Ebert Reclassifies Games as Sports

You may recall last year's spirited debate touched off by film critic Roger Ebert's assertion that games are not art. He's once again touching that nerve, this time stating that he was too loose with his words. He points out that 'a soup can' can be art; what he meant to say is that games cannot be 'high art'. Says Ebert: "How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in Myst, and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports." The critic goes on to discuss comments from Clive Barker from last year, a gent who took great exception to Ebert's view.

Comments

Flawed argument

[eln]

Stating that games cannot be high art, and backing up this assertion by giving examples of games that aren't (anecdotal evidence) is logically flawed.

He may be right that there are no games currently in existence that should be considered high art, but that does not preclude one from coming out in the future. There is nothing inherent to video games that would prevent this, especially given that what is and what is not "art" or "high art" is entirely subjective.

Re:Flawed argument

[illegalcortex]

People on both sides of the "argument" are engaging in a bit of a futile exercise. As you said, it's entirely subjective. Yet both are trying to prove the others' opinions to be wrong, when that goes against the very definition of opinion.

Re:Flawed argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, there is. Video games can be used to convey art (e.g., machinima), but by making the player into the artist, it ensures that it will never be art on its own. By giving the player control, a game can never be art.

A play through of the game might be, but the game itself can never be art.

Re:Flawed argument

[moderatorrater]

One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art. Since you can choose the ending, it's art just as much as someone slapping a happy ending on romeo and juliet is art. However, were he to encounter a game where you play as Romeo, and no matter what you try you and juliet both die, then is it not art? What if you were to have an expansion to that same game, and you were to play as one of the patriarchs of their respective families, and you find that the only way to save the lives is to make peace, but at the cost of your own? His assertions seem to say that art needs to teach, and to teach you can't have choice in the story. I disagree, I just think there needs to be consistency in the outcomes of the choices. By the way, he would make a great slashdot interview, don't you think?

Re:Flawed argument

[moderatorrater]

While you are partially correct, there are aspects that can be debated. The argument itself revolves around the definition of art which, while subjective, will often incorporate the same elements from one to another. The argument stems from Ebert's belief that we don't know what art is while gamers believe that he doesn't know enough about games and their potential.

So, while neither side will "win" the argument, we can learn something from the argument itself and gain greater insight as long as we're open to it.

Re:Flawed argument

[the.nourse.god]

And that goes to the very heart of what art really is. I may think that the Mona Lisa is an amateuristic piece of crap and Nights Into Dreams is the most brilliant art masterpiece of modern times. I may be wrong on both counts, but that doesn't negate the fact that either piece could be considered art.

Re:Flawed argument

[illegalcortex]

You can't be wrong. You can, however, be out of the consensus of popular opinion. Or the consensus of critical opinion. Etc.

Re:Flawed argument

[WrongMonkey]

It's interesting that he uses malleability as an argument against videogames being art. 90% of games are highly linear. Look at Mario: you either rescue the princess or you just stand there. Even take something like Deus Ex, which is praised for its non-linear story line. It still just boils down to three endings and there's not much difference between those endings, other that some text and maybe a different cut-scene.
Basically I'm saying that almost every game ever made follows the model that you're talking about, where the outcome is inevitable.

Re:Flawed argument

[Chris Burke]

So would a play which involved audience participation, and which was scripted such that according to said audience participation could result in one of several outcomes, then become a sport? I don't know if such a thing would offend the High Poobahs of theatre, but it sounds like a cool work of art to me.

I've never seen a video game that was -that- malleable. They only ever allow what the game authors put into the game that you could do. It was like when I was describing computer RPGs to my roomate, who is familiar with pen and paper RPGs but not CRPGs, and I was describing the bit in the NWN expansion where you get turned to stone by a surprise encounter with a medusa.

"How do they make sure you get to that point instead of running off somewhere else?" he asked, thinking like a game master whose players can ruin their plans.

"Uh, by making that the only thing in the area that you can interact with in any way" was the answer. If they don't give you the option to do something else, then you can't do anything else but stand there and not do what they want.

The fact is that games only offer the illusion of malleability to varying degrees. The ways in which the game designer both gives you choices and constrains the outcomes seems to me to be the very place where "art" can be created in a way unique to video games.

Re:Flawed argument

[Bobartig]

Your example involving Romeo is basically any RPG without multiple endings (and about a hundred other things). It doesn't really matter how you choose to play Diablo II, at the end, you've destroyed world stone and opened the gates to hell. Or something like that. The point is, a game doesn't have to have a malleable outcome.

What would be really nice would be to listen to a debate between Will Wright and this Ebert fellow.

Re:Flawed argument

[eln]

To me, art is about the emotions it evokes in the beholder. If a piece of work is capable of stirring strong emotions, it can probably be considered art. In video games, the entire experience of playing them can often stir up strong emotions, even if they are not the emotions intended by the creator.

A hallmark of much great art is that it can be appreciated on many different levels by many different people, often in ways the creator of the work never intended. A truly great game could very well do the same thing.

Like I said, it's arguable if any game up to the present has been able to do all of this, but to say it's impossible is, I think, fundamentally misunderstanding what art is.

Re:Flawed argument

[Megane]

However, were he to encounter a game where you play as Romeo, and no matter what you try you and juliet both die, then is it not art?

Hey, Aeris always dies in FF7! ART!

One might argue that modern RPGs full of cut scenes should be considered as art with a bit of sport as a diversion between the cut scenes. Even when there are choices that affect the outcome, such games still have a limited number of outcomes.

Re:Flawed argument

[Tirno]

One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art.

I guess that rules out jazz as art, along with any other music involving improvisation.

Re:Flawed argument

[Anonymous Coward]

If I took the Mona Lisa and crumpled it into a ball would it not be *different* art? Or is that 'sport' too?
Ebert is a silly old goat who refuses to acknowledge that he just might be wrong. Treat him as you'd treat any other silly old goat who doesn't know what he's talking about.

Re:Flawed argument

[Dun Malg]

One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art.

I guess that rules out jazz as art, along with any other music involving improvisation. Indeed. I believe you've hit upon the ultimate rejoinder to his ignorant assertion. But what do you expect? He's a freakin' film critic. In his mind, if it's not film, it's probably crap. He's a dunce.

Re:Flawed argument

[aichpvee]

I'll just continue to point to the dictionary as evidence that anyone who takes up the debate is wrong. The definition of "art" is so broad that it can encompass just about anything people make or do.

Re:Flawed argument

[illegalcortex]

Add to that the definition of "opinion."

Re:Flawed argument

[DreadPiratePizz]

Because then there would be no reason for it to be a videogame. If the outcome were determined, it might as well be a play or film. Ever wonder why videogames either default back to radio (metal gear solid codec), film (any game with cutscenes), or the stage (FFVII or half life 2) to advance the story? Because the medium of videogames can't do it.

The bottom line, the video game is never the optimal way to get across your artistic point, or a story. The only advantage videogames have over film or theatre is the immersion that controlling a character can create. But there are so many downsides. You can only interact physically with the world, thus most game stories are about physical conflcit. The best stories involve emotional conflict. Since there is no way now, or quite possibly ever, to interact with a game character in an emotionally maningful way, as AI like that is way beyond reach, games will either be devoid of emotional conflict, or will defer to other artforms to present it. It's this serious shortcomming that I think makes creating 'art' out of a videogame very difficult.

Re:Flawed argument

[aichpvee]

I don't think it's gotten bad enough for drastic measures like that.

Re:Flawed argument

[AgentPaper]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall reading something similar in one of the original Battlestar Galactica novelizations (the one about the big-ass laser on the ice planet - I forget the title). According to that novel, "Caprican tragedy" was a theatre form in which the actors would enact two endings, showing the results from changing a main character's pivotal choice at some other point in the play - to wit, what would happen if Romeo didn't kill himself before Juliet woke up, or if Jean Valjean simply took the Bishop's silver and ran.

Interesting idea, though I imagine it'd be a pain for the actors!

Re:Flawed argument

[neomunk]

I disagree. You seem to be implying that art must be a static form, unchanged by the observer, and I cannot agree with such a stipulation.

In fact, I think that several thousand years from now (assuming a social trajectory without massive direction shifts) people may be arguing that a simple flat static painting cannot possibly be considered 'art' because of the lack of full sensory immersion.

Even IF art NEED be a static form, many games are static forms. Play Doom again, the monsters will still be where they were 15 years ago. Many games get around this (to allow for dynamic experience) with pseudo-random number generators, yet still it's a static form within the boundaries of the generator.

Maybe you're saying that art is some singular experience that the artist is trying to convey. Again, I disagree. Humans, being (seemingly at least) analog machines, no two having the same state ever (an assumption, but accurate enough for this discussion) cannot possibly be brought to the same exact singular state by ANY sensory input. The closest you can really come is strongly evoking a mood or environment which suggests and makes obvious the state of mind the artist wishes to convey. I see no reason why that cannot be accomplished with an interactive (uni- or multi-)sensory experience.

I'll take this a step farther. What exactly about running through one of Escher's stairways would reduce a person's ability to understand it's point? In fact I truly believe that with the proper camera angles you could suggest the dimension spanning cubism even more strongly than could be possible with a static 2D print. Imagine running into Dali's "Corpus Hypercubus" in a game, but watching the tesseract unfold before your very eyes then refold with the man's spirit taken along, that would be art if done right.

Re:Flawed argument

[neomunk]

How do you interact emotionally with a painting or a film? The complete and utter LACK of ANY AI makes any connection (as you seem to be defining such a connection) impossible. The art EVOKES the emotional response through some sensory input (indeed each piece of art evokes mood differently, even if the difference is subtle) and there is nothing about a video game that cannot give you the same effect.

Re:Flawed argument

[Nazlfrag]

They exist to me already. It's a subjective thing anyway, appreciation of art. I see Tetris as high art. It has a transcendent beauty unparalleled by conventional art. Take Knuths stance on this topic of whether software is art or not - he says source code is art, and I agree.

Re:Flawed argument

[joystickgenie]

Will Wright is the wrong person to pick. There are many people in the industry that do not find what they do to be artistic, if my memory serve me correctly I believe the Will Write is one of those people and have made statements along those lines. If you want to pick some one from the industry to represent it in a debate, I would go with Ernest W. Adams

Re:Flawed argument

[russellh]

One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art.

I guess that rules out jazz as art, along with any other music involving improvisation.

In all seriousness, in jazz, the performance is the art more than the sheet music (if there would be any) or some other abstraction of the music. For games, the performance is what the player does in the game, not what the game developer does. Playing the game is the art, like the performances of chess grandmasters that are praised, analyzed, and fill books. The same might happen for video games one day, but is it high art? Maybe, but can there ever be a Mozart of game play? I don't think the comparison makes sense; maybe a Bruce Lee of game play - the pinball wizard. Will there be a Mozart of game creation? That, I think, is also unlikely. While there is an art to creating a game, it is mostly a practical art. What chance there is for high art in a game is usually squeezed out or crushed by everything else going on.

Re:Flawed argument

[cgenman]

Could Ebert be participating in a form of self-protection? Here is a man who has invested his life in the art of movie making... and here comes a form of cultural communication which he doesn't understand in the least.

He probably percieves movie making to be threatened more by the video game generation than any thing else he has seen in the past. This is probably the driving force behind his terribly flawed arguments. Games are the enemy (to him).

Re:Flawed argument

[Bo'Bob'O]

There are a huge number of theater productions, many of which indeed considered "high art" that rely heavily on the actors, or even the audience in the flow and outcome of the work. I think I'd agree with the GP, there may not be any right now, but there COULD be high art video games. After all, one of the important compontents of modern art is changing context, it might just not be a GOOD game, but it could very well be good art.

Re:Flawed argument

[lumimies]

Actually, these guys are trying to do just that -- create emotionally meaningful interaction with game characters, where the experience is designed by the author of the piece.

Re:Flawed argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that any choice the player has is dictated by the developer. It's not like you can just choose to do anything you want to.

Re:Flawed argument

[Anonymous Coward]

slapping a happy ending on romeo and juliet is art. umm... The whiny little punks both died at the end. I'd call that a happy ending. Definitely the Bard's weakest piece of work. Blech.

Re:Flawed argument

[Crazy Eight]

"Stating that games cannot be high art, and backing up this assertion by giving examples of games that aren't (anecdotal evidence) is logically flawed."

True but he didn't do that at all. He talked about what games are.

Re:Flawed argument

[mwvdlee]

Stating that games cannot be high art implies that one has a universally agreed upon definition of art by which to exclude games as a whole.

