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Why Ebert Was Right
Next Generation reports has an article examining how, in some ways, Roger Ebert was right when he criticised the artistic merits of gaming. From the article: "But Ebert cannot be discounted, because, while he may not be the foremost authority on videogames, he knows a great deal about storytelling. He's not even completely ignorant on the subject of gaming; in fact, Roger Ebert is credited with at least one game review, a piece on the obscure Cosmology of Kyoto published in Wired in 1995. He reviewed it positively - he said it was wonderful."
Citizen Kane is overrated. And Touch of Darkness contains lame cliched stereotypes of Mexicans and pot smokers.
Ebert can bite me. He is probably less qualified to comment on games than I am to comment on movies. I'm sure I've watched more movies than he has played games and read more books on film and hell even edited broadcast video.
The art in games is not just the matter of telling a good story. Games are not experiences where you passively absorb a story that is dictated to you. Game mechanics and design are just as important if not more important than story, art or music.
Ebert tries to interpret games in the same manner that he does movies, as a visual and aural experience. He completely misses the point. Which isn't surprising given where he's coming from. Just wait another 30 years and games will be an excepted art form just as movies are today. Recall that when movies came out they were considered inferior to stage plays. As TV was considered gimmicky compared to radio dramas. It's just the old guard's reaction to a new medium.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Anybody play that one? How was it?
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Anyone who says "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" has never spent serious time playing Tetris.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Ebert may be onto something when he says that gaming is an inferior method of storytelling -- it may well be (depending on perspective). However, this isn't the whole picture behind Ebert's contraversial statements.
Ebert has been claiming that he doesn't consider video games an art form in the same way that he considers movies, books, music, or even comic books to be art forms. This and his storytelling statements are quite dissimiliar and should be treated as such. Nice try with the trollish title there.
-Turkey
I agree. While there's nothing artistic about Burnout 3, and there's nothing artistic about countless Diablo 2 runs, some games contain sweeping scenary, beautiful music, timeless storytelling, and wonderful character developement. Sure, those games that integrate all those factors are few and far between, but they're still there.
The problem isn't with gaming as an artistic medium like Ebert suggests, it's with almost all media made today. Nobody cares about artistic merit anymore...all people really care about is sales, including consumers...most people won't go see a movie if it's doing poorly at the box office, or won't listen/buy a CD unless it's already in the Billboard top 200. Sure there are a few of us who care, but the vast majority don't...and that's the real problem.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
As one of the poor unfortunates who has sat all the way through Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, I respectfully disagree on this point.
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I thought that Ebert said that "games are not art."
The author here is saying that games aren't the best medium to tell a story with... I agree, but that's not the same as saying games are not art. Games are art, regardless of how well they tell a story.
-manno
Ebert was mostly right. His only problem was in his over generalisation. There are indeed games that I would consider great works of art. And the fact is that 99.9% of games are complete shit. Maybe you can call them art, but only if you recognize they are bad. I've played quite a few games in my time. I've had joystick firmly in hand since the Atari 2600. There have been many games I've enjoyed over the years, but very few I can consider good works of art. In the past two years I can only name Katamari Damacy, and it doesn't even have a story. That's one out of thousands.
Ebert seemed to imply that no existing games were art, which is wrong. The correct statement is that most games are terrible art.
Disagree? Make a list of which games you would put in a museum and hang them on the wall for people to play hundreds of years from now. Divide by the number of games that exist. I rest my case.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
That's one of the problems though...how do you determine who's qualified to rate anything. I'd say 90% of the reviewers who work for print mags and 99% of online ones aren't qualified to rate games either. Just because you play games doesn't mean you are qualified to tell other people whether they are good or not. A reviewers job should be, ideally, to filter out the bad from the good for the people who dont' want to have to dig through all the garbage to find the good stuff. Unfortunately most reviewers just give glowing reviews of all the over marketed, over hyped garbage while completely ignoring the interesting titles out there. And don't bring up Katamari....that was a fluke. Go to one of the major game sites one day and look through the news and such for that day, and look at how many of those games are produced by a small/indie developer? Hell just look at the ratio of original titles to sequels...it's sickening. Yet these "critics" keep giving these lack luster games great ratings.
