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."

Comments

Re:subject

[jchenx]

Does the game have to "say" something to be artistic? How about a book, or a movie, or a painting? There are lots of ways of communicating impact to the viewer. Movies and books mostly do it through things like dialogue, good storytelling, etc. Paintings employ something entirely different (brush strokes, style? I'm not an art history major, so I wouldn't know). What about photography? Modern art? Sculpture?

Games will employ a little bit of everything above, and then some. Some games, specifically RPGs, I consider artistic because of their storyline, dialogue, character development, etc., much the same way I consider many books/movies to be artistic. However some games like Tetris, I consider artistic just because of the effect it had on me. I wouldn't say it's the "fitting of blocks into lines" that did it, but somehow the gameplay and the addictiveness of something so simple, yet gave me so much joy over time ... I think that's art in some way.

I'm not a creative person, nor an good writer by any means, but I'm sure a decent one should be able to write about Tetris in such a way, and convey the essence of what it means to play it, to enjoy it, to non-gamers. I think that's what the game industry really needs. Our own Ebert.