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Blow-Back From Ebert's Latest Games Assertion
Last week's new diatribe from Roger Ebert on the merits of games had some people up in arms. Commentary ranged from the respectful at Ars Technica, to the dismissive statements at GameCritics. N'Gai Croal, of Newsweek's LevelUp, has a lengthy and thoughtful look at the issue from both sides. From his comments: "It's the right of someone with the maturity of an honest and articulate four-year-old to forget the history of his own favored art form and close his mind to the potential of another. In the meantime, those of us who care about the possibilities inherent in this medium will have to rely upon ourselves and one another to keep doing the heavy lifting necessary to suss out where the art of videogames lies; to determine how the craft can enhance that art; and to continue the fight to push this young medium from squalling infancy into graceful adulthood. Let's get cracking."
Why should we (gamers and game creators) care what Roger Ebert says?
Art is something that draws you into its alternate universe to make you look at an issue or scene differently than you might otherwise. It is the man-made representation of the real world filtered through the artist's omniscient. Anything can be art if you permit yourself to perceive it as such.
In my opinion Ebert is A, an old man, and B, afraid. He is afraid of interactivity and doesn't trust the people he writes for - the passive consumers of one-way art - to be capable enough to play along when given the chance. Newsflash, Ebert: art is what YOU make of it, not what the artist makes.
Doesn't the fact that people are arguing over whether it is or isn't art make it art? Especially since some people's art is another person's trash...?
See, the question is, "Why would Ebert bother to comment on gaming if he doesn't actually care about gaming?"
The answer is simple. We see it here every day. Why do people put inflammatory crap on their websites? To drive traffic.
Ebert's not an idiot. He is, however, largely irrelevant in terms of the internet...Movie reviewers are a dime a dozen here. Anyone ever been to his site for anything else? I never have.
But with one clever piece of pure flamebait, he drove his web traffic through the roof. Read his article...No, actually don't, just read someone else who's quoted it...No more traffic for you! Not yours! It's pure flamebait, right down to ad hominems and poop jokes at the expense of his target.
So let the irrelevant blowhard pass on by. By even caring about his hilariously irrelevant opinion, you're giving him what he wants.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I don't get it, why care? Does everyone have to have a favorable view of games to keep them going now? I'd say critical mass has been achieved. There will always be people who get pissed because the kids are having too much fun. Time and tide make them as irrelevant as they deserve to be.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Ah, "art": that most bloodied and sacred of semantic battlegrounds. For centuries it will be fought over by the classicists and the abstract impressionists, neither side ever holding the line for long, all for the right to apply the fortifying balm it exudes to one's tortured ego.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
"It's the right of someone with the maturity of an honest and articulate four-year-old to forget the history of his own favored art form and close his mind to the potential of another." This a quote from a thoughtful article on Ebert's comments? Calling him an immature, dishonest person with the mentality of a four year old? Such name calling does not belong in a thoughtful piece. These kinds of "stories" do nothing to improve the reputation of gaming.
cheers,
Andrew
From the perspective of storytelling, videogames are in fact a poor medium for doing it, for reasons Ebert describes. The physical interactivity with a game world that videogames provide add nothing to a story, and in mediums such as film, the director and editor use decisions to guide the audience. Any story you can think of telling will always be more effective as a novel, play, or film, than as a videogame. Nearly every videogame story involves violence or physical conflict. Why? Because the story has to motivate the gameplay, and guess what the gameplay entails! Interaction is limited, so the stories are as well. Unless you want to use cutscenes or text... in which case you're using another medium.
So it depends on what you consider a videogame. Games like MGS3 are pretty artistic, but it's all conveyed through cutscenes. Nothing wrong with that, but the emotion and depth brough tforward there isn't possible using only interactive elements. It seems to me like the games that are the most artistic, are also the games that are least like GAMES.
As a lover of video games and cinema, and as someone who can understand the very close and deep relationship of the two artforms, I'm very interested in what Roger Ebert has to say about video games.
Cinema was seen as a medium for serious art from its very birth. The mercantile value of cinema developed subsequently, though quickly. Today, video games are primarily mercantile, yet they have enormous potential as an art form, a potential that goes largely unexplored.
Critical theory is a field with which I am well acquainted, and the attention of a first-rate critic like Ebert can only help video gaming. As fans we just have to love the medium enough to see that there is much work to be done and not feel challenged and wet ourselves just because someone says, quite correctly, that video games have not developed artistically as far or as fast as they could have. Nor will they as long as our fandom supersedes our ability to think critically about them. (Fanbois take note)
You are welcome on my lawn.
scandal rocks the news world as debates rage:
What is Art?