/. so I won't bother again here...please, don't bother me with replies on that either...it's off topic ;)
Back to my point... just because I've watched a few movies before, does that make me an credible film critic? Hell no... To be a good game reviewer you need to go out and play every game you can possibly find, even the ones you know are gonna suck. Then you write articles on the games that fall through the cracks, the ones that really do go beyond being just a game and are actually pieces of art. Madden 200X will never be a piece of art...so quit wasting our time reviewing it...they've got enough advertising already as it is! What makes a game art has been discussed numerous time on
Still at the end of the day, Ebert needs to point the finger at his own industry first... all the entertainment mediums are going to shit right now, and probably due to people being more concerned with hype and sales rather than artistic merit.
</rant>
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Grim Fandango had an excellent story and characters. Remove the puzzles and it would be a great interactive movie where the player felt like he was moving things along, and clicking on objects to hear the inner monologue of Manny Calavera's thoughts. But it's the puzzles that detract from the art. One definition of art is that it explores the human condition. That is why great movies like Casablanca or The Godfather are considered art. By some in the art world, any game that includes puzzles or other distractions from what makes the piece meaningful, will never be art.
There have already been art installations with computer generated projections and videos. The next step is to really make them interactive where the art responds to the people, or leads them to discoveries. But puzzles and gunfights in games will probably never be art.
If this is the case, then why make the comparison? I don't understand why you would take games and compare them to films when both of them have very different strengths and weaknesses -- and then have the arrogance apply a value judgment. It's kind of like comparing a movie and a campfire story and then try to say that a movie is better than a campfire story because has more authorial control than another? Totally lame. It all depends on who you ask.
This whole thing is totally silly. Wouldn't it be better trying to explore what games can do rather than sit around talk about how movies are a better art form?
You're thinking of "Touch of Evil".
He is right, videogames are not considered an art form by people, then again, neither was photography for its first 100~ or so years.
The problem to me is that Ebert is automatically dismissing games as an art form because they cannot tell the stories that the greatest novels and the greatest movies have in the way that books and movies do. I can agree that a game trying to be a movie is probably better off as a movie. However, games as an artistic and storytelling medium have the added dimension of being interactive, something that film and word cannot claim. As a result, a player can take an active role in the story, and likewise the story can attempt to make an active impression on the player by putting them in someone else's shoes.
Ebert is right that games have to give up a certain amount of control by being interactive... that the pacing and even the narrative itself is often left to the whims of the player, not the writer. But can't these differences be used as an advantage for games to tell unique stories that passive entertainment like film and literature could never aspire to? I think so.
The question of whether games are art or not is a BS argument. Games are art, interactive, auditory, visually, and tactile. Compare a game to a painting. Both involve composition, use of lighting, and the same techinical skill applied to the subject matter. Some is crap some isn't. No one claims that a Jackson Pollock painting isn't art because it lacks a coherent narative voice. Similarly, no one claims that modern interpretive dance fails to be art, because each dancer contributes their own interpretation of the underlying metaphors, and no two performances are exactly the same.
Games are art, but need to be judged on their own terms. Games must be judged by their tactile aspect, the actual physical game play. Game must secondarily be judged by their visual appeal and cohesion and also by their use of sound to help suspend disbelief and its relationship to game play. Games may be judged by the stories they tell, but the story is tertiary at best to the artform as a whole. A game's mechanics, the way the game plays, the balance between forces, is the primary art. And critics like Eberts just aren't accustomed to judging this form of artistry. They lack the technical familiarty with the subject matter to judge it. The same thing goes for critics of concert violinists, or abstract painters, without the proper context and familiarity you can't accurately judge the relative merits of the works beyond your subjective reaction.
Claiming a game isn't art because it lacks a cohesive narative voice, is no different from saying "a painting isn't art because it isn't a movie", or "a novel isn't art because it doesn't involve flashing lights and people prancing about in skintight pants". It is a new artform, and games like PacMan are obviously art. Beautiful in their simplicity, and evocative of an era. Centuries from now, people will realize some games are crap, and others pure works of beauty. Games are a very complex artform. They require new rules to judge.
But that's just my 2 credits worth..
Ebert's opinion is just his opinion, and his theory of art is his theory of art, which makes it just yet another one.
I like some of his commentaries and some of his reviews, but I disagree with him about as often as not. Still, he's free to have his own opinion and I'd guess he leaves everyone the same freedom.
