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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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...

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: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.

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.