What is Love?
What is Beauty?
What is Truth?
What is...the point? Saying it never makes it so (except in baseball), so Roger bloats out to movies while others prefer different eye candy. So be it.
no different than the tabloid:
What is YoungerstersTooSassyForTheirOwnGood?
What is TheBestHolidayDestination?
What is MilkTooOldToDrink?
I think Ebert's fundamental, and most interesting, assertion is that because there is an aspect of player choice in a game it is more similar to a sport where the outcome isn't determined (by the artist). Without the control over outcome, Ebert believes that you can't rise to the level of high art.
This is where his unfamiliarity with the medium really shows. The outcome of a game is usually one of a set of outcomes (win or lose being the most basic), and there are certainly designers that want to expand those choices and make them more meaningful. If the game includes any outcome (that has been carefully designed) that would make it high art then the game as a whole must be high art, even though there could be many outcomes that are not. At first this seems to make games a poorer medium for the expression of high art. However, there is little difference between the players that choose the "low art" paths through a game and an audience who "doesn't get" a high art film. Both will come away from the experience thinking that the game or film was low art (or worse). Games only allow the the audience to interact with their low art interpretation of the game if designers allow the player the freedom to do so (eg. shooting everything).*
Games are generally made to be replayed, so that they can be explored in full: choice doesn't turn it into a sport, choice only increases the re-playability, or in terms of other art, the re-experience-ability. Like coming back to a complex and deep book or film and understanding it "better" because of insights learnt from the last time you experienced it, games hide part of their content purposefully. The choice of which content you experience is just more obvious in a game, but the knowledge and experience that allows you to make those choices to see that content is not very different from being able to "see more" in your other art.
Just like someone who can't understand the high art film, Ebert's ignorance of games prevents him from seeing if there are high art games. I'm not sure there are any myself - I'd say there are many that we will look back on and recognize as the precursors and inspiration to those that eventually get acknowledged as the first high art games.
* Note: much of the art of game design can be found in the options or available actions given to players. How the designers restrict the players into particular outcomes is the essence of the art. That Ebert doesn't understand this, or believes that multiple options is somehow incompatible with high art is testament to Ebert's unwillingness (or laziness) to think about games seriously.
Complexity Happens
What some fat Chicago has-been says who doesn't even watch the movies he reviews thinks?
Within Ebert's definition of "high art", it is not unreasonable to state that games do not pass muster. The way he defines high art, it precludes the kind of interactivity that is in most games. Nothing wrong wit that.
But what about the individual elements that go into a game -- like the textures, or background images, or cutscenes, or level designs, or soundtrack -- can those be "high art", even if the game as a whole is not?
The Mona Lisa is, unquestionably, High Art. Would it still be High Art if I used it as a texture for my "Louvre Deathmatch" game mod?
What if I made an original painting of equal artistic merit as the Mona Lisa, but instead of exhibiting it in a hoighty-toighty gallery I used it in a game -- would my choice of context instantly make my painting become Not Art?
If a famous composer wrote a symphonic work specifically for a game, would it still be High Art? Why (not)?
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
I know someone's going to question N'Gai Croal's choice of words in the summary, so let me quote this from the debate Ebert had:
Barker: "I'm not doing an evangelical job here. I'm just saying that gaming is a great way to do what we as human beings need to do all the time -- to take ourselves away from the oppressive facts of our lives and go somewhere where we have our own control."
Ebert: Spoken with the maturity of an honest and articulate 4-year old.
I came here for a good argument
So I create a sculpture unlike any before. Instead of looking upon its exterior surface, you have to step inside it and explore its inner surface. There are many branches, converging and diverging, and depending on the path you take to explore the sculpture you see different things. Areas differ in appearance through materials used, lighting, projections, etc. Others differ in acoustics, have different environmental sounds, perhaps play back recordings of others who were there before. Others may be completely dark with nothing visible and you experience it only through touch. It can be enjoyed singly or in groups. Some parts are only accessible if you cooperate with others, or if you picked up some element along the way necessary to reach something. Other areas are only accessible if you work against your fellow explorers. Many are mutually exclusive. Some parts of it react to your presence and try to induce you to follow particular paths, which you can go with or fight against. The sculpture is the size of a large building, both in height and footprint. There is one entrance, but thousands of exits. It may even be impossible to fully explore within one person's lifetime.