If there was ever a game that I would call artistic, Katamari Damacy is it. THAT is, ultimately, what the future of games should be.
Well actually it is. The problem with modern people is that we are surrounded by art all the time. Virtually every product we buy has a design (by an artist, often many) on it. The cars we drive, the houses we live in, the white stripe underneath the word Coke. All of it, art.
For Roger Ebert to claim that Film is art and games are not is ludicrous. Film and television have a different artistic language than any prior artistic medium. Imagine the theater conniseur in 1924 going to a cinema and walking out saying "That was nice, but its not art!" Well its not theater!
Video games aren't movies. The artistic langauge is different. Most creators of TV, Film, painting, sculpture, and the rest would love the praise: "You made me feel like I was part of the action!" Well in a video game, that is a given. Do the artists behind the video game use this language to thrill or do they use it for more? Sure their is eye-candy video games, well there's eye candy movies. But they are ALL art.
Next a symphony conniseur is going to claim that heavy metal, industrial and particularly rap are not "music". Please, if your subjectivity of taste is that short sighted. Spare us and spare yourself from looking silly.
Spare me the 'there is no definition of art' cliches. But art does have a definition, and Ebert is using the wrong one. Ebert believes art is a passive 'greatness' that everyone else absorbs. Art is not the 'finished product' but the act of creating it; art is holding the mirror up to Nature.
The art of a statue is not the statue but the sculpting of it. The art of a symphony is not listening to song but the playing and composition of it. The art of literature is not the reading of the book but the writing of the book. We are not a civilization like the Far East or Middle East who conceptionalizes things with the mind. We apply the hand. How else would the gothic cathedrals or symphonies or paintings come about? Art is not a frozen eternal object, it is the fiery act that created it.
A great example would be Shakespeare. There is no 'final version' of a play of Shakespeare. The actors, the acting, the direction, the vision, all make the play different each time it is shown. Ebert, sitting in the audience, thinks art is defined by the perception of the audience. Rather, art is the doing.
Take the example further. The great poems of Humanity were only recently in a 'final form'. They have been sang, with parts added, parts deleted, all for centuries. The great books of Humanity were actually only recently in a 'final form'. They, too, have been written, re-written, with additions added and subtractions made. It is not the book that is the art but the scribbling of the pen. It is not the play that makes the art but the act of 'playing'. It is not the poem that makes the art but the act of singing/chanting/writing it.
Only in this context can video games be understood. Toys are to help children understand (and play) in the world just as art is to help adults understand (and play) in the world. While paintings and movies might be art to the eye, the symphony as art to the ear, it is video games that is art to the hand. Video games revolve around the use of the hand (and when video games refuse to with cutscenes or slideshows, we instinctively refuse to call them video games).
When you play a game (say Mario) and you fall into a hole, you laugh and try again. Ebert would look at that and think it was a bad story, as you fell down the hole. But the player knows that is not what keeps him playing. It is his control, his hand input, that defines and varies the electronic canvas in front of him (within certain game designed rules which the player tries to break anyway).
Ebert might call video games 'fun playing around' but not art. But what else is art but 'fun playing around'? Shakespeare had 'fun playing around' with his plays, that is why he was so good. Mozart had 'fun playing around' with is music. Dickens, Twain, and all the rest had 'fun playing around' with their literature. The reason why academics can never create art is because they never have 'fun playing around'. All great art exudes a sense of play because it was the play that made them.
There are many 'great books' that are sneered by academics because they are 'too enjoyable to read'. The same goes for movies (they hated Star Wars and only praised the boring wacky films). Video games are getting the academic sneer simply because they are FUN. Academics have brainwashed themselves and everyone else that art is not supposed to be fun but to be SERIOUS and that we all must be SERIOUS. And then they wonder why they can't understand why one of the most beloved Shakespeare characters is Falstaff.
Let them be the word pinching tyrants of joy that they are, I'll take Falstaff any day over Ebert. He, at least, knew how to play.
Yeah... I get that "If you've seen one game you've seen them all," vibe.
David Jaffe makes a few good points on whole are games art discussion.
