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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)."
+1 Knows what the fuck begging the question means.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
This is silly. Games are already Art, good or bad. Art is the celebration of free will. In other words, art is the product of the act of play.
It is not so much a "deeper meaning", although that is a common way of doing it, but just subtlety. I think that is a reasonable definition, and I don't think "what impacts the viewer" is particularly reasonable, because as you say, then you suddenly include natural phenomena under the definition of "art", and that makes the term useless. It seems clear that if your definition for "art" includes things that are not created by man (or some other sentient entity) it is useless. (If you're religious and want to include your god as an artist, I suppose I'd have to accept that that definition is internally consistent, though.)
So, no, I can't accept that argument. I'd say that a piece of art made with absolutely no intent of anything but perfecting your craft is, in fact, not art, no matter if it is very pretty. It is craft, it is beautiful, it has great value, but it is just plain not art. This seems a better approach than broadening the term "art" to the point of uselessness.