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Game Devs on Ebert's Put-Downs
Gamsutra has a writeup of a recent Austin Game Developers meeting. Damion Schubert, Allen Varney, and Scott Jennings took the stage to discuss games as art and Roger Ebert's opinions. From the article: "McShaffry then asked the panel to consider whether Ebert was picking on youth culture in general, and assuming technology wasn't an issue, whether popular games like Grand Theft Auto would be played 500 years from now, like the works of Shakespeare are enjoyed today? Jennings didn't want to speculate that far into the future, but he admitted to still playing and liking the Final Fantasy games released for the Super Nintendo."
There's a fundamental difference between Shakespear and GTA: one was on paper, one is digital.
Five hundered years from now, we don't know what the technology will be like. Maybe they'll be calling "Quantum Computing" old and busted. Maybe they'll revert to Zip drives. Will the Playstation 128 be able to play Playstation 2 games? Will Sony even exist?
But there will always be paper.
Well, until we deforest the entire planet, but at that point I doubt playing video games from a half dozen generations back will be on our minds. So, while the concept may remain (assuming we don't have a Demolition Man-like future), the game will likely not be played except by the handful of "hardcore" hobbiests who procure working-condition units of the PS4. Don't rule out it being taught in game design classes, though.
Mario is an entire other matter.
would be played 500 years from now, like the works of Shakespeare are enjoyed today?
Are Shakespeare's works seriously "enjoyed" today? How many people who have to study his works today in school enjoy doing it vs. playing GTA? And what's the deal with the "500 year standard", it's circular and self-fulfilling. We read/view performances of Shakespeare 500 years later, because they're so great, as evidenced by how people still read/view it 500 years later! Go us!
How many people, as a fraction of the population, go to Shakespeare plays *purely* for the joy of seeing it, irrespective of the buzz behind them? How will that compare to the fraction who plays Rockstar games 500 years from now?
(And it's more like 400, but whatever.)
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
some companies have open sourced there games such as Id. also infocom interpreters are avialable. So Unless a company make a effort a either keeping it up to date with technology , releases code or has a cult following of fans that reverse engineers it, it will die
Why does there always have to be some stupid variation though?
The tetris released with the original gameboy is probably still the best version out there. Great music. Great gameplay. No silliness. The MS Entertainment pack version is also pretty good. Tetrisphere for the N64 is probably the furthest thing from the original that is still really good.
Tetris Worlds for the GBA is better than the gameboy version only because it is in color, which is nice, and because the cartridge doesn't stick out the bottom. The overhang just ruins the pocketability. It would have been better if they had just released a shrunken-cartridge, colorized version of the original. I really don't need multiple 'world' backgrounds.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Ebert misses a major point- Art can be bad. Art can be really, really bad. As long as we think that for Art to be "ART", it must be good, we aren't understanding wat Art actually is. All Art is interactive. Movies, paintings, plays, symphonies all require your attention and grant the depth of meaning and expression based on your experience of them- which happens in time, causes thought after the fact, asks questions, gives sensations- ALL art is interactive. With out you actively watching the movie and thinking about it (interacting with it) it is simply light flickering on a wall. Games, like any form of art, are capable of poorly executed attempts at expression, just as bad films and songs and paintings. When Ebert says that no game can compare to the "great" dramatists, he is by definition excluding any and all art that doesn't reach the pinnacle of it's respective form as 'not art.' On that I call bullshit. Art can be inept, poorly executed, clumsy, barely inspiring, derivitive etc. etc. But it does remain art nonetheless. Games are conjured out of the minds of their creators to be experienced by an audience- who hopefully will come away from the experience having been engaged, entertained, and challenged. That is enough for Art. Ebert is too quick to cling to an elitist idea of Art that considers the actual material to be the art, rather than the interaction bewtween the materila and an audience. I submit that Art is in fact a VERB and not a noun. Art is something that only occurs between a work and an audience. Otherwise it is just a bunch of atoms, photons or sound waves. Art is the tree falling in the woods with people there to hear it.
What percentage of literature produced today will still be read in 500 years? Not much, I'm guessing. And publishing sensation Dan Brown sure as hell isn't going to be - unless post-humans want to marvel at our primitiveness.
And, oh yeah, Shakespeare also had the little advantage of thousands of years of written tradition behind him - stories being told on paper, and oral epics before that. Generations of humans perfecting the art. No way could Shakespeare have innovated so much without that history: every writer learns by reading, copying, branching out on his own.
How long has videogaming been perfecting its art? Thirty years.
Finally, one huge but....TETRIS! Anyone who thinks that Tetris, the most perfect game of all time, is immortal. It isn't going anywhere. Gameboy Advanceolution 2500 is going to let us spin blocks with the power of thought, no question.