Here's a couple of relevant quotes on The Sims:
Now this Ebert guy may know about story telling, but by his own admission he has no experience of the very thing that makes a game not a film. A linear narrative isn't even necessary in gaming, Ebert doesn't understand that and will never be able to give meaningful criticism unless he bothers to spend some time playing.
If you're going to let the game lead you around, like the example from the article, you're not experiencing art. To some point, the gamer is responsible for developing his own playstyle. A game as it sits on a store shelf is an incomplete set of materials. Both the developers and the gamer must be the 'artist'.
"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."
So undermining the authorial control leads to something not being a work of art? Are video game designers not 'artists' because they cede this control to the player?
Elitist asshole. Go masturbate intellectually more.
...
If I want to read a story, I'll read a book. If I want to watch a scripted sequence of explosions and dialogue, I'll watch a movie. If I want to see acting and dialogue, I'll go to the theatre. If I want to stare at scenery, I'll go to an art museum. If I want to stare at scenery from every angle, I'll go outside (or get one of those 3d/panorama quicktime thingies).
If I want to challenge my brain by stacking 4 square linked together, I'll go play Tetris.
I really wish the industry would get off its kick of trying to define "videogame art" in terms of other mediums. I've finally decided that until someone provides a definition of gameplay (or to some degree interactivity) as art, then I'll finally begin to believe games are art. Because that's the only thing they have that the other mediums don't.
In my opinion, this is also the growing pains problem that the industry and gamers are facing. Do we (the games) want them (the industry) to keep pumping out pretty games with little gameplay, or do we want something that pushes the gameplay envelope that may not have 3million polygon scenes complete with HDR on an HDTV 1280i screen?
Insert Sig Here
I for one typically don't play games for stories, but I understand that is the goal of many games.
I agree that games are sort of opposed to story telling. The more story telling the worse the gameplay.
There is a balance there. Or at least that is the best we can do right now.
But games can do something movies, books, etc.. can not. They can create stories. Especially in MMOGs. And of course there is a whole struggling genre of Dynamic Story telling in games.
Can games tell stories, yes. Can movies create stories, nope.
Now I've seen Everything
Ebert is simply being territorial. Blame him for being a film enthusiast -- it's like hearing an energetic sushi chef tell us that Japanese food is better than French cuisine.
One common point between viewing movies and playing video games is the "pleasure of encountering surprises". When we watch a movie, we may guess that A, B, C might happen, but in fact, X, Y, Z occur, and if the director is smart, we may feel gratified by the unpredictable twists, which is a sensation similar to, during a video gameplay, when we are suddenly attacked by a "surprise monster" which we engage with pleasure (or pain), but in the end are happy about the virtual engagement.
What is different is this: when watching a movie, we prefer to be "outwitted" by the filmmaker, whereas in video gameplaying, we prefer to overcome the artificial intelligence thrown at us, meaning, the pleasure of video gameplaying is in the notion (perhaps erroneous) that we have "beaten" the game designer -- and there lies the art of video game design, as we, the players, are "fooled" into believing that we have the authorial control.
Sun and Fun
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned that cloud game. If that ain't art, I don't know what is.
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
Yes, thanks. Heston rocks.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
"I just don't feel that his analysis of gaming (at least what I have read) shows him coming from an outsiders viewpoint."
Duh. This should be:
"I just feel that his analysis of gaming (at least what I have read) shows him coming from an outsiders viewpoint."
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Someone just HAD to bring this up after I finish a session of Mario and Luigi 2. The game, when played at its best, is like a dance - quick, but directed, every step the fulfillment of an intention. After a while, you're playing just to experience the sheer rhythm of the game - hit points be damned. I get a similar feeling just from watching Ikaruga being played. Games like that evoke a sense of intellectual nimbleness that is rarely seen or sought after in storytelling.
So in other words, I respect Mr. Ebert's opinion, but I think that if you're seeing a great game and not getting this kind of feeling off it, you're missing something.
78 comments about games being art and nobody has said a word about planescape torment?
Games like MGS and even Snatcher have some very interesting character development and plot twists, not to mention music and dialogue that pips much of what Hollywood has to offer today. The "codec" implementation alone is pure genius.. Other stellar titles, like Shadow of the Colossus and Grim Fandango demonstrate how much the industry has advanced since the days of Pong and Pacman. Those delusional/senile elitist psuedointellectuals like Ebert really get on my nerves. I mean, by contrast most paintings don't register with me at all, and I'd be hard pressed to label many films as "art".. The only difference of course is that people listen to critic arseholes like Ebert who think they know everything, yet haven't bothered to get seriously involved with games to begin with. Get lost you old tosh!