Since there is no consencus on the definition of art, it is just one man's opinion.

I've read many arguments why games cannot be considered art, but none of them valid.
- Games are interactivity. Plays are performed (interacted) by actors, does this mean that games can be art as long as you're only watching and somebody else is playing?
- Games have restrictions. Paint has to stick to a canvas, statues are static and movies can display the content from only a single angle. Are those not art either?

Besides, I wonder whether ancient paintwork we nowadays consider "art" were seen as such back when the painters were commissioned to make them. From what I've heard, people like Da Vinci and Rembrandt were considered no different from skilled carpenters in their respective times.

Re:Flawed argument

[rjhubs]

What if I traded the world stone for 100 soj's? Alright Diablo 2 humor is way too old now, I know... which reminds me, when is that third one going to come out..

Re:Flawed argument

[hey!]

If you frequent art installations, the idea that art cannot be interactive is obviously incorrect. Many modern artists defy the convention that art is something that sits on the other side of a velvet rope in a museum by inviting people to touch or manipulate their work.

In fact, I'd say interactivity on some level is what differentiates the fine arts from the practical arts, although there is some overlap. The shapes of the cams in an automobile engine have a certain aesthetic appeal, but since they aren't intended to be looked at they aren't fine art. The aerodynamics of the car body is clearly both practical and fine art.

Games are clearly art by this criterion. Excepting games with a didactic purpose, games are purely fine art, since they are created with the sole purpose of being experienced. However, the main artistic focus of the game is game play. Modern games clearly have a huge amount of incidental art in them, particularly musical and visual elements, but these are generally mediocre.

I would draw a parallel with animation. The earliest moving pictures were zeotrope cartoons of moving animals and such. As actual movies became popular, animated cartoons started to appear. The artwork in these early cartoons was very crude, just sufficient to act as a vehicle for a series of jokes. Gradually technical sophistication and production values, until animators started to extend the artistic dimensions of animation. I'm not just talking Fantasia, although that is a landmark as a self-consciously "artistic" piece. The Max Fleischer Superman cartoons really began to use composition and color to create a dramatic mood. Those cartoons were, if not exactly in the avant garde of filmmaking, at least strikingly parallel to it, like Orson Wells borrowing stylistic elements from the German Expressionist cinema of the 20s and 30s. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there can be no doubt that an animator like Miyazaki is an artist.

I'm not much of a gamer myself, but as an outside observer I'd guess games are still in the "Steamboat Willie" era of gaming -- where animation was in the late 1920s and early 30s. It is an era dominated by advancing technical refinement, which may be retarding artistic growth somewhat. Most of what is being produced today might be played by gamers of fifty years hence as a kind of mildly amusing curiosity. But as technical refinements are perceived to be delivering diminishing returns, we are absolutely certain to see a surge of artistic refinement as game producers look for a new source of competitive advantage.

What I'm predicting is that some time in the next few years, we are going to enter a golden age of game design.

Re:Flawed argument

[hey!]

I think you are on the mark, with one small caveat.

Art does not have to evoke an emotional response. Ebert is biased because he specializes in a narrative art form. Art can evoke a purely intellectual response. It can evoke other kinds of responses for which we have no name.

Abstract art evokes a response on a level for which I'm not sure there is a precise name: above the level of perception, but not exactly thought. A kind of perceptual kin to the body's sense of proprioception (positional awareness of the body), which organizes space.

Years ago I used to visit the MIT humanities library. MIT has a lot of art scattered around the campus, in many cases very badly situated, but there was a really interesting sculpture outside the library. It was a simple curved bronze strip, about a foot wide, eight or so feet tall and an inch thick, bolted into the floor. What was interesting about this sculpture is that unlike most of the art shoehorned into the campus, this piece was perfectly sited: it took a blank rectangular space of concrete and divided it into two curved sections. In the workshop, it was a curved strip of metal. In situ it was art, because if you paid attention it invited you to reorganize your perception of the surrounding space.

Art though it may be, you'd be very peculiar (even by MIT standards) to have an emotional reaction to it.

Re:Flawed argument

[ultranova]

One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art. Since you can choose the ending, it's art just as much as someone slapping a happy ending on romeo and juliet is art.

Which it would be; specifically, it would be a derived work. Would it be good art is another question. In any case, since Rome and Juliet is a theatrical play, and since it is impossible to make each performance exactly like any other, this particular argument is void - Romeo and Juliet is already a dynamic work.

His assertions seem to say that art needs to teach, and to teach you can't have choice in the story.

I wonder what Mona Lisa is supposed to teach, then - that smiling makes people wonder what you're up to ? or is he claiming it is not, in fact, art ? Or what about the statue of David ? I suppose it could be considered an anatomical lesson...

Anyway, his second assertion is flat-out wrong. Teaching usually involves having the student perform exercises and providing feedback on the results; the student certainly has choice over the outcome, and in fact the whole purpose of exercise is to learn what choices provide the best results.

Re:Flawed argument

[KatchooNJ]

By Ebert's logic, you could then add the Left Behind game as art because the outcome of the game is set. The good guys win and the bad guys lose. It is set in stone.

Damn... what a sucky game that must be... for several reasons. But at least Ebert might see it as art. ;-) heh

Re:Flawed argument

[FingerDemon]

I don't disagree, but the problem with that definition is how do you quantify it? Is it still art if only one person is moved? Does it have to be a majority? One person could just be unbalanced or have really bad taste. However, as an example, most people are at least somewhat moved by the sadness of Romeo and Juliet. Even if it isn't your kind of story, most people upon hearing it think it is sad. But there isn't any way to say, "It is artistic and I can prove it."

This seemed to me to be the fundamental paradox of any study of the philosophy of art or even the philosophy of truth for that matter. You can't really quantify what seems to be an obvious subjective truth. But if it is subjective, the whole thing can be called into question.

Still, no one really questions that some things are art and they are emotionally moving. Some artists even played with the whole notion of what constitutes art like the Dadaists. They would make art that would incite anger in the viewer because it was so different from normal notions of art. Its pretty interesting stuff to study, but at the end of the day there are no certain answers.

And that to me is where Ebert loses the argument. He is saying it is definitely not art. But he can't prove that either.

Re:Flawed argument

[SanityInAnarchy]

I've never seen a video game that was -that- malleable.

There are, but I'm not sure I've seen any that I'd call 'art'.

For example: Sim-type games. In these games, it really is the player being the artist.

Also: Multiplayer games. These have varying degrees of linearity, but I think Counter-Strike is what he was thinking of when he called games a 'sport', because it really is. In fact, you can be professionally sponsored, and paid to win Counter-Strike or Halo tournaments.

But it's difficult to get the sheer breadth of possible games out there without actually being a gamer. Even Halo -- play online, and it's a sport. Play campaign, and it can be a sport (if you're playing again, on Legendary, co-op but by yourself to make it harder), but it can also be a compelling story and as much a work of art as any movie.

There is another element here, though -- he would probably not see these truly artistic elements as being a property of the game. For example, a cinematic sequence is really a little movie in the middle of a game. But games can tell everything without leaving the mechanics of gameplay (like Half-Life), or use both those and cinematic sequences (like Halo).

But here's the essential problem -- he (and others) don't have the distinction between the mechanics of gameplay and the game itself. Gameplay is as much the game as the camera is the movie.

Which is to say: Usually, they are not. Every now and then you see a game that is pure gameplay, like Lugaru, or Geometry Wars, or classic arcade games. Every now and then you see a movie which is pure camera work, like 2001: A Space Oddessy. But usually, the pure-camera movie isn't presented as a movie, it's presented as a "demo" of some technological aspect of filmmaking or game design. In fact, we're much more likely to play the pure-gameplay game than watch the pure-camera movie, certainly more than once, because it can be fun to just play, but it's not really fun to just watch. You have to be watching something happen.

In fact, gameplay can do things a camera can't, yet. There's nothing like the purely visceral satisfaction of bludgeoning a Halo elite in the back of the head, or firing a rocket at some group of enemies (all clustered together nicely, or performing a perfectly-executed fatal combo in a fighting game, and feeling that solid vibration of the controller... All of these elements are under the control of the game developer, but the experience isn't complete unless you're the one doing it.

So, this is the common confusion -- parents walk in and see their kid playing Halo, and they're "just killing things". And maybe the kid is, but that's all the kid probably sees in most movies, too. When I play Halo, I'm not "just killing things", I'm saving the world, or I'm escaping from prison, or I'm negotiating the trade agreements and alliances that will govern Japan (or China) for the next hundred years. I'm living out a story. And it's a damned good story. Halo is good enough to make into a good movie, and with Peter Jackson still involved, it might be a very good movie.

There's also another point I'd like to drive home to Mr. Ebert: Games can do anything movies can. You could make a game which was pure cinematics, with zero interactivity, and people can play it on their PS3 or Xbox 360 hooked up to a high-def home theater system, invite 20 friends over, and they may as well be watching a movie -- WILL be watching a movie. Because you can control the amount of interactivity in a game, from zero to 100%. But you can't make a movie with any interactivity -- it's stuck at zero -- and there's no way you'll make a movie that has the viewer identifying as strongly with a character on the screen as they will with a role they are playing.

Okay.

[aarku]

Suppose first-person-shooters are sports. Sports are played in arenas and FPSs are played in designed levels. If architecture can be considered art, then the levels of First-Person-Shooter "sports" can be considered art as well. Since the levels of FPSs are an integral part of the sport, by extension the game as a whole is art.

Re:Okay.

[Eco-Mono]

Like Bioshock, for instance.

Re:Okay.

[moderatorrater]

Then he would reply that certain parts of the game may be art (textures, terrain, etc), but not the game as a whole. To extend your analogy, if we were to play tic tac toe on the mona lisa, the game wouldn't be art. The outcome might be, but the game of tic tac toe itself wouldn't.

I personally believe that he's wrong, but it's for more complex reasons dealing with what art is; at its core, that's what all the hubub is about, the lack of a definition of art.

Re:Okay.

[pezpunk]

or, another way to put it: the designs on the helmets don't make the NFL "art".

for the record, i am convinced some existing video games are great works of art, but pointing to great graphics or cutscenes is a dead-end argument. (these are just the helmets)

video games ascend when all the peices -- the art, the story, the mechanics, the interface, the potential actions offered and engaged in -- work towards the same compelling whole and remove the player from the chair he sits in, take him inside the game, and make him a real participant. when you ARE the architect of an epic civilization, or the lone hunted marine on a doomed space station, or a travel agent in the land of the dead, or spiky-haired mercenary, or mute colossus-killer.

honestly, i don't understand how a person can experience these things and NOT come out the other side with the same soul-warming appreciation that good art instills. it's just common sense to those who have.

who cares, who thinks he's an expert?

[frovingslosh]

You only need look at Ebert to realize that he understands even less about sports than he does about gaming.

Re:who cares, who thinks he's an expert?

[XxtraLarGe]

You only need look at Ebert to realize that he understands even less about sports than he does about gaming. Other things Ebert considers a sport:
Pie Eating
Watching Pr0n

Re:who cares, who thinks he's an expert?

[gnarlyhotep]

All you need to do is look at his corpus of work and realize he doesn't even have a full understanding of "high art" in film either. The guy has opined over the quality and worth of Russ Meyer moves, ffs (faster pussycat, kill kill! amongst others).

Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamers

[timster]

It's not surprising that Ebert would miss the point of games, as it seems that everybody else does. Whenever this discussion comes up, we'll get pages and pages that go on about the plot or characters or music or whatever, but this isn't the answer; these are mere accidents, non-game art that's attached to a game.

To speak of games as (high) art, we must explore the foundation of the form, and that isn't the plot or music or story, though a great story can be told in a game's context. The art in games is in the experience that they create for the player; the feeling of doing something or being something that you're really not. This isn't a traditional emotional experience that you might get from literature, but that doesn't mean its value is less. We have literature to make us sad or happy or lonely -- games are something different, and that's why this new form is such a treasure.

Play Planescape: Torment.

[RyanFenton]

Really. If you ever want a game to show you that an interactive experience can be as much art as any book, try that game. There's many other examples, across all other aspects of art, but games hold many forms of artistic content, and the addition of choice does not lessen that expression.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Play Planescape: Torment.

[Spy der Mann]

Or maybe just FFVI. The story is a work of art. And if the story is only ONE element of the game, :. the game is art.

And now for a counterexample:
Just because "oops I did it again" sang by britney is both music and a load of crap, that doesn't mean all music is a load of crap, does it?

Re:Play Planescape: Torment.

