things and creates a powerful story in a dystopian future that makes people THINK. How many of have not gone and looked up some of these groups after playing this game and found out all this cool information?
So why is it art? It makes you think about life, it evokes emotions, it shows you the possibilities of nanotechnology and how that could be used in the future. It also gives you choices, let's you play the game how you want to play. Movies don't allow that. Deus Ex allows you to interpret not just the images and sounds you see, but it allows you to choose WHAT images and sounds, therefore providing a greater amount of possible interpretations.
My best stab at it is that art is anything purposely designed to elicit an emotional response.
This can be anything from a painting, to a product wrapper, to a corporate logo, to the shape of an everyday product such as a flashlight, just as long as it's not 100% utilitarian in design.
But there are none that are masterpieces. None that will still be enjoyed by our grandchildren, and mentioned in schoolbooks. And until there are, he's right. I'm not saying it's _impossible_ that there could be such a thing, just that there isn't right now.
:p
If you look at a close cousin to video games, i.e. board games, we already have a few that span more generations than film, games such as Go and Chess. We even have some modern board games that have been played by generations like Monopoly.
I'd be willing to bet there well be some video games that will be played for generations to come, but they may not be classics. Games like Tetris or Bejeweled (or clones) or who knows, maybe The Sims 843 with add-on packs!
- Chad
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
either way you look at the three ways I describe it, games are in fact art::::
1: Where a game resembles a movie or book, it is art (movies and books are considered art, are they not?), some movies, books, and paintings are fantastic, while others it would be giving more credit than due to say people could care less about them, some make you cry over the story and stare in awe at the visuals and the unique way things are rendered, and others just make you want to puke
2: the type of game that allows the end user/gamer to control the outcome - making the gamer the artist because what results is their creation