Is it just a game? Is it just a sport? Or is it art?
What makes it one and not another?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I sincerely believe video games could be art but I haven't seen one actually cross that threshold yet. 99% of video games are similar to thriller genre fiction, pure crap. The possible candidates I have seen for video game as art would be:
:)
1. Second life, allows people to be creative in a virtual world
2. Myst and it's sequels, original concept beautiful artwork within the game
3. That Japanese game where you roll things up into a big ball Katami something or other? I haven't played it but the screen shots look interesting and I think it's very purposelessness points to it being more art than entertainment.
4. Spoor when it's released?
All other video games I have seen are entertainment not art. The difference is how long they will last in the culture, entertainment games go in the rubbish bin as soon as a new generation of video card comes out, art games will be preserved in some sort of simulator and discussed in classes like Huckleberry Fin and Citizen Cain are. Thus far it hasn't happened yet though I think the above listed games COULD reach that status. Half life, Quake 4, etc? Never...
BVTW nothing wrong with entertainment it's just not art that has a hugE impact on our whole culture Mozart, the Beatles, Public Enemy, Shakespear, etc. The jury is out whether any video game will do that but as a slashdot reader I hope it does happen.
p.s. I AM Open to hearing about other games that COULD be considered art they must be able to run on OS X power p.c. G5, P4 Linux notebook, or PIII Win XP with integrated graphics if I am to see them.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Okay, let's assume for argument's sake that technology has evolved quite a bit from our present standards and technology such as the holodeck from Star Trek, or the Matrix exists. The closest thing we have to that is video games.
Are you telling me that _feeling_ what the protagonist (or any other character for that matter) feels couldn't be used in an artistic fashion? Because currently writers try very hard to make you emotionally feel the same things as their characters, and I'd bet that being able to physically feel the same things would make the job a bit easier.
Look at a movie like Saving Private Ryan. Are you saying that without the physical conflict the movie would be the same? The expression of that combat, even through video games, could certainly be used to convey aspects of the story, and I will agree that storytelling isn't always art, but it definately can be (in the case of video games, tetris, like chess will never be an art, although playing them well is, but that is a different conversation).
Furthermore, we now have the technology to create open worlds. Tom Hanks might be able to say "fuck saving whosits" and go do something else in the WWII universe (God only knows how many different stories have been set there), and each and every story may have artistic value, they might even be intertwined (Ryan could have valuable information, so letting him die has an impact).
Now just imagine how many adventures over many universes may be created. Creating an epic and enjoyable adventure itself may be considered art. Sadly, we'll probably need someone with the cultural magnitude of Shakespeare to have games recognized by the mainstream as art.
Shit, I probably should have used a car metaphor in there!
Ebert is a smart guy, but even smart people can be wrong. What he labels "sport" is just the playing of the game. A movie is considered art, but the act of watching a movie is not. In the same way, a game could be considered art even if the act of playing it is not.
There are also games where the "result" could also be considered art (like Spore's creature creation, for example).
Video games are not high art. They are, potentially, the HIGHEST form of art.
Is a novel "high art"? Is a painting "high art"? A picture is worth a thousand words, a movie contains one hundred thousand pictures, and a video game can generate a million possible animated sequences. You do the math.
This reminds me of traditional jazz musicians in the 50s complaining about that repetitive, simplistic nonsense called Rock n Roll.
Meanwhile, The Beatles.
Oh- a word about choices: when I decide to either despise Hannibal Lecter as a monster or admire his capabilities despite his flaws, I'm making a choice. When I decide that "Starry Night" is really about the village in the foreground, I'm making a choice. All these people bitching about videogames as art are really just broadcasting, loudly: "I am a dinosaur, I will soon be extinct."
Perhaps Katamari Damacy, or Ico, or Shadow of the Colossus is art. It's a set of images that evoke feelings from me that I both have an emotional and physical response to. Just by watching them, people I know think about both games and art differently.
Even Tetris, from a design standpoint is art in the way that a cleanly designed piece of Jens Risom furniture is art.
Even God of War could be considered art.
Isn't it, like, subjective? Don't movies suffer from the same flaws? When you think of art, do you think of A Room With A View, or Rear Window, or Clerks, or do you think of Uve Boll masterpieces like Alone in The Dark and the House of the Dead and Bloodrayne? If you have a preference, does that invalidate the claim of another that the other group is art?