[RyanFenton]

Certainly agreed there - FFVI is one of those games I have to replay every few years just for the timeless combination of unequaled music, profoundly artistic story, and sharpened gameplay mechanics perfected from the previous 5 games. I didn't want to mention it under the circumstances, as every time I find I mention it, a FF6 vs. FF7 argument ensues where I can't help but be partisan and mention my relative disgust for FF7 compared to what came before - my taste only though, and I can still find charming aspects to FF7 despite those tastes.

I'd also mention the Ultima series, particularly Ultima 7 and the Underworlds, though that was in an age where gameplay development only dreamed of the luxury of content (even in mere word count) compared to other media. Like a Moog synthesiser, I consider the result art in terms of pure economy of basic constructed content - such wonderful expression in such limited, carefully shaped environments.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Play Planescape: Torment.

[xtieburn]

'And if the story is only ONE element of the game, :. the game is art'

Playing catch is not art. Even when your playing it with a copy of a midsummer night's dream, on a scenic embankment, at sunset, while listening to mozart, and wearing the latest fashion range from the worlds best designers.

Re:Play Planescape: Torment.

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably would be. Context is everything, remember?

So by his definition...

[the_skywise]

Choose your own adventure books are not, nor ever will be, "High art" because the "player" controls the outcome.

Re:So by his definition...

[WrongMonkey]

Are you trying to disprove his point or support it? Of course a choose your own adventure book cannot be "High Art". Try to imagine a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure of Anna Karenina. There is a mountain of metaphor and plot that would lost if at the end you choose not to jump in front of the train.

Re:So by his definition...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dammit!!!! I was so close to the end. Thanks!

Re:So by his definition...

[Who235]

What? She jumps in front of a train at the end!

Thanks, man. I was only 50 pages away from the end of the book.

Re:So by his definition...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, please. We're not talking about converting regular novels to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, as that would obviously return the absurd. We're talking about new art in the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre, which would obviously approach metaphor and story structure in a different way. And yes, there is a great potential for "high art" there. Anyone who says otherwise is bereft of imagination.

The same is true of video games.

Re:So by his definition...

[LKM]

Choose your own adventure books are not, nor ever will be, "High art" because the "player" controls the outcome.

No, they don't. They may choose from a number of predefined outcomes, but in the end, the outcomes are controlled by the writer.

Re:So by his definition...

[rolfwind]

You can smell a BS argument always coming because the very act of trying to define "high art" invites someone to come along and prove you wrong or for the younger generation to ignore you and flock to it. It's not even a debate worth having.

The only thing that generally seems to define what is art and what isn't is that it seems to always be a man-made somehow (not always). I think this attachment of a human ego as a creator/author/manipulator of the piece is important distinction -- you don't see too many things of nature pushed as "art." But beyond that, it's who you can convince to open their pursestrings to that "art" and for how much.

I think the only debate worth having, once a genre for that piece of art is defined, is whether that piece is to be considered at the epitome of that genre or not. This is at least somewhat productive at you are providing a service to people who do not want to sort for the gems among the countless baubles themselves.

Ebert should recognize he is in this game himself in regards to movies, and that genre was once contested as to whether it is truly an art form (long ago). Once he recognizes that, he'll begin to see how untenable his position in regards to games ultimately is.

Re:So by his definition...

[realityfighter]

you don't see too many things of nature pushed as "art."

Natural objects and their shapes are HUGE in the art world. Other than that, I agree with you.

Art is something that moves you emotionally. It doesn't have to be complex - a truth most young artists take years to understand - and it doesn't have to lead you to a personal revelation or change your life or endear millions of fans. It just has to move you. I think, even though many of us won't admit it - that we've all been moved by video games at one time or another. So that's it. End of debate.

Or, if you prefer, lets define Art as something that can be evaluated for quality. If there is quality, then there can be excellence, and where there is excellence, there is High Art. Maybe games have not achieved perfect excellence yet, but if we can agree that Ocarina of Time is better than most other games, then there is the potential for excellence. (Actually, we don't need to agree! The argument itself proves that quality can be seen and evaluated; those stupid Top Ten lists are proof that Art in Games exists!) So that's it. End of debate.

Honestly, its difficult to believe that saying, "x will never be Art" is any different than saying, "a woman will never be President." Both are absurd.

Lazy Art?

[jythie]

Ebert's argument often seems to come down to 'any time the artist has to interact with the subject instead of 100% dictating the experience, it is lesser'.

The problem with 'games as art' is that tree plot lines are much harder to write then linear ones. But there are artists out there who can do it,... I think some of the backlash from people like Ebert is he represents artists who can not do this and are thus feel threatened.

Re:Lazy Art?

[meringuoid]

Ebert's argument often seems to come down to 'any time the artist has to interact with the subject instead of 100% dictating the experience, it is lesser'.

Then is a videogame more like a performance? Much of the traditional folklore of every culture was preserved by bards and storytellers. These people would tell their tales, and would expand parts and gloss over others to suit their audience, gauging their reaction as they went through the story. Yet certainly their performance is a work of art, never quite the same twice but certainly there is a core routine, and a repertoire of common variations around it that the bard will use as the circumstances of the performance require.

You'll see it also in contemporary performances. Watch several shows by the same comedian - say, Bill Hicks or perhaps Eddie Izzard, someone who tends to revisit themes. You'll see the same joke, the same routine performed in different times and places. Certainly the joke is a work of art which that comedian has created and polished during his career. But each performance of it will be different, because the comedian will react to his audience and adjust what he does accordingly. Watch enough shows and you'll come to recognise the extras the comedian bolts on to the joke if he has time or if he thinks a longer build-up will make the audience appreciate the punchline more. Or watch rock performances, and see how each time they'll put together a different setlist dependent on the type of show, where they are on the bill, whether they're pushing a new album, and whether the crowd have started throwing bottles at them.

There are plenty of artforms which are interactive. I think the chief difference is that the typical videogame is one-to-one - it's only your input that determines how the game unfolds - while a performance would be an artist responding to the aggregate reaction of a large audience. But I don't think that's enough to disqualify games as an artform.

Re:Lazy Art?

[Chosen Reject]

The real problem with "games as art" is that we even have this argument.

First off, the term art is not well defined. It basically boils down to "Art is what I consider art" or "Art is what the majority consider art" or "Art is what the critics consider art." If we had a precise definition of art then it would be easy to decide. But if that were possible, it would have happened a long time ago.

Second, I don't see why people even want video games to be considered art. You don't hear people complaining that other types of games are art. Where are all the Monopoly players getting upset that no one considers it an art. Where are the Scrabble players, the Candy Land players or even the Chess or Checkers players at? Probably playing their games and enjoying them for what they are: games. It's not like having a video game fall into the category of art makes that game more enjoyable.

I'm going to explore the three definitions of art given above.

1) "Art is what I call art" -- If so, then call it art and we have no need for this discussion.
2) "Art is what the majority call art" -- I realize there are lots of different people on the slashdot with lots of differing opinions, but if we use this definition it sure seems bizarre that we have one article where a lot of people spell doom for Nintendo for ignoring the "hardcore" and going after the mainstream and then we have this one where people are declaring that games should be considered art by the majority.
3) "Art is what the critics consider art" -- taking this definition, then it's only a matter of finding a critic who can be respected and who calls games art. I think we have Molyneaux, Meier, Miyamoto, and many others who can be game critics and call games art.

Re:Lazy Art?

[Irish_Samurai]

Where are the Scrabble players, the Candy Land players or even the Chess or Checkers players at? That would be a game, not games. That is the same as asking where are the Baldur's Gate players, the Super Mario players or even the Command and Conquer or the Pac-Man players at?

Re:Lazy Art?

[Chosen Reject]

I gave specific examples, but had I used more general terms, such as board games, card games, etc., it doesn't change the points I made.

Re:Lazy Art?

[jythie]

While true you do not hear boardgame players wanting their thing to be 'art', you DO hear other creative mediums trying to get recognition.. such as film, comics, books (back in the day), etc.

I think the big thing is... people who are being creative and consider themselves artistic want their particular mode of expression treated with respect like other modes. So it is less the players and more the creators that really feel this.

Re:Lazy Art?

[jythie]

Exelent example... I will have to remember the idea of games as preformance art.

Unfortunately, it is also an possible example of why games would have a hard time being considered 'high art'. Folklore, performance art, etc, are generally considered 'low art' since they tend to be 'pessent oriented' rather then aristocratic in origin.

Re:Lazy Art?

[Half a dent]

Personally I believe that a well crafted game could one day succeed as a piece of "art".

Look at a painting for example, it is 2D and shows one thing only from the perspective of the artist. Ebert would presumably argue this is art. OK I can agree with him.

Now look at sculpture, it is 3D and shows what the artist wants from different views. Still art? I think so.

Finally look at games, they are 3 dimensional in the sense that they can be approached from different angles and perspectives much the same as a work of art. The "experience" of the viewer or gamer is crafted by the artist, the degree of interactivity does not define whether it is art for me personally.

As to whether any games currently in existence are art, I would say probably not but then I do not feel that Ebert's field is art either in the strictest sense. Both games and movies are predominently entertainment, he is just arguing for his team (movies) over the competition (games).

I prefer Kojima's approach.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Games are not art.

Games are more like an art gallery. The story is art, the music is art, the graphics are art...

But the game is the package that they all come together in.

Re:I prefer Kojima's approach.

[Spy der Mann]

Games are more like an art gallery. The story is art, the music is art, the graphics are art...

But the game is the package that they all come together in.

Then by Kokima's definition, cinema is not art. However... cinema is widely considered the 7th art.

Re:I prefer Kojima's approach.

[flymolo]

I think a game is art; the same way a collage is art. You can't artistically combine art and not get art.
So the creation of a game is an artistic process that results in ART.

But the playing of a game may well be a sport.

Re:I prefer Kojima's approach.

[Bobartig]

Mixed media? That can still be art.

Ever seen a musical? It's got lighting, singing, dancing, acting, scenery, costumes... all art by themselves, and they combine into.. .. wait for it.... art!

There's all sorts of art projects and installations that involve technology and mixed media. There's interactive art that is experienced in different ways, and that experience/interpretation is considered an important element of that art. Games are no different. Ebert is just using an arbitrarily narrow definition of art that would necessarily exclude a lot of things that are already established as art.

This is exactly the same as music critics who argued that jazz wasn't music. Today, that notion is considered absurd. It will take time, probably enough for dinosaurs like Ebert to die off, but eventually games will attain the recognition they've deserved for quite some time.

Art is like beauty

[Trojan35]

completely in the eye of the beholder.

Definition of Art

[Shifty Jim]

I think I a lot of people lash out because they fail to understand what Ebert defines at "high art" or "great art." While I respect Mr. Ebert and regularly read and enjoy his critiques on various movies, I'm not in total agreement with him on this point. But, that doesn't not change the fact that he's being attack by people who do not totally understand his argument.

From the Article:

Barker: "I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written 'Romeo and Juliet' as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn't taken the damn poison. If only he'd have gotten there quicker."

Ebert: He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would "Romeo and Juliet" have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. "King Lear" was also subjected to rewrites; it's such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare's or Barker's, is superior, deeper, more moving, more "artistic"?

Barker: "We should be stretching the imaginations of our players and ourselves. Let's invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art."

Ebert: If you can go through "every emotional journey available," doesn't that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time, I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what?

That said, let me confess I enjoy entertainments, but I think it important to know what they are. I like the circus as much as the ballet. I like crime novels. (I just finished an advance copy of Henry Kisor's Cache of Corpses, about GPS geo-caching gamesters and a macabre murder conspiracy. Couldn't put it down.) And I like horror stories, where Edgar Allen Poe in particular represents art. I think I know what Stan Brakhage meant when he said Poe invented the cinema, lacking only film.

I treasure escapism in the movies. I tirelessly quote Pauline Kael: The movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have no reason to go. I admired "Spiderman II," "Superman," and many of the "Star Wars," Indiana Jones, James Bond and Harry Potter films. The idea, I think, is to value what is good at whatever level you find it. "Spiderman II" is one of the great comic superhero movies but it is not great art.

Re:Definition of Art

[eddy]

I know enough to know that Ebert doesn't get to take ownership of the expressions "art", "high art", "great art" with his definitions. Why can't he make up a couple of words instead, and say that games can't be those?

Mod parent up

[Chess Piece Face]

I agree - Ebert has chosen to focus on the activity portion of games and ignore the environment completely. Making a game involves everything required to make a film PLUS the gameplay. You could take 2001: A Space Odyssey, break it down into cutscenes, and add interactive tasks (spacecraft flight, etc.) in between. Would it cease to be high art?

