Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
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?
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.
You can't be wrong. You can, however, be out of the consensus of popular opinion. Or the consensus of critical opinion. Etc.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
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?
meh
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.