C'mon, people, he gave a thumb up to Daredevil.... He probably likes Bon Jovi too...
...video games are an "inherently inferior" storytelling medium. He writes, "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."
In other words: "the way video games tell a story is inferior, because they do it differently than the mediums that I am myself used to."
Ebert fails to do one thing: explain why authorial control is a requirement of a good story, and why player choices make a story inferior. In my opinion, player choices make games a *superior* storytelling medium, because it involves the player. Even a story that is fairly weak can feel like a very good story because it involves us, the people who are experiencing it. And when the story in a game is *actually* good (in a way its at least as good as in a good film or book) like in Gabriel Knight 1&2, then boy do they feel like brilliant stories!
As far as I am concerned, it is a proven fact that games can have excellent stories. Ebert just has not played them himself. If you dont believe me, get your hands on Gabriel Knight 1&2 and tell me thats not a good storyline.
No, my definition of academics is not people who do not have 'fun', it is people who do not 'play'. It is impossible to 'play' with the academic mindset. Of course academics 'riff' the greats. It is common for common people to tear down great people just to elevate themselves.
Here is a sample of Einstein quotes on academics:
"The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."
"Education is only a ladder to gather fruit from the tree of knowledge, not the fruit itself"
"I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn."
Mark Twain even said, "I've never let my school interfere with my education."
Shakespeare even wrote a play that revolved around the question, "What is the end of study?" Interesting enough, his answer to those academics (of that time) was to see life through women's eyes. The play ends with the 'thinking Biron' to be sent to the hospital for 6 months to help the sick and dying. If he does not make them 'laugh', then the woman would not marry him. It is a common theme for Shakespeare to mock ambition and intellectual narcissism. No wonder Jaques was left in the forest at the end of "As you like it"!
Academics have no sense of 'play'. In the same way, Ebert has no sense of 'play'. To Ebert, art is authority. It is the academic who perverts art into "authorities". This is why academics can never equal the greats. This is why our richest, most influential people are college drop-outs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Rush Limbaugh, among others.
Academics cannot become great because academics are 'risk averse'. This is why they seek tenure in a soft university womb instead of blazing the risks of the outside world like real men.
Instead of being 'serious all the time', academics need to take more risks instead of hiding behind a brick wall of 'theory'. I want to move to this Land of Theory where all these academics emerge from, then I could be always 'right'!
I think the article misses the point. I dont think Ebert said games arnt art because the stories need to be improved for it to get there I think he was saying games arnt art because the act of playing a game isnt artistic.
As an example the majority of games tell you a chunk of story which can often be brilliant. You then go in to the game play for a while and then it gives you another chunk of story. The story is fine but its told through movies and text, two mediums that are already recognised as art. The game itself wasnt anything to do with it. Even a game with such an intrinsic plot as Plane Scape Torment has its story line told nearly entirely through conversations and movie sequences. The actual gameplay doesnt really have a bearing despite how fun it can be to upgrade your character and such.
The best thing I can liken it to are those books where you choose an option and go to the page number it tells you. Saying a game is art would be like saying that the process of flipping through the book to the correct page was a form of art.
So I can fully understand why Ebert doesnt see games as art. The only art that is within them is typically in the form of previous mediums. You could argue that the game world and its textures and such is a form of art but really it exists for its functionality not its artistic merit. The moment you make an area purely for its art and once again youve no longer got a game youve got a 3D sculpture or 2D art work.
I would say Rez comes closest of all games to breaking this rule. Its music its levels both exist as an art work and at the same time as the games method for progression, but its still debateable.
That said ive swayed between thinking games are and are not art about 20 times tonight so I think its definately an area for discussion. I am more dissapointed at the articles in response than the idea that started it. A lot of people have responded by insulting Ebert, the article the other day insulted the magazine reviews, this article is better but again I would say it was missing the bigger question by just attacking an aspect of gaming.
If the movie version of DOOM is Art, then so is the game it was based on.
It's not much of a stretch to extrapolate from there.