Re:Mod parent up

[magical_mystery_meat]

I would argue yes, because you've taken the determinism out of the narrative. There's no singular vision there anymore. It's "ok, here are some scenes, now you go screw around and feel like you've accomplished something for a little while."

If games aren't art...

[Twintop]

...where does Mario Paint fit in?!

Re:If games aren't art...

[DavidV]

...where does Mario Paint fit in?! It doesn't fit anywhere and it never will.

Re:Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamer

[QuantumG]

That's right. For example, most online FPS games make me feel lame and inadequate most the time and then, when someone's connection dies or they have to go feed their cat and I finally manage to kill someone, it aides my ability to delude myself into thinking I might be getting better.

Missing the point

[pifactorial]

One could certainly make "high art" in the form of a video game. If they weren't interested in making any money.

Video games are made for a market. A market looking for action and entertainment, not a foray into the depths of the human experience. Games don't even try to be high art, and I don't think they should. Perhaps, like a soup can, they'd be better classified as pop art.

Re:Missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

People said the same thing about film. Which, to me, is just proof that High Art Games are not just inevitable, but also destined to be popular one day.

Re:Missing the point

[|/|/|||]

A market looking for action and entertainment, not a foray into the depths of the human experience. Games don't even try to be high art, and I don't think they should.

Hmm. I'm going to disagree with you there. Maybe "art games" wouldn't be blockbusters, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be made. Would you say the same thing about movies? Should directors making art movies switch to making summer blockbuster style crap? No thanks.

Sometimes I want to check my brain at the door and just blast some baddies, but why wouldn't I also want to have a mind bending and thought provoking interactive experience? Just because most games don't offer that yet doesn't mean it isn't desirable... even without accompanying gunplay.

Games != sports

[Anonymous Coward]

Sports and multiplayer video games maybe, but what about single player RPGs? If they're sports too, then what about paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons?

Who are the jocks going to pester now?

The fact is... there are sports video games, but they are just that, sports video games. To lump ALL video games together as "a sport" is ludicrous.

Leave it too a movie buff to categorize video games...

He's got a point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, movies can't be high art because I've seen YouTube and its just a bunch of drunk teenagers and kittens falling asleep. Furthermore, painting can't be high art because its just a bunch of kindergarteners spreading color on paper with their fingers. I've seen both of these, and it outweighs any other knowledge I lack.

Re:He's got a point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, he references Myst, so he's obviously on top of the contemporary gaming scene.

people like pinball games for the ART work in them

[Joe The Dragon]

as well as the game part.

Re:Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamer

[spun]

Games, like other art forms, follow the characteristics laid out in Aristotle's Poetics. Specifically, games raise and lower dramatic tension by posing and answering questions. Ebert misunderstands the basis of art. It is as if I were to say that paintings and theater both can't be art, because their characteristics are so different. Yet paintings too ask and answer questions. We even talk about tension and motion in paintings. We say the eye is drawn this way or that. Why? Because the painting poses a question with it's structure that makes you want to look here as opposed to there. I think dramatic tension is a key component of art. But then, looked at that way, sports are art too, because they raise and lower dramatic tension the same way.

Interactivity and Art

[RamblinLonghorn]

"What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it. How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in "Myst," and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports."

For someone who reviews countless action movie sequels and buddy cop movies, he sure has a poor grasp of how most great works of art are rare "diamonds in the rough." He has listed 2 (?) genres, FPS and point and click adventures. He has never seen the level of detail Bioware put into the characters for their many games. He has never experienced the emotional story of a FF6. He has never tried to see a dynamic artificial world created by the likes of Civilization.

I think Barker is wrong in calling Ebert prejudiced towards games. I think he's just ignorant towards them.

Re:Interactivity and Art

[Anonymous Coward]

He has never seen the level of detail Bioware put into the characters for their many games. So you're saying the game involves art? I don't think he's ever disputed that. A can of soup can have a picture of art on it. Doesn't make the can itself art.

He has never experienced the emotional story of a FF6. Isn't there a debate about whether the Final Fantasy series even count as games since you really only play battles, and the story always unfolds the same way? In any case, the story may be art, but it doesn't make the game art. The only game in Final Fantasy are the battles, and they're not art.

He has never tried to see a dynamic artificial world created by the likes of Civilization. Already mentioned, creating the world may be art, but simply setting up the rules and simulation that the world is created in is not art.

What everyone is saying is that games can contain art and that the way someone plays a game might be art. This is true.

Ultimately, the game is not art. It never can be, in the same way that the paints and the canvas are never art but the final painting can be.

Re:Interactivity and Art

[enderjsv]

First, I still don't understand why the "game" portion of a game cannot be considered art. Even if you take Ebert's particularly narrow definition of what art is, that art requires authorial control, I'd still be able to classify a game as art. Art can be the culmination of other art forms. Your only claim to your statement that a game like ff6 is not art is, obviously, because of the game play elements. So in your mind, the "battles", as you state it, are not art. I assume you make this assumption for the same reason as Mr. Ebert, that a battle does not contain authorial control. Well, doesn't it? In a battle, aren't the game designers the ones who created the game play? While you have to interact with it, you're still constricted to the type of movements that the designers laid out for you, or allowed you to discover in a previous scenario. While it may be interactive, it's still very much influenced by the type of experience the game developers wanted you to have. Why it may not be the same exact experience for every player, it is most likely very similar. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that there is indeed quite a bit of authorial control in game play. Game play is designed to invoke an emotional response, same as the music, scenery or story that accompanies it. There is a certain amount of artistic quality to game play that, when combined with "classic" artworks, can create a rich artistic experience that I believe can be classified as great art.

Re:Interactivity and Art

[enderjsv]

Oops! My above remark was meant to be a reply to "Re:Interactivity and Art" posted by Anonymous Coward. Sorry.

Re:Interactivity and Art

[UbuntuDupe]

Kinda late to jump in, saw today's story linking this...

I couldn't agree with you more. No painting as ever given me the sadness (seeing the cataclysm) or joy (finding out that Locke is still alive), or tormented my sleep (*dreaming* that Locke is still alive), the way FF6 did. And that was constrained by having to run on a 16-bit platform! If that makes me a Philistine, I don't want to have taste.

Games aren't art, Games aren't sports

[EEBaum]

Games are games. Why do people have such a hard time with this?

Re:Games aren't art, Games aren't sports

[voltheir]

how did this get modded up? {games} and {art} aren't mutually exclusive, and neither are {games} and {sports}. Some games are sports (e.g. warcraft III, rise of nations). Some games are art (e.g. final fantasy). and some games just plain old suck (second life).

That sounds like

[Aexia]

However, were he to encounter a game where you play as Romeo, and no matter what you try you and juliet both die, then is it not art?

Planescape Torment. No matter what choices you make, no matter how good or evil you play, you can't escape your fate.

Re:That sounds like

[The One and Only]

Missile Command. You can't escape your fate, and that makes it all the more ghoulish. Defcon. You can at best change the magnitude of the global nuclear holocaust, but you can't avert it. Both of these are poignant and, dare I say, artistic games.

Re:That sounds like

[Crazy Eight]

Then there's that old classic tic-tac-toe where you're always a hero -- tragic or victorious.

Re:That sounds like

[KBKarma]

I would hasten to add Darwinia to that list. There are very few games out there like Darwinia. The music and sound effects alone make it stand head-and-shoulders above most other games. Even the premise is incredible (WARNING! SPOILERS!). An artificial race, in its realisation of the existance of its god, try to contact him, and instead receive virii (devils?), but are saved by the actions of the god they worship. If you think about Darwinia in those terms, then the game completely changes. Instead of a hacker or a simple user, you become a messiah to these people, sent by their god to deliver them from evil. I've actually never thought about it that way. Wow.

Re:That sounds like

[The One and Only]

I wasn't making an exhaustive list, just mentioning two in which the eventual outcome is the same no matter what you do. (Defcon and Darwinia are made by the same people, incidentally.) Another game I have always considered artistic is tranquility.

Who cares?

[voltheir]

He's not even an authoritative source on movies; why would anyone take anything he says seriously about art, sports, or games?

Duchamp and Fountain

[ShaggyIan]

Every time I read arguments like this, the first thing to mind is Fountain . Note: voted the most influential artwork of the 20th century.

If a urinal is the most influential piece of art in a century, do we really care about "high art" anymore?

I have this recollection of a man standing in front of something really stupid and screaming "ART!!!" at it. I don't remember what it was from (I'm sure someone will tell me), but it reinforces the point that "artists" will insist everything is art, just because they made it.

Re:Duchamp and Fountain

[AgentPaper]

Personally, I think it's amusing how we contort ourselves into rhetorical knots trying to describe an object as a work of art, when in all likelihood the "artist" knows damned well it's not art, nor did he/she put any work into it, and is just having a fabulous laugh at the critics' and the public's expense. People who claim a urinal tilted on its side is "curvaceous, vitreous and partially reflective" and "represents the imposition of the artist's will on the resulting work of art" are either pretentious gits or completely delusional.

If someone relieves their bowels in Central Park, is that art? Some art critics would say that it is - it challenges perceptions, it can be interpreted on many levels, and it provokes thought and criticism. However, there comes a point when art, regardless of what medium it comes in, has to justify its classification as art, and at some point, the art critic must face up to the fact that this "work of art" is, in fact, a turd. It's not "a self-contained palette of hues and textures" or "a defiant act of humanity against the sterile modern world,"* it's either vandalism or public indecency. Meanwhile, plenty of better art ("better" in the sense that it has aesthetic value in addition to the the points previously mentioned) exists all around us, and yes, in video games as well.

Ebert, and the vast majority of art critics, wouldn't know art if it bit them, and that goes for ALL the arts, including cinema and interactive entertainment.

* ...and I can't believe I actually said that about a turd. Perhaps I should look for a career in art criticism?

Re:Duchamp and Fountain

[Chris Burke]

Heh, I remember watching a show that was basically about stupid modern art, and I remember being increasingly incensed with what people were willing to shell out loads of money for. The most egregious one in my mind was the little old lady who paid ten thousand dollars for a pile of red, blue, and silver foil-wrapped Hershey's Kisses. That's all it was, a big pile of kisses dumped in a corner. Ten large. Wow.

But the thing that turned it around for me was when they showed the young modern artist who had successfully sold a shoe polish tin filled to the brim with his own feces for several grand. And after thinking about that little old lady trying to justify the deep meaning behind the pile of hershey's kisses and how she had to spend $10k on it instead of going to CostCo and spending $20 on her own kisses to pile in the corner... it clicked.

A shoe polish tin filled with shit is not art. The act of getting someone to pay you thousands of dollars for your shit in a tin is a stinging criticism of the modern art world, the sycophants who desperately pretend to understand it in order to seem cultured, and is a magnificent piece of "high" art.

Re:Duchamp and Fountain

[hemorex]

Merda l'Artiste is proof that "high" art is shit. When the hell did "high" and "crap" become synonyms?

One Word:

[feepness]

Infocom.

I nearly wept in at least two of their games.

Re:One Word:

[nomadic]

I nearly wept in at least two of their games.

Ok, let me think, let me think...

Planetfall? And Trinity?

Re:One Word:

[feepness]

Planetfall and A Mind Forever Voyaging.

Trinity as well come to think of it. Also Zork III at the very end. I don't think I've enjoyed any media as much.

Re:One Word:

[nomadic]

Infocom games were amazing; it would be great if they released the old games again, but Activision (the current IP owner) hasn't shown any signs lately of doing so. I emailed them a while ago asking them about rereleasing them, but didn't get a response. I can't have been the only one to try that, and I'm wondering just how many people have to ask for it before they actually think about releasing them again.

So anybody reading this, feel free to shoot them off an email...

Re:One Word:

[Chemical Serenity]

You can play some online!

Right here, in fact.

And absolutely, singing the Ballad of the Star-crossed Miner to Floyd as he died, that was emotionally intense. Of course, I was something like 12 at the time so hormones had their say.

I also greatly enjoyed Planescape: Torment. It's a work of art in its own way, in my opinion (less so about the graphics and interface, more so for the experience).

I think Ebert's out to lunch on this topic.

Change vs. experience

[Chess Piece Face]

"If you change it, you become the artist."

How many games can you actually change the outcome of? Using Romeo and Juliet as an example only shows that he doesn't understand how games work - that if the play were made a game he thinks it would have a different ending or multiple possible endings.

I've played through GTA:San Andreas several times and the narrative always starts with CJ coming home and ends with Tenpenny driving off an overpass. What happens in between has some flexibility, sure. But there is no way to damage the narrative.