I'm just sayin'.
Nyet SOME movies are art Citizen Kane leaps to mind:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/
as well say Ingmar Bergman movies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman
however 99.9999% of movies are entertainment as is true of music, video games. There is nothing wrong with entertainment I have my guilty pleasures in music like the Go Gos from the 80s, very fun but I'd never try to claim it was art just fun music with good memories for geezer aged people like myself. I hope you aren't trying to claim all movies are art, would that include Porkies III, and Ernest Scared Stupid?
Some movies are art, as are perhaps some video games though as I have said I have yet to see the video game that I think will be remembered in 50 years time when computers will offer us fully imersive reality, and Half Life Quake 4 etc will seem tired, quaint and utterly lacking interest. That to me says that 99.9999% of video games are graphic sizzle eye candy without substance much like the 3 d post cards that were produced at the turn of the century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopy
In a similar fashion 3 d movies from the 60s to early 80s did not leave us any masterpieces, Jaws 3d ring a bell? Just because a technology is new and exciting to us does not guarantee it will lead to the production of great art.
And BTW I do hope I am wrong and something comes of video games but I am not convinced, YET. I am looking forward to Spoor BTW and I am not the cynic about this that Ebert is, I just have high personal standards (which may differ from yours, shrug).
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Hey! Leave my Yugo out of this.
Okay Ebert. I've seen most of your highly rated movies, and can see the artistic touch in many of them. Have you played many of the games I consider art? Based on your comments, it's a rather obvious answer.
Here is just a personal anecdote:
The game was Black and White, you're a God, with incarnate consciousnesses, created by some villagers in a desperate cry for help. From there you progress through the game by winning the faith of other peoples. Your choice in actions defines your good/evil alignment. In retrospect, it was a set up, if you didn't go into the game intending to be a certain alignment, you would almost certainly be good, it was natural, you wanted to be kind.
I was at the beginning of a map many levels in, I had many powers and the little angel spoke frequently, the little devil was gone. My tower was ivory and my voice angelic. On this map, the second village was a particularly difficult convertion. I slaved over them, did everything I could to show them my benevolent worth, I aided them in every endeavor, and through hours of painstaking effort I won them over. It was a stunning relief to finally convert them, the worst hurdle overcome. A few moments later the enemy God retaliated, sending a pack of wolves to punish the villagers. I destroyed many of the wolves, but I don't think they were really stoppable. The village turned on me, setting me back to a condition far worse than I had started the map.
I sat there, staring at the screen in disbelief. I was angry beyond reason. At which point, a little evil voice, no animation, just a soft voice of evil said: "Go on boss, do it, do the bad thing." (It sounds cheesy, but it was the kicker for my already trembling hand.)
By the end, I had created an ever-burning pit into which I cast those who denied me. I took the land in a display of brutal rage, right down to destroying my enemy while listening to his pleas for mercy. I was the God of fire and brimstone. I drifted back toward the light after passing beyond that map, but it wasn't the same, I wasn't the same. I was a darker, more vengeful God from there on.
It was an emotional event, it was like stepping into Lucifers shoes, just before the fall. It was a lesson about absolute power and corruption. It was awesome. It's left an impression. It was art.
Lack of complete narrative control doesn't preclude success, much as possessing narrative control doe not ensure it.
In a video game, when they have achieved a level high art, you have to be willing and/or lucky enough, to be led where they are trying to take you. That is certainly true of music, movies, painting, photography, and other artistic mediums I have experienced. (Joshua Bell performed in a busy Metro station, to minimal acclaim, it was not the art that was lacking.)
-- Res
High art is traditionally art for art's sake, not for entertainment, removed from economic constraints (i.e. not a mass-consumed, reproduced, commoditized product).
That's the difference.
Context has always mattered and medium too as people have historically considered high art associated with things that require more skill such as painting and music as opposed to film, etc. Though the definition has changed over the years less towards skill and more towards concept.
