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Roger Ebert On Why Video Games Can Never Be Art
Roger Ebert has long held the opinion that video games are not and can never be considered an art form. After having this opinion challenged in a TED talk last year, Ebert has now taken the opportunity to thoughtfully respond and explain why he maintains this belief. Quoting:
"One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite an immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them. She quotes Robert McKee's definition of good writing as 'being motivated by a desire to touch the audience.' This is not a useful definition, because a great deal of bad writing is also motivated by the same desire. I might argue that the novels of Cormac McCarthy are so motivated, and Nicholas Sparks would argue that his novels are so motivated. But when I say McCarthy is 'better' than Sparks and that his novels are artworks, that is a subjective judgment, made on the basis of my taste (which I would argue is better than the taste of anyone who prefers Sparks)."
Art is anything that has the ability to inspire emotions in people. Some videogames certainly fit that definition. Few videogames currently have really artistic artwork, but good 3D immersion increases, not decreases, the emotional impact of artwork. Some areas of World of Warcraft are enjoyable just to wander through, e.g. the silence of the snow covered woods or flying on a Griffin. But then, I guess I believe that "art" and "play" are not mutually exclusive.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Didn't the end of that quote just become "I know it when I see it"?
Okay, so it's not art because you can "win". That's fine if you're the player. What if you're watching someone else play a videogame? It's kind of like watching a movie, and you can't "win" at it. So, then is it art? And if not, then why is a movie art?
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
If that's his argument, then how does he argue that movies are art? They're just a container for art, writing, stageplay, and audio. It could be strongly argued that camera movements (cinematography) are just mechanics placed on art, not art itself.
Arguing that game rules applied to art isn't art is just as absurd a line of argument - it doesn't matter if it's a game, if the content is art, the product itself is artistic.
Ryan Fenton
Google for "Lance Armstrong is not an athlete". Seems about 8 years ago, some wanker of a sports reporter wrote this long idiotic oped piece that Lance Armstrong is not an athlete, because cycling is not a true sport. A true sport, like baseball, involves several motions, like running *and* throwing. Cycling does not; ergo cycling is not a sport and Lance is not an athlete. (At least according to this idiot, cycling only requires pedaling.)
So boxing (which this idiot covered) *is* a sport because it involves punching *and* falling down.
This is in the same vein; start out with a personal dislike of something or other, then write convoluted logic justifying your personal prejudice.
And this crap gets published because you are a member of the press, not because it makes any sense.
That might have value as a definition of artistic judgement, but seems lacking as a definition for art itself. Otherwise any artist that creates with passion would have his works disqualified as art, and that doesn't seem to accord with the way we understand art.
I suppose if you consider the game creator as the artist and the player as the appreciator, then I can see your point. But suppose you see the player as artist, and the game as his canvas? A good run through a Far Cry level can surely be considered art, at least as much as an improvisational dancer can.
Or maybe we need to look at game playing as an artistic collaboration between the game creator, and the player, producing performance art that arises uniquely from that combination.
Interesting.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I doubt, at this point, Ebert is going to go out and play a bunch of videogames and have a change of heart.
In any event, I always sort of suspected he didn't watch some of the movies he critiqued, so the fact that he's knocking games from a position of ignorance doesn't surprise me.
That wasn't my interpretation (from actually reading the article, I know that's a bad idea). It seemed to me he was making a kind of exploration, he wasn't trying to bash everyone's head in and convince them that his way is right, rather he was giving an explanation of how he sees things, hoping to advance the quality of the dialog a bit.
In the actual essay he somewhat backed away from the firmness of his argument "video games can never be art" and restated it as, "no video game now is art, and I don't see how video games can be art." He is addressing the arguments of one person, and he found them lacking, but he is open to hearing new arguments if they come along.
And frankly I don't think she presented her case very well. She used the case of a video game portraying Waco Texas, and he presents a movie that does a much better job. She shows a game that has pretty visuals, and he rightly points out that the visuals aren't that much better than what you would find on a postcard.
I think the biggest problem is he doesn't understand how emotionally captivating it is to play a video game, how it makes you 'become' the character. He would probably say that movies do this too, and that movies have better graphics, better scripts, and better camera work (and he is definitely right), but he misses the fact that games succeed even without all that. The fact that you personally have to save your partner is incredibly engaging, even without a decent script, realistic graphics, or decent camera work. Imagine what someone could do with all those elements. It could be something truly great.
Incidentally I also disagree with him that chess cannot be art. The rules themselves are not art, but some of the games that have been played are extremely beautiful dances between two minds.
Qxe4
No. He's managed to trick you.
Art has a perfectly good objective definition.
Humans use symbols and representations of things. Normal, straight usage, such as saying 'I'm going to the store', or a map, or a whatever, is not art.
Art is when, in addition to the actual standard representation, the creator is attempting to convey another meaning. For example, 'beauty'. Or 'excitement'. Or whatever.
Art is simply what we call symbols and representations that are 'two deep'...the normal literal one, and one on top of that.
Anything else, any quibbling beyond that, is not trying to define 'art'...it's trying to define good art.
Now, there's an argument to be made that art has to be able to convey some primary meaning or some secondary meaning to least some of the viewers, and hence some non-representational art (What you called abstract, although that just means 'deliberately incorrect'...Picasso paintings are abstract.) actually fails the 'art test', as it's often not possible for people to grasp the second meaning without being told it, and there isn't any 'first meaning' beyond 'blobs of stuff'.
But that's a very very very small subset of things that are 'art', and have an amount of attention paid to them that is way out of proportion with their actual experience.
Likewise, a technically good drawing that doesn't (try to) convey anything beyond the drawing, is not in fact art, in much the same way a security camera recording is not art.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
has no deeper meaning,
Taking apart GlaDOS at the end, piece by piece, suggests a deconstruction of an artificial psyche.
evokes no emotion,
The companion cube evoked no emotion? How about the cake? You yourself admitted to loving Portal -- is that love not an emotion?
teaches no lesson.
Aside from the lessons of the portal physics themselves, it teaches that games are meant to be fun, and that you can have a fun, innovative game with solid production values.
But of course, is art required to teach a moral lesson? I sure don't think so.
It certainly isn't abstractly beautiful or otherwise uniquely aesthetically pleasing (well, any more so than an average, technically competent game).
"More so than the average" isn't required. And the gameplay itself is abstractly beautiful.
But is it art? I sure don't think so.
I think it's unequivocally art. You seem to ask whether it's better than the average art, and it's certainly possible to say it's bad art, but I don't see how you can say it's not art.
Look at Dada for an example. If "found art" is legit, then someone can certainly take a urinal, declare it "found art", and erect it as a statue in a public park -- which I think I remember someone doing as an exercise in Dada. If Dada is legit, it doesn't seem like there's much you can say is not art.
More relevantly, though, it's aesthetically pleasing, humorous, entertaining... It contains all the elements required to call it "art" in the same way that any movie deserves to be called art. You clearly enjoy it, so you think it's good art, you just might not think it's particularly highbrow art, which is fine.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!