Flag boy

[namekuseijin]

Hollywood is scared of the games industry eating their lunch, which undoubtly will occur in the coming years. They put a high respected puppet to deride games as not being art by taking lame examples of games as art. As if most of Hollywood's output is art!

Here's a quick list for what Ebert should have "played" instead to get a grip:
* A Mind Forever Voyaging, by Steve Meretzky from Infocom
* Shadow of the Colossus, by Sony
* Savoir-Faire, by Emily Short
* The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, by Nintendo
* Deus Ex, by Ion Storm
* Anchorhead, by Mike Gentry
* Super Metroid, by Nintendo
* Spider and Web, by Andrew Plotkin
* Half-Life, by Valve
* Metal Gear Solid, by Konami

and so on...

Interactive art is here to stay! The original author of a work of art does not mean his audience to sit there passively reading/watching the plot unfold, but to activelly participate and change the outcome in ways he could not see. We're still not quite there, but eventually this goal will be reached...

Re:Flag boy

[DreadPiratePizz]

keep in mind, I enjoyed all the games you listed. But to include them in a list of "high art" is a bit ridiculous.

Metal Gear Solid- Could be included, but driven almost entirely by cutscenes and codec conversations, with intermittent periods of interactivity. Dangerously close to watching a movie.

Half Life- Equivilant to an action movie with no characters, and all run and gun action. The sequel adds one deminsional characters. Hardly a good story.

Super Metroid- The opposite of metal gear solid. Pretty much all game and no story.

Deus Ex- Full of clichés, ridiculous bugs and scenarios that instantly break immersion. The choices you make at the end can have serious moral consequences, but this is never explored in the game. Your character is emotionless, and the NPCs one dimentional.

etc etc etc. These are great games, because they are fun. The best videogame stories pale in comparison to the best film stories. How could one make Casablanca the game? You can't... because the story is about internal conflict, something you can't control in a videogame. Citizen Kane the video game? Catcher in the rye for wii? Other artforms can capture the human spirit in ways videogames can't. And the video games that do, do it by defering to these artforms (film, radio, theatre), usually through non interactive cutscenes.

The more a game becomes high art, the less of a game it becomes.

Re:Flag boy

[bogjobber]

Uh...Ebert is many things (most of them bad IMHO) but a Hollywood puppet is definitely not one of them.

Re:Flag boy

[namekuseijin]

First, like I said "We're still not quite there" in terms of true interactive storytelling.

We need some true AI, not just for better NPCs than the manually scripted of today but for a host of other goals.

We need NPCs with motives, goals, thirst for knowledge and power and awareness of what is going on in that simulated world and how they can act upon it in a way to benefit them. AI is needed too for the so-called drama managers who should build the plot accordingly to the player's actions. As well as for a narrator that can report in exciting manners what is going on in that world (able to narrate events in a range of literary styles in the case of IF, or to choose appropriate camera angles, perspective and order in which to present events in a 3D game.)

That said:

"But to include them in a list of 'high art' is a bit ridiculous."

As I said, we're not quite there yet. But high/fine art is really just a snotty term to define a range of things that go from Shakespeare popular plays from his days, Mozart's popular operas, Buster Keaton's popular silent short movies and urinols in an art gallery. In the end, anything can be "high art", as far as there is interest in it. I told some chap bellow to bury some cartridges of SMB1 and behold as they are treated as high art by critics in the future puzzled by the sheer ingenuity of this early interactive art example.

"Super Metroid- The opposite of metal gear solid. Pretty much all game and no story."

Games with little story generally go towards providing the player with great freedom in exploring a large area, with a single goal in mind (in this case, capturing the last metroid).

And what a game. So much to do, so many places to explore, so many clever puzzles! And, most of all, what a moody setting! There's you, alone in an alien world full of danger and puzzles in the form of finding out which suit powerup helps you into unlocking the ingenious multibranched level layouts.

Play with lights off.

"The best videogame stories pale in comparison to the best film stories."

Upon concluding the first Metal Gear Solid for PS1, I thought to myself: "Holy crap! It's been ages since I've watched anything coming from Hollywood of this scope." I remain true: the twisted story, top-notch narration, razor-sharp dialogues and voice acting, the soundtrack... there seemed to draw straight from Hollywood's best in the genre. There were some slippery spots here and there in which the drama sounded to be gearing towards the corny side, but the sheer scope of the thing far outweighted it...

Hollywood OTOH seems to have been adopting the plain-stupid-score-oriented-videogame approach, releasing flicks shock-full of action and explosions and almost no story or with corny dialogue.

Besides, not sure you've played those interactive-fiction works I've listed. They seem to be doing far better into putting someone in some character's shoes than anything else out there and some do not feel like games at all. Try Photopia, by Adam Cadre or Galatea, by Emily Short...

Re:Flag boy

[DreadPiratePizz]

Upon concluding the first Metal Gear Solid for PS1, I thought to myself: "Holy crap! It's been ages since I've watched anything coming from Hollywood of this scope." I remain true: the twisted story, top-notch narration, razor-sharp dialogues and voice acting, the soundtrack... there seemed to draw straight from Hollywood's best in the genre. There were some slippery spots here and there in which the drama sounded to be gearing towards the corny side, but the sheer scope of the thing far outweighted it...

Everything you described there comes from the cinematics. It's film. The more a game becomes high art, the less of a GAME it becomes. The non-interactive elements take over.

Re:Flag boy

[namekuseijin]

"Everything you described there comes from the cinematics. It's film."

The moody setting doesn't come from the cinematics, it comes from the feeling of attachment to the main character and the knowledge that any false movement and you're toast. It comes from interactivity with the simulated world. I remember vividly such varied interactive moments that are about as startling as the cinematic presentations: trying to hit a hitman (hitwoman) and feeling you're too "nervous" so that you should find a way to stop the shaking; hiding into a cardboard box for the first time; hiding away behind walls waiting for guards for the first time; smoking getting you out of some laser troubles (it can be beneficial to your health after all:); I could go on... these are not shown to you via cinematics: you experience them first hand, by your own will to interact with that fictional world...

"The more a game becomes high art, the less of a GAME it becomes. The non-interactive elements take over."

I don't think that'll hold true forever. It's true that today games employ Hollywood models or embrace literary narratives to impress their critics. Once true A.I. comes, though, a true interactive storytelling artistic medium will be born, in which there is an active story-aware AI agent mediating between the author's original ideas and plot and the "player"'s intentions. A plot-adapting and generating agent, that is.

Re:Flag boy

[lumimies]

Deus Ex- Full of clichés, ridiculous bugs and scenarios that instantly break immersion. The choices you make at the end can have serious moral consequences, but this is never explored in the game. Your character is emotionless, and the NPCs one dimentional.

Actually, I think Deus Ex had a lot of potential and intent for being so-called high art. The final choice is, of course, meaningless, as it is not reflected in any way in the game. There is, however, one part of this game that truly reached out to me. It's quite possible most players didn't experience this, mostly due to bad design (or, I should say, insufficiently good design).

My recollection of details is a bit fuzzy, but basically, there is a part, in the airplane, you're talking to the man, and Anna Navarre comes in and asks you to execute him. For me, the moral outrage was so great, that I tried to kill Anna Navarre. If you know video games at all, you know that would never be possible, to kill a main character at random. And in fact, it was impossible. She's insanely tough, and when she dies she detonates and kills you. I had to utilize a save before that part, and plant explosives along the corridor where she comes in, and that killed her. But the game let me do it, and it actually mattered to the story.

I've played a lot of games of various types over the years, but it's this moment that really stays with me. I actually felt the internal conflict, until I couldn't push it away anymore, and acted even though I knew it was futile to even try.

What is a game?

[grumbel]

What happens if my games allows only two interactions, 'previous page' and 'next page' and while doing so it is showing some writing of Shakespeare? Is Shakespeare displayed on a TV (in text form) less art then printed on paper? Is there even a difference? Now, true, most games allow some more interaction then 'previous/next page', but many are really not that far away. Many games don't have much freedom, the story they present is predefined and linear, the only real difference is that the 'next page' trigger is a little harder to reach, hidden in some piece of action sequence or NPC dialog or whatever, that however doesn't really change the story they tell. A game simply can express the same stuff as a movie or a book, since when the interaction is striped down, its really almost the same thing.

However, there is a worthy point to discuss left: When a game gets closer to a movie by using cutscenes, it can be art like a movie. And a game that relies heavily on text dialog can get very close to a book and so be art like a book. But what about the actual gameplay itself? Most games that evoke emotions do so by using non-interactive cutscenes, not gameplay. Can a game evoke emotions in via gameplay itself? I think the answer would be 'yes', but there are only very few games around that ever tried that, let alone succeeded at it in the same way a non-interactive book, movie or cutscene can.

Re:What is a game?

[namekuseijin]

"What happens if my games allows only two interactions, 'previous page' and 'next page' and while doing so it is showing some writing of Shakespeare?"

Then it's not a game. But thanks for remembering Shakespeare: his plays were mere popular entertainment in his days. Now they are high-art.

That's it: bury a copy of Super Mario Bros. for a few centuries and unfold as critics in the future bow to its superior intelectual challenges as an early interactive art example...

Re:What is a game?

[Anonymous Coward]

Queen: Playwrights teach us nothing about love. They make it pretty; they make it comical; or they make it lust. They cannot make it true.

Viola: Oh, but they can! I mean, Your Majesty, they-- they do not, they have... not, but I believe there is one who can.

Wessex: My Lady Viola is young in the world; Your Majesty is wise in it. Nature and truth are the very enemies of playacting. I'll wager my fortune.

Queen: I thought you were here because you had none.
Well, no one will take your wager, it seems.

Will: Fifty pounds!

Queen: Fifty pounds ? A very worthy sum on a very worthy question.

Can a play show us the very truth and nature of love ? I bear witness to the wager, and will be the judge of it as occasion arises.

I have seen nothing to settle it yet.

Re:What is a game?

[halycon404]

Lots of games evoke emotions via gameplay itself. For instance, anyone who played Ninja Gaiden on Xbox jumped up and down several times in absolute joy once finally beating the very first boss in the game after getting thier asses handed to them 20-30 times in a row. Who hasn't went on a rapid fire killing spree in a multiplayer fps match and thought "I'm the man!"? Or the other end of the spectrum, and died 5-6 times in a row and been angery or upset? Games evoke emotion, and the emotions games evoke are often more powerful than any book or movie because you are the person doing it. The life of the protaganist is directly in your hands, something books and movies cannot do. I read alot of books, no other medium but books engage you in thought about 'life the universe and everything' as you go over the material presented. Movies are good for instant gratification, rarely do I walk out of a movie thinking about what went on in them beyond "that was pretty cool". And games do a good job of bridging those two mediums, while throwing a few other oddball mediums into the mix.

Re:What is a game?

[grumbel]

### Lots of games evoke emotions via gameplay itself.

True, but the set of emotions that they invoke is quite a different one then a movie can do. Joy and frustration are easily accomplished in gameplay and can get more powerful then anything you get out of a book or movie, but have you ever grieved because your game character died? Normally you just hit "Retry" and continue as usual.

### The life of the protaganist is directly in your hands, something books and movies cannot do.

Right, but that actually doesn't evoke emotions, since savegames, continues and all that stuff make your character invulnerable, there is no final death, you just retry once more. What evokes the emotion isn't the character, but your success or failure in the game.

Re:What is a game?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Can a game evoke emotions in via gameplay itself?

Not the gameplay, but the game world and story, without having to resort to a cutscene.

For example: Even games with cutscenes often rely on the gameplay to give the cutscene more impact. But there are games with great story, and no cutscenes -- take Half-Life. All kinds of things happen in the game world, but the player is usually in full control of themselves.

I think one question is how much can be evoked from the interactivity. Certainly, there are some basic things that movies lack -- something truly visceral about bludgeoning someone in the back in Halo, or shivving a guard to death in Riddick (and then hiding the body). But most of the deeper things that happen in a game are either cutscenes or scripted sequences (in which the player is in full control).

There may be exceptions, but I think that's really enough to make them art -- and potentially a much richer art form than movies can be, at least until we get a truly holographic cinema.

hmm

[Vexorian]

"You art cannot be as good as ma art!"

Games are a contest.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with it being a sport? It's not like sports are a second-class citizen, and calling it art will not change anything.

Creation of Art vs Use of Art

[NeilRyan]

I like and respect Roger Ebert quite a bit, but here he's confusing the creation of art with how art is used.

He's judging a (potential) work of art by how it's used, rather than by what goes into its creation.