You are asking about music and paintings, both of which would be capable of high art when considered by themselves. Inserting a Mona Lisa into deathmatch isn't going to make the latest FPS into high art, since the FPS is comprised of more than the painting or music that you have around it. It would be like framing a classic painting in a square mile of paintings by five year olds. There is no doubt that most games come nowhere close to a piece by *insert favorite artist*. Ebert, of course, considers films high art. A film has a strict design space path that it never deviates from. You can imagine a straight line. Some games allow for a certain level of interactivity, but you are still constrained within the design of the game. All a game does is open up the straight line "experience" of the design space into a cylinder of "possible experiences". That freedom and interaction allows for a slightly different story. I doubt it even enters Eberts mind, when thinking about this subject, that most of the films he considers "high art" could have been changed in subtle ways, and he still would have lavished praise on them. While there are an infinite number of possibilities even in a cylindric design-space path, they are limited to the possibilities contained within the volume of the cylinder. If you imagine a film traversing the design space of all possibilities, there is a smooth, linear transition from one moment to the next. It never deviates. But you could, conceivably, take portions of that line, and move them ever so subtly... a game merely gives you the freedom to move the line yourself, while being capable of delivering to you a very focused experience. What I'm trying to say is that if the director of the Godfather switched the camera angle and had Pacino phrase his line a little differently, it would not have impacted the movie much. A gamer playing Shadow of the Colossus that crawls up the left leg instead of the right leg of the giant creature is merely "shifting" the experience of the design space line within the cylinder provided to him by the game producers. I would argue that a game producer can still provide a deep, meaningful experience while allowing the player some small degrees of freedom (enough to make it an interesting game), and with that end I would argue that a game could be produced that would be considered "high art", even if none exist today. Not to mention we were playing 8-bit Mario years ago, the game industry has a lot of maturing to do, who knows what we'll have in another fifty years...
Not to say that this doesn't expose Ebert as a whiney old coot. His decision to rail on Clive Barker (read: easy target) is especially telling. But that doesn't change the fact that the most a video game will make you contemplate what it means to be a person or what a person is capable of being is a quick glance at a STAT menu.
Peter Molyneux really should've released "The Room" for these reasons. A surreal playground like that would open a lot of people's eyes to just how affecting a "game" can be.
Roger Ebert actually has posted some interesting responses to his statement. Some of which are really interesting. No further comments of his own though. And if you didn't read the original article I recommend reading it too, even if I disagree with Eberts conclusions it has some interesting aspects on what makes art(at least to me who is an art noob).
If noone rtfa, then what's the slashdot effect?
Nearly everything isn't art. There's nothing commensurate between my toenail clippings and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf".
If GameCritics.com is "smart reviews for serious gamers" they are using a different definition of "smart" than I am. In just the first couple of paragraphs the writing is enough to make one shudder, and includes such gems as "The problem is simply that "art", and it's even more pretentious sibling "high art", are definited so vaguely,"
Honestly, I think GameCritics.com would do gamers a service not to enter into this discussion.
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Medieval II may be one of the most artistic games out there.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
To date, many people don't think any Video Games have achieved "High art status", and that is a result of how they classify "art". If you view Art as "____" then it may be obvious to you that Video games "clearly aren't, nor could they be art..." but if you view Art as "____" then it may be obvious that Video games "Are, or certainly could they be art..." and that is the discussion.
I question Mr. Ebert's assertions of video games myself, but it is after all his opinion and he is entitled to it. The subjective nature of Art invites these kinds of discussions. To get back to one of your points however...
I will first state that I agree with you that most video games are done in a way that forgoes their classification of "high art" by most standards, I would argue however that cinema is no different. Shall we hold up every Pauly Shore movie, or Uwe Boll film as exhibits A & B that cinema is not art?
Do the existence of non-artistic pieces (even if the majority) preclude the possibility that a medium may achieve high art?
I have to disagree with this. Haven't you ever played a game with a strong enough narrative where you could actually relate to the character and understand why they make the choices the make?
I can choose how I view a piece of (let's call it)traditional art. I can read a novel and decide that a piece of satire isn't meant to be taken as satire(assuming you view satire as art), and instead choose to take it literaly. I can look at that Jackson Pollack and decide it is about happiness in youth, while the guy next to me is thinking how depressing it is. Choice is most definitely an inherent part of defining art. And that choice is not something the artist has any control over.
I know I'm saying the same thing as other people but every medium of art is interactive. The people who get an emotional rise out of a novel are connecting with the hero and feel as though they are participants in the story. If H.P. Lovecraft can be considered art then Doom 3 can as well. Both exude a sense of atmosphere that is almost tangible although one you have to imagine for yuorself where the other is right in front of you.
Ultimately, the problem with Mr. Ebert's argument comes down to the fact that art really is different for everyone.Psychonauts. Particularly the boss in Gloria's Theater: A big fat self-important theater critic.