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."

Comments

Re:Have to agree the answer is No

[XenoRyet]

You can watch a movie based on Shakespear's works today. Same work in a different form. I suspect that will be the case with games, new forms, same ideas.

However, as to which game? Not GTA, not Final Fantasy. It'll be Tetris. That game will never go away, it's made the transition to every new platform that has come out since it's conception, and it will contiue to do so indefinitaly. Tetris' combination of simplicity and addictivness will give it staying power well into the time where GTA's game mechanic looks antiquated and silly.

Re:Gonna say "No"

[Ben Newman]

Actually you had to worry about that a lot. The First Folio was published after Shakespear's death by a group of his friends to help combat just that, and to cut down on the business of bad copies of his manuscripts being made. These things were great, imagine Hamlet re-written by the folks that make those howlingly bad subtitle for pirated chinese DVDs and you'll get the idea. Of course Will himself freely listed plots, characters and whole lines from his contemporaries, so who to say who would have benifited more from elizabethian copyright protection.

Ebert? What does he know about video games?

[Red Flayer]

Not to be crass, but Ebert can suck it.

He mentions that video games are typically just a waste of time; I would posit that movies are just as much a waste of time. It's like asking a classical music critic to judge whether or not a certain modern sculpture is art -- don't ask a movie critic about video games.

I've had plenty of "oh wow" moments in video games. I've also been affected emotionally in video games (which, I'm sure, was intended by the designers). I've also been stimulated to think critically about a topic by video games. All these things indicate that video games *can* be art.

Yes, there are artless videogames, just as there are artless movies and artless novels. There is also "bad" art out there, in every media. I believe that as video games continue to be developed, very many more of them will be intended as art pieces, and will succeed in being considered art.

/My 2 cents, at least as valid as Ebert's when discussing video games.

Also, keep in mind that the movie industry is losing $$ to the videogame industry -- video games are eating away at film's cultural mindshare. Ebert, as a part of that industry, has a professional interest in promoting movies over video games.