A game may or may not possibly be a work of art - I don't know.

But by Mr. Ebert's own yardstick (the use of the product), nothing hanging in any Museum is a work of art either.

All people do with the things displayed in Museums is to walk and look at them. How artistic that?

Ah, well ...

Re:Creation of Art vs Use of Art

[magical_mystery_meat]

The difference between art and craft is in the intent of creation. If 50 people come together to create something that does nothing more than express a shared thought, that's art. If those same 50 people create something that is intended to sell a million copies and make them all rich, it's not art. Even the most creative parts of the effort are just craft when there's no honest emotion behind them.

I know, artists need to make a living too, but a true artist will practice their art regardless of any monetary reward. How many of you have a "crazy" aunt that paints or a cousin that plays guitar in a band that writes original material? Those are artists.

It's not a perfect definition, but it's the only one I've been able to figure out.

Painting is not art

[trolltalk.com]

"How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in Myst, and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports."

How do I know this? How many paintings have I looked at? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of paintings. They tend to involve (1) strokes and colors in many variations and plotlines, (2) subjects and lighting, and (3) artist control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with video games.

Both arguments are BS, except that, unlike Ebert, mine was crap by intent.

I give him two thumbs down. Or one finger up, if you want to be artsy-fartsy.

Art or High art? Set a definition first.

[Irish_Samurai]

OK, to begin my argument I am going to set forward two definitions that the semantics can be debated evenly upon.

Art

Fine Art. Yes, I know he said 'High Art', but there was no such definition so I used the next best thing I could find.

Looking at the two definitions, Ebert's statements seem a little soft. The first bullet point for 'Art' seems to support video games of at least qualifying for consideration inside its ranks. Using the first two bullet points for 'Fine Art', the incredibly controversial Super Columbine Massacre RPG can easily be debated as a form of Fine Art. Have fun arguing over that one.

Bullet points three and four under 'Fine Art' seem to support Ebert's assertion. 'Fine Art' is not functional, and to be judged by the theories of art. It also asserts a hard definition for the forms worthy of this definition (painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, music). My initial issue with this is the 'theories' part. Theories are built upon to create new theories using new information gathered from the application of the older theories. Is there a cut off point for the validity of a theory in this case? What are the criteria used to establish applicable 'thoery' in this sense? What was the criteria used to establish writing as able to qualify as 'Fine Art' when at one point all that existed was verbal story telling? Ebert compares games with Shakespeare, but according to this definition - that doesn't quite qualify as 'Fine Art' either. Once again, I realize he said 'High Art', but 'Fine Art' and "High Art' are used interchangeably by many.

Bullet point 5 of 'Fine Art' seems to remove everything Ebert has ever reviewed from the definition of 'Fine Art', making him wholly unqualified to define what is and isn't able to attain the categorization. I don't know, maybe Ebert has reviewed a movie that wasn't created for commercial purposes - but I highly doubt it. Even if he has, his references to Shakespeare's writings and Andy Warhol's paintings fail as these were commercial efforts.

Take it one step further, Andy Warhol's paintings were created in his famous studio the Factory. Andy used capitalisms methodologies as a method of delivering his vision. The soup cans weren't art - the ability to create them so efficiently and have people THINK THEY WERE ART was the art. It was a pretty impressive social statement that established him as a great artist, and thereby allowing the definition of 'Fine Art' to be applied to his works. This completely undermines every single one of Ebert's assertions by allowing work to be defined as 'Fine Art' after the fact if the creator can somehow establish their greatness AT ANY POINT IN THEIR WORKS EXISTENCE.

Hell, Van Gogh, and his work, was considered nothing until he DIED - thereby eliminating access to anything that wasn't already created. By this logic, and it has been applied by academics and the plebeians alike, almost ANYTHING can become 'Fine Art'.

Fundamentally, I see this mans statement as a great example of how large the generation gap really is between the Boomers and X on. The Boomers fight to keep their definitions relevant and superior instead of recognizing the disruptive cultural technologies created of the past two decades and embracing the possibilities they enable.

Games not art?

[regular_gonzalez]

Someone needs to get this man a copy of Planescape: Torment stat!

Depends on the game.

[MythMoth]

Probably most games are not art in the normal sense. But there are some. I challenge Ebert to play "For a change" and emerge convinced that it's nor art.

Obviously a film reviewer, albeit a superlative one, is not the best person to make the call, not being aware of the breath of the genre. Not every film is Transformers, not every video game is Doom.

Re:Depends on the game.

[MythMoth]

Actually, having read TFA, it emerges that he said "Video games". So I kind of agree - I've never played one that I considered to be art.

Re:Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamer

[dootbran]

I'm completely with you on the first paragraph, I just don't think the underlying game ever becomes art. I just don't see how a set of rules and a victory condition can evoke emotion and be considered art. Think about Chess, great game but not art and playing the game using pieces that are art doesn't change that.

Sports are games

[dootbran]

The reason why they have such a problem with it is because they can't get the relationship right. Ebert got it backwards. They both involve rules and a victory condition, sports are just a subset of games that involve some athleticism.

Ebert is grossly mistaken....

[mark-t]

When he states that the player is actually in control to the same degree as in sports.

In fact, the appearance that the player is actually appearing to affect anything at all is just an example of masterful illusion at work. Ideally, the programmers design a game in such a way that it _appears_ that the player's actions and choices are in control, and for all intents and purposes they can be considered to be, but in reality, the programmer determines what will and what will not happen in a game. In actuality, the CPU is doing nothing more than shoving data around memory and performing mathematical operations on the data. But _EVERYTHING_ that happens in a game is something that the designer put there, whether deliberately, or inadvertently (such as a bug).

Ha!

[morari]

Have you looked at a list of films that he's given kudos to? This guy generally doesn't know shit.

Re:Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamer

[RTofPA]

Well, actually, everyone getst he point of games (or should): to have fun and entertain, just like Romeo and Juliet, or the Odessey, or Star Wars. Yet al three of these are art, and, I would say, high art. Anything can be art, such as taking a screenshot of a vista in TES4:Oblivion. The "high" part comes in arranging the pieces of the work in a way that conveys a deeper meaning. Making it allegorical, if you will, but allegories that are consistent to convey a meaning. For instance, Star Wars conveys a deeper, subsurface allegory for the battle between good and evil, and how evil takes root in our lives, and hence contains "high" art. In video games, this can be present in the story line/gameplay as well. I can't really think of any off the top of my head, but they can and do exist, even though only rarely, and I think we will see more and more of them as the genre develops. (Bioshock, for instance, looks promising.)

Sculpture is not art!

[nten]

Because I can choose what perspective to view it from. The creator of a game has put thought into each ending and game style a player might use, and each should not only be fun, but convey a message tailored to that player. I'm a bit extropian in tilt, so I saw Deus Ex in a transhumanist way and chose to merge with the machine. A neoluddite (not meant as a derogative) might get an entirely different message, but it was, no less, intended by the creator.

What needs to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree very much with his assertation that high art cannot be malleable by the user. Any art major will tell you art by its very nature is malleable by interpretation - and video games are EXACTLY that. You interpret a storyline or what visual evidence you have seen so far in the game, and draw conclusions and epiphanies of meaning from your own personal interpretation.

Take for example impressionism, impressionism uses purposeful blurring effects, and emphasis on reflections to create an image that is defined - but also malleable by the user to be what they want to see - a face may be blurred, allowing a distinct character - but one left to the viewer to finish off and fill in the details that might remind them of their similar looking uncle or something. That's how it grabs people - that's why it's so popular and powerful - because it is malleable to interpretation.

So unless Ebert's idea of "high art" is exclusive of everything post neo-classicism I think he's full of shit - the last few hundred years of art have been about not just telling a story (as in classicism/romanticism/neo-classicism), but telling a story the viewer defines (as in impressionism, modernism, post-modernism, etc).

So now the question is, are gamers really interpreting their world as they define? Or are they more constricted than say, a viewer of a Renoir, by the simple possibilities pre-defined by the game designers as possible endings and variations on story? I say that this is what makes some games art, even high art - the ability for a user to define their world from a meaningful, complex, even beautiful world of choices that can create some sense of epiphany (even a nebulous one we can't put into words) allows some games to become art. For a gamer example, see games like Deus Ex Machina, or Metal Gear Solid II: Sons of Liberty, or Final Fantasy VI, VII, even VIII to some lesser extent, as well as Chrono-Trigger. These games all have user defined interpretations of storylines that are not static, but can be conclusive only through interpretation of those events that the designers did not lay out for the gamer. I mean to say that yes, there are sub-quests, alternate endings, and these help to allow a user a personal interpretation of their experience with the 'art', but there is also missing information which, just like the blur effects in impressionist paintings, force users to fill in those unsaid parts of the story they chose - and That is what makes it real art, instead of just a story with multiple endings. Real art IS malleable - otherwise you may as well just take a fucking picture you high-nosed, unintellectual ponce (referring to Ebert).

Stop kicking us out of the Salon de Paris - we're art damn it.

arguing about art is like arguing about genre

[bigbigbison]

Arguing if games are art is like arguing if Star Wars is a western. No matter what people have made up their minds and no one will change them regardless of how persuasive the argument. And, in the end, it doesn't really matter since they are terms that only matter if you want them to matter.

I don't care if something is art or not. I don't care if Star Wars is a Western or not. All I care about is if I like them and find them worthwhile or not. The terms you apply to them won't change that.

Re:arguing about art is like arguing about genre

[Anonymous Coward]

Arguing if games are art is like arguing if Star Wars is a western.

Given where it takes place, isn't Star Wars more like a cross between a Northern and a Western?

I dare him to play...

[ghostunit]

I dare this guy to play Final Fantasy VI and Silent Hill 2 and tell me that games cannot be art.

Old people. It's almost as if their perspective of the world freezes at 40 or something. I wonder if this will happen to me too.

Re:I dare him to play...

[Anonymous Coward]

Final fantasy is D&D interspersed with movies. Cheesy, terrible movies for children in Japan and emotionally stunted nerds in the West.

Fact: Games Movies

[KIFulgore]

Ok, so Ebert wants to get into logical discussions about games vs. films as art?

Here ya go:
Much in the same way that C++ is a superset of C, video games, properly understood, are a superset of the more limited, and therefore by definition inferior, medium of film. Any game can simply be a start menu and a 2-hour cutscene (i.e., a movie). To say that games can or cannot do or be any particular thing, Ebert, doesn't show that you're prejudiced against games, only that you're totally ignorant of the possibilities of the medium.

QED.

Re:Fact: Games Movies

[KIFulgore]

So... that title should've read "Fact: Games > Movies". Self-owned.

Most people don't seem to get it

[Blublu]

I'm sure someone has said this here before, but it's very simple. A painting can be art. Not even Roger Ebert would disagree with that, right? But the act of looking at a painting is not art. Music can be art. The act of listening to music is not art. Movies can be art. The act of watching a movie is not art. Games can be art. The act of playing a game is not art.

There. Get it now?

Re:Most people don't seem to get it

[Crazy Eight]

Since yours is the first highly modded post in this discussion that doesn't seem like bullshit to me I'll interject my question here: Why is everyone so hell bent on calling video games art?

Re:Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamer

[namekuseijin]

"the feeling of doing something or being something that you're really not."

simstim

though certainly not art.

disappointing

[Jormundgard]

Most of his responses are pretty ad hominem and snarky. And he really doesn't make much of an effort to define what he means by art, and whether his meaning is consistent with the general public or artistic community.

I don't know if he's right, but if he's taking the time to write that article and we're taking the time to read it, I expected a little bit more.

In other words...

[MMaestro]

Art is only considered to be art if its static. And The Thinker is considered to be art, yet no one can come to an inevitable conclusion that everyone is satisfied with.

Life rule: Always ignore critics and snobs

[Scrameustache]

He may be right that there are no games currently in existence that should be considered high art, but that does not preclude one from coming out in the future. flOw is art (a product of human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind;).

He might not call it high art, but that's because high art is by definition not consumed by the masses, its appreciation is an affectation of the higher classes.

Re:Life rule: Always ignore critics and snobs

[usrusr]

It's not that important who is consuming.

But in using the word "consuming" you pointed your finger right at the flaw of his arguments: all he talked about was the act of _consuming_ a video game (playing it), which is certainly not an act of art. Just as little as staring at pieces of high art in an exposition is an act of art. He seems to give a little mention to the interactivity of games, but that's also not an argument against video games as art, since big parts of the last decades were dominated by the idea of "interactive art". Maybe he didn't like that either.

Re:Life rule: Always ignore critics and snobs

[Scrameustache]

It's not that important who is consuming.

But in using the word "consuming" you pointed your finger right at the flaw of his arguments Thanks for noticing. I'll be here all week : )
But seriously, it's a clear case of "old man doesn't like new fangled contraptions, film at 11"

What I don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is why a film critic (by definition someone that's already NOT GOOD ENOUGH to create himself) is criticizing a medium he doesn't understand or have any experience in. Second, why should anyone care? It's not like he's even a good movie critic.

I nearly cried when Ico's credits were playing

[Scrameustache]

Ebert: If you can go through "every emotional journey available," doesn't that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time, I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what? Dear Mr. Ebert,
The world has passed you by, say hello to the old men who were decrying the depravity of the waltz on your way to the special hell reserved for snobs and creationists.

This title is a bit sensationalistic

[Reddragon220]

If you read the article Ebert essentially claims that

"Games may not be Shakespeare quite yet, but I have the prejudice that they never will be." The point of the article was to explore exactly what defines the limits and role of art in modern culture. If anything, Ebert's argument categorizes videogames as 'low-art'.
If you can all remember back to art history, low-art is usually that of the masses, essentially anything that isn't high-culture. However, these works often turn out to be of the greatest importance to historians since it essentially shows an unabashed view of a cultures interests.

Games = paint and canvas

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

In this analogy, the Game itself is not the art, but the medium. The sequence of actions you perform within a game may be art. In the same sense that the rumble in the jungle might be considered art, but boxing in its self cannot be.

Applying this argument to movies...

[bwcbwc]

...shows it's false. If you take away the story from a movie, you're left with a collection of dailies with no editing. The art of the movie is in the application of all the technical aspects of creating the images and sounds combined with the scripting and editing that merge these into a coherent (or at least cohessive) work. Similarly, the key of making art out of a game involves the combination of the technical aspects with a vision of the story (or stories) it tells via it's various plot lines. I also take issue with the idea in another thread that to be art, the plot threads of a game must be mutually consistent. Perhaps there IS a way out for Romeo and Juliet, but it has to involve a level of sacrifice that makes the player realize what is lost. Maybe they have to burn Capua to the ground and spend the remainder of their lives as fugitives in order to distract their families enough to get away. Or maybe the emphasis of the story could shift completely away from the tragedy and morph into something like "The Taming of the Shrew". This even raises the possibility that some plotlines of a game could rise to the level of high art, while others fall back to melodrama. But even high art is rarely flawless. Given that an RPG contains all of the elements that make up a movie, and then some, I don't see how Ebert can go around claiming that no game can ever rise to the level of high art. Unless he is also saying that no movie can ever achieve that level either. Imagine that instead of a movie, there was an RPG of "Casablanca" (or pick your favorite), and the main game flow followed the exact plotline and points of view of the movie during the game. Would the game be any less of a work of art than the movie? And what if all of the potential plotlines of the game were similarly satisfying, both emotionally and intellectually? Wouldn't that actually be a greater achievement than the movie that actually exists?

Re:Applying this argument to movies...

[stony3k]

I think he's trying to say that 'high art' is basically a reflection of the artists mindset (at that point in time). Hence Romeo and Juliet gives us an insight about Shakespeare which is separate from the story itself. This insight can be derived from analyzing Shakespeare's handling of difference situations throughout his plays.

Since games is far more participative and depend on the player to interpret them, we don't get as much a sense of the artist's mindset as that of the gamer. Since the artist's message is diluted, he claims that games are not 'high art'.

I agree with him to a certain extent, since most games do not give the gamer any insight into the artist's mind(s). But there are definitely games which even while being non-linear and participative, convey a strong 'impression' of what the artist wants you to feel (an example would be System Shock).

So I think I understand where he is coming from, but I feel he just needs to look at the right games - just as he needs to look at the right movies (most movies aren't high art, either by his definition).

Non-interactive cut scenes...

[bwcbwc]

I'm glad you said that "most games" only evoke emotion through cutscenes.

I think just about every player was inspired to emotion by their first interaction with the Norbert character in Nashkel in Baldur's Gate. In most cases Norbert probably didn't survive the experience, despite the fact that he never did anything to threaten the player. He really was that annoying.

I wish games were art. They're not

[CubeNudger]

Just let it go. The only times games can achieve the level of control over audience experience necessary to fit the definition of "art" is when they strip so much interactivity out of the experience, they no longer qualify as "games." Who would argue that the cut-scenes in Final Fantasy VII (one oft-cited "arty" game) are anything except movies spliced into the actual game?

The closest I think you could come is a game like Half Life 2. It is both unambiguously playing by the rules of games (no cutscenes that take you away from control of the character), yet stays on rails enough for the developers to give a controlled and interesting experience to the player. If that's the best we can do, it's time to give up the crusade.

For some of the greatest games (in my opinion) it would be impossible to make a strong case for being art, because they allow for experiences largely in the control of the gamer. The best are strong enough that they turn the player into an artist of sorts. SimCity isn't art, but many user-created cities could be.

Ebert is speaking from ignorance here, but he's still right. As much as it gives games a dignity they surely deserve to lump them in with "art," there's no way to make them art without stripping them of what makes them interesting as games.

Re:Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamer

[wiremind]

lol!

me: "wow i'm kicking ass!"
..
..
Blackbird: Hey fuckers 1'm back, now bend over!

don't blanket statement

[fozzmeister]

I'd agree generally, but not as a blanket statement. How about Deus Ex, stronger story and characters than virtually any film. Actually I'm not sure you could call all films art, particularly the SFX orgies you often get.

High Art?

[LKM]

What the heck is "high art"?

Re:High Art?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the heck is "high art"?

I'm not sure, but I suspect an appropriate adjective for it might be "psychedelic".

Re:That sounds like-other 'perpetual' videogames

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned SPACE INVADERS. You can apparently play that game 'forever' without the game 'messing up' after 255 levels like PAC-MAN famously does. You lose if the invaders reach the bottom of the screen.

On the lighter side, you can play TAPPER 'forever' on the low(est) skill levels without it 'messing up' after 255 levels. It took me 8-plus hours to find that out the game has a 'stage 0' then after you clear it, the game starts all over like you first put a coin in the slot.

But what do you do about games that deliberately(?) become IMPOSSIBLE to play like BURGERTIME does once you get to stage 30 or so. The 'ingredients' move SO fast you can't elude or outrun them. The same thing happens in PAC-MAN but it is a bit more subtle.

Also, there is the 'cat coin' in MAPPY that acts as a HURRY UP in the game if you spend too much time on one level of that game.

There are probably other examples but these are the ones I know about from personal experience.

But nowadays, the games are expensive and have a 'time limit' to them or make it (almost) impossible to get extra lives to extend your play time.

But in the end it looks like arcade videogames are dead--all you'll find are those 'crane games' that are more lucrative because there is no computer program to 'outfox' to extend the value of the money you put in it to play.

huh?

[TheLink]

I classify games as games :).

Killer 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone needs to play that game if they want to find proof of games as art. It wasn't the cutscenes that made it art, it was the camera placement behind your character, the choice of colours, Cel shading, the way blood was handled, and not exactly the story itself (as that could be told in a movie or book as well) but the way the story was presented. Some levels were entirely surreal just to get an artistic point across about the mind of the main character(s). On the other hand, if one were to play it competitively (trying to beat it as fast as they can, trying to unlock the secret character, etc.) then it's more like sport.

Games are definitely art.

[SageinaRage]

If Ebert doesn't think that the games of Chess and Go are beautiful, then he is mistaken on a level beyond belief.

I think you guys are entirely missing the point :)

[IckySplat]

This Ebert guy is a Film Critic. And like all Art Critics it's not art if it's not
impenetrable to the general public. Art for them is self referential symbolism, etc etc bullshit, bullshit.

He plainly states he doesn't think Spider Man was art. And having seen some "Art" movies I'm inclined to agree with him.
The simple rule is... "If it is widely enjoyed by the greater public, then it's NOT Art"
These peoples very livelyhoods hinge on the fact that Art is an impenetrable fortress of bullshit.
This is so they can write screeds and screeds of opinion pieces explaining to us boorish retards the meaning of the Art
It's just a cash cow for them. Any anything that gets called Art with mass appeal is instantly attacked.
They are after all only protecting their jobs.

I quite sure in the early days of film, there were detractors saying, "Yeah it's great and all, but it's not Art"
Hell, I'm willing to bet that when Ug and Grunt were scraping bison pictures on cave walls, some smart arse
at the back of the cave was saying, "Yeah, but is it Art?", I also suspect he got his head kicked in.
Which could be why Art critics are the bunch of whiney arseholes they are today.

And to be fair, I think that the ONLY reason people are trying to hold Video games up as Art these days is to find some
sort of defence from the "Video games are evil" Luddite's that seem to have the ear of the politicians.
And if you stop to think about it. The fact that the fear of video games has brought together the left wing, limp wristed tree huggers and the right wing bible thumping knuckle draggers is testament to the ability of video games to unite people :)

Something to be proud of in my book *hehe*

Video Games posses most potential for art

[Alexpkeaton1010]

Comparing video games, a relatively new medium (~25 years old), to film (~90 years old?) or classical art and music is extremely unfair. When "motion pictures" first came out and consisted mostly of train robberies and pirate movies, I bet there were art snobs who said the same thing about film as Ebert is saying about video games. Most universities in the world have a specialized program in film study, but only a limited number of universities include undergraduate video game study.

The fact is, without a doubt, video games posses more capacity to include art than any other form of art in human history! A video game is able to combine the following elements:

plot + visuals + sound + music + interaction with story = more art than is possible with any other medium!

Good news for us geeks

[Anonymous Coward]

For once in our lives we can be considered athletes! Who's afraid now fast moving baseball!

Sure?

[IIIKrazyKiDDIII]

If movies are art, what is MaxPayne? Surely a movie can't be sport.

Re:Sure?

[IIIKrazyKiDDIII]

MaxPayne=Art Counterstrike=Sport Whats the deal with trying to classify games in general. I agree with the previous dude, classify games as games.

Not exactly...

[sonap]

Because you receive feedback from your interactions, the actual act of playing a game can indeed be considered part of the art, if that feedback generates the response (usually emotional) you'd associate with art.

One might argue that interaction makes you even more emotionally invested than merely observing, as is the case with other art forms.

Interactive Theatre

[Trillian_1138]

So would a play which involved audience participation, and which was scripted such that according to said audience participation could result in one of several outcomes, then become a sport? I don't know if such a thing would offend the High Poobahs of theatre, but it sounds like a cool work of art to me.

I actually just finished up a senior (undergrad) project involving just that. It was, literally, a Choose Your Own Adventure-style play*, with the audience presented with multiple choices along the way. Everyone in the audience received a xylophone (so you know it's good theatre!) and at key points would hit one of the two notes, thus notifying the backend computer which choice had been made. There were seven possible endings, and each audience was able to see 3-4 (depending on time).

The show was extremely well received, with audiences having a great time. All were very responsive to the idea. Whether or not it was *good* art, I'd be quite offended if someone implied it was art at all. It was certainly as much art as Wrestlepocalypse (pretty much what it sounds like) which went up on campus the same weekend and was billed as a theatrical piece, or as some of the abysmally horrible Shakespeare interpretations in my four years in a theatre department.

Likewise, while a long argument can (and should) be had over whether specific games are examples of "good" art, to say it's impossible to make a game which is also art is foolish just as, one hundred years ago, saying movies could never be art would have been foolish.

-Trillian

*"Choose Your Own Adventure #178: The Pirate Ghosts of Bigley Manor." Not a real CYOA book, but with a lot of concepts taken from them. Again, I didn't say it was "good" art, but could you really call a show with pirate ghosts *bad*?

Re:Interactive Theatre

[Chris Burke]

*"Choose Your Own Adventure #178: The Pirate Ghosts of Bigley Manor." Not a real CYOA book, but with a lot of concepts taken from them. Again, I didn't say it was "good" art, but could you really call a show with pirate ghosts *bad*?

The only way to call it "bad" would be in reference to the lost opportunity to also include pirate moneys, pirate ninjas, ninja ghosts, and ninja monkey robot ghosts.

But seriously, sounds awesome. I didn't really think that my idea of a choose-your-own-play was original or anything, but really cool to hear someone did it and it worked.

Re:Interactive Theatre

[Trillian_1138]

The only way to call it "bad" would be in reference to the lost opportunity to also include pirate moneys, pirate ninjas, ninja ghosts, and ninja monkey robot ghosts.

While there weren't any monkeys, ninjas, robots, or the combination thereof, there were some great (by which I mean, ridiculous, slow motion, drawn out) swordfights and every character had the possibility of dying on at least on path. =)
-Trillian

Re:Interactive Theatre

[Chris Burke]

Heh cool. Was there a "Shakespeare ending" where everyone died? :)

Re:Interactive Theatre

[Trillian_1138]

Heh cool. Was there a "Shakespeare ending" where everyone died?

Damn! I knew I missed something! We had the maid dying, the policeman dying, the pirate ghosts dying, the main characters dying, and various combinations of the above, but no path where everyone died!
-Trillian

Re:Interactive Theatre

[Q-Cat5]

I don't think you have to go even this far. There are some excellent performance artists and comedians out there that work with their audiences and use varying degrees of improvisation, that are far more interesting and artistic than a more "static" performance would be. An example from the Comedy side would be Paula Poundstone. The funniest bits, IMHO, in her performances are the parts where she's talking to audience members and spinning up whole new bits on the spot as a result of them. She's a gifted improvisationalist.

How about Jazz? Jazz musicians interact with each other and their environment. The end result is rarely the same thing twice, and some Jazz musicians even improvise bits on the spot based on people or things they see in the audience. It's not an intentional act on the audience's part, but still the "observer" influences the process.

Since he mentions Soup Cans, maybe we should bring in a quote commonly attributed to Warhol: Art is whatever you can get away with.

Edwin Drood

[ryry]

So would a play which involved audience participation, and which was scripted such that according to said audience participation could result in one of several outcomes, then become a sport? I don't know if such a thing would offend the High Poobahs of theatre, but it sounds like a cool work of art to me.

As soon as you said that, I thought of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a play which does involve audience participation. Because Dickens died before finishing the novel, the story has no ending. When performed as a play, the audience votes on who the murderer is, and then the cast finishes the play with one of several endings per the audience's choice. It's actually pretty cool :-)

Re:Edwin Drood

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I was just thinking of the same thing. Our senior class play in high school was Drood. It took some extra preparation having to know all the possible outcomes, but it was fun to be a part of, and we ended up getting to do a different ending each night we put it on.

"I said, an assignation with Mayor Sapsea, who lives just around behind..."
"What's that you say, Bill?"
"I said, 'A round behind...'"
"And so have you!"
"I didn't come here to be insulted!"
"Why, where do you usually go?"
"I'm not a complete fool, you know!"
"Oh, which bit is missing?"
"You're next to an idiot!"
"Pleased to meet you!"

Games as an art form

[Alzheimers]

There's too many scrambles here for defining just what about games makes it an art:

-The mechanics makes it an art! Tetris is the greatest masterpiece ever!
-The story makes it art! Final Fantasy VII is the greatest masterpiece ever!
-Abstract games are art! Fl0w is the greatest masterpiece ever!
-It's the emotional response that makes it art! Floyd dying in Planetfall makes it the greatest masterpiece ever!
-It's the player that makes the art! This youtube video of someone finishing SMB in 10 minutes is the greatest masterpiece ever!

It's the same arguments that people made about film a hundred years ago: it's the cinematography, or the acting, or the script, or the special effects, or the soundtrack, or the...

The bottom line is, there's no such thing as "Fine Art". There's art that has a purpose, and there's art that exists for it's own sake. The Mona Lisa isn't art because it's a painting, it's art because someone stood up and said "That's Art!" and defined "art" to include it. What we have to do is not argue the definition of what makes a Game "Art", but argue the definition of Art to include Games.

For me, the most simplistic definition of "Art" is it's something that captures my interest. It can be a song, or a picture, or a tree, and it's art to me. The Definition of Fine Art that separates it from just art is that it not only captures my interest, but makes me think and feel, too. I think Andy Warhol's soup cans -- which many call "Fine Art" -- are dull and boring. The "industrialization" of art that it came to represent, however, makes us consider the piece in different levels beyond paint on canvas. Similarly, one might not appreciate the aesthetic elements of a game such as Thief to be a spectacular achievement, but the tension and atmosphere created by the "game", the moral dilemas presented (to kill or to avoid conflict?).

So argue all you want about what makes a game "Art". Ebert won't back down because he chooses not to recognize the own struggle his favorite medium fought for recognition, as well. I had a college professor tell the class that the soundtrack for a movie shouldn't play a role in determining it's quality because a movie was technically a moving picture so the auditory elements didn't matter. Tell that to Alfred Hitchcock.

Games are not art... yet

[solar_blitz]

But the game is the package that they all come together in. That's probably one of the key points people are forgetting about video games. A lot of the aspects of the game - music, voice acting, animation, movie sequences, writing - if they were to be critiqued stand alone, they'd be works of art. All that's left is the game. And this, unfortunately, has not evolved very much over the past few years or so.

There are some cases, I feel, where games have evolved. I like to list a few games I think Mr. Ebert should play before coming to his conclusion. Note the fact that I'm listing only the games that I've actually played; I'm sure there are dozens of games out there which I have not played and should be considered worthy of the "art" status.

Shadow of the Colossus: Shigeru Miyamoto once said all the creatures in the game were like "inverted Zelda dungeons", and I found that to be an accurate statement. There's so much open land in the game that you feel like exploring sometimes, and claiming victory in the battles feels like huge accomplishments. Beautiful music and art design, but the best part is the ending - thought provoking, really makes you think of all you've done in the game.

Metal Gear Solid: Yes, I agree with whoever mentioned this game before. The way you embody Solid Snake and participate in the plot is an integral part to understanding its message. Also, some of the ways the game coerces the player to think outside the game's content, with things such as the Psycho Mantis boss fight and other ways the game acknowledges the person playing the game instead of Snake (think of the interrogation scene). It provided new and interesting ways for the player to participate in the story; not just as Snake, but as himself.

My personal opinion is that we haven't even scratched the surface of the potential of game design. There are ways of giving the action more context within the game - a lot like what Sir Peter Monyleux is attempting with the Fable series or what has been done with Knights of the Old Republic on the XBox. Ways of showing that a players' choices and decisions are not mutually exclusive to the world around them. That is, they effect more than the next two scenes in the game - they have a resounding impact on everything that happens afterward. When I studied Ontology in college, I found its elements to be the kind of aspects we should strive for in game design - how we impact our world and how it impacts us. Not quite sure exactly what Ontology is, but I'm sure I've hit on some part of it.

In order to reach this level of game design, we have to mimic the role of Christoff from "The Truman Show". We create a world where one main character interacts with his society/environment, and through events of our own devices, pull this person into different sorts of situations and issues. From my own personal beliefs, it feels as though we're playing the role of the fates, perhaps even elevating ourselves to the role of "god", trying to control the movements and actions of different PCs and NPCs.

This can create an experience that inspires people, that forces them to think in ways they never had to before, just like real life could give them... but artificial. And yes, they would still be games about fun and entertainment and shooting bad guys.

If movies or books can be art so can games

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at some of the more linear RPGs for an example (ie Xenosaga or Final Fantasy). In essence they are a movie or a book interupted by some interaction with the player. Thier primary focus is to tell a story, often time a complicated or thought provoking one, and in this they differ only slightly from a book or movie in that the player gets to move the guy around in some locals between story telling pieces

or the classic adventure games of yore.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Dig... Loom... King's Quest IV... Planetfall...

Re:Ebert doesn't get it, but neither do most gamer

[kEnder242]

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/grid/war s.htm

Note on the URL: I believe it's World of Stuart, not Wolrd ofStu art.
Anyway, some games are pure, this is an example.

Modern Tetris is broken three ways

[tepples]

I see Tetris as high art. It has a transcendent beauty unparalleled by conventional art. Until you take a closer look and see the flaws:

1. infinite spin (explained),
2. counterintuitive T-spin triples (explained), and
3. "bag" randomization that allows playing forever (explained).

You can blame Mr. Rogers.

If it's public domain, it's not a spoiler.

[tepples]

What? She jumps in front of a train at the end!

Thanks, man. I was only 50 pages away from the end of the book.

The ending was first published in 1877. If it's public domain, it's not a spoiler.

The promise of video games is

[Mawginty]

that you can make the player do things. I'm reminded of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. The book was filled with extraordinarily repetitive prose. Pages and pages of what people were wearing, eating, driving etc. At first the murders in the book were horrific, but a break from boredom and a welcome change of pace for the reader. Something of fascination of the abomination. Then the murders became more frequent, and more repetitive and they became just as boring as the ultra-detailed exposition of clothing. The artistic triumph of the work, I thought, was the deft manipulation of the reader (or at least me) into being able to read about the disemboweling of a prostitute as if it were instructions for a stereo.

That kind of manipulation, on many more levels and not just with violence, is much more possible with games. You want to explore the kind of evil Hannah Arendt was interested in? Make a game about optimization and organization: start with trains in Germany 1938, then go to Auschwitz and manage the prisoners, and when the allies take over, run the trains for the allies. The game designer can focus the player's creative energies on whatever he or she wants. I think that will be very important for any game that aspires to be "high" art.

Art is human, transcends media, tech, even content

[gig]

Anything made by humans can be art. The way you tell is if the artist says it is. It has nothing to do with the medium. If Da Vinci used pastels or oils it doesn't matter. Whatever mediums are available, humans will make art with it. It's bizarre to presume you would know better than the artist, it is the worst pomposity to look at something an artist made and say is it art? It's like listening to someone talk and saying is it speech? Only one step worse is to say high art, that is always applied randomly or retroactively it makes no sense, you are better to talk about the weather.

Doesn't matter if the message is received, just that it was sent. Whatever the content or medium, a message is a message, art is art.

User controlling the outcome is indicative of art.

[Lacks Humor]

I didn't understand Ebert's disqualification based on 3) player control of the outcome.

There are several forms of modern art that change depending on the position of the viewer, or change depending on what time the viewer arrives at the art and sees its current incarnation. In this case, the designer intends that viewer has some control over the content of their experience. If they want to see a certain aspect of the art, they can view it from all angles or wait for the art to complete it cycle.

Taking this to an interactive game, if your outcome in one version of the story was different from some other, it was reflective of your choice - but the designer intentionally set the stage to viewed from those various angles.

If you were to make another comparison, if I were to compose a sonata, would its inherent value or impact be changed if a composer down the line chose to play it with different instruments, or changed some of the notes? If I built inherent choice of instrument or varied choral plans into the sonata, would that mean it's not art suddenly?

I respect Ebert's opinion on movies...

[godfra]

But not on video games.

For me, the definition of art is something that, when experienced, evokes feelings of strong emotion and appreciation for the skilled labour and vision that has gone into the form. This could be a good movie, a beautiful piece of music, or a well-designed video game.

One theme in this discussion is that of not being able to change a tragic outcome in the narrative. Such as Romeo & Juliet. This type of scripting does exist in computer games, for instance last night while playing a certain popular RPG I got to a stage where I was forced to kill a character that I honestly felt sorry for. I tried to get out of it a number of ways but had to play along with the story. The feeling of regret that I felt was quite genuine, and who is Roger Ebert to tell me otherwise.

Re:Fact: Games Movies

[Anonymous Coward]

Self-owned, but not by the lack of a greater-than sign. A game is a "film" with interaction; a game without interaction is a game without a game, and thus something else entirely—like, say, a film. As I suspect you know, subsets and supersets are mathematical concepts; mathematics, of course, has no concept of superiority or inferiority, thus subsets are not inherently inferior to their supersets. (They are "less complete", but while you seem to have taken the view that completeness is perfection, Ebert seems to disagree.)

Nevertheless, Ebert is wrong. He fears games because he does not understand them: he believes games to be more interactive than they are. There comes a point, when interaction is increased, when a game ceases to be art and starts to become a world(or, if art, then of the player's creation, rather than the designer's), however, that point lies very far into the future. Games, as they are now, are highly limited "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, and it seems laughable to suggest that such a book could not be art, because it so resembles that most revered of art forms, the novel. Of course, most actual CYOA-books, as most actual games, are made more to entertain rather than as works of art; but that doesn't say anything of the potential of the medium.

(Ebert does have a point, however: interaction can get in the way of art. I just finished an excellently written text adventure recommended by another poster in this very thread; excellence notwithstanding, I was frustrated by the end of it because the puzzles(probably simple puzzles by any experienced player's standards, the "hints" which I fell to using about an hour of unproductive frustration were quite patronizing) got in the way of the writing, and there was not enough of a world to explore while I banged my head against the parser.)

I'd urge Ebert to watch an experienced player play through a well-written text adventure. This experience is very obviously art—obviously even to Ebert, I'd think, because it very much resembles traditional "art" in the form of reading a short story.