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)."

Comments

Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[Shadow of Eternity]

At this point it's almost like he's desperately trying to find some way of defining "art" in a way that excludes video games purely because he, for some reason, NEEDS them to not be art.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that he's officially passed into hinging his entire worldview in relation to videogames as art on a "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[eln]

I don't think that's necessarily a conclusive argument. I can draw a beautiful picture on page 874 of my personal copy of the federal tax code, but that doesn't make the tax code art.

Without question there is art in video games, but the question is is the video game itself a piece of art? While the various character models, backgrounds, and even cinema clips are art, is the game as a whole? I'd argue that it is, because the design of the gameplay and the storyline, alterable by the user or not, is art in much the same way the architectural design of a building can be art. Additionally, there is such a thing as "interactive art" in which the observer is invited to interact with the art work in various ways. How is this different from a video game?

Of course, ultimately what is and isn't art is in the eye of the beholder. Ebert is entitled to his opinion as to what he considers art, as am I. It just so happens that he's wrong ;).

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[JustinOpinion]

To expand upon this. In any argument if you start really arguing about whether something "really is" something (i.e. arguing over definitions) then you need to take a step back and ask why either side cares about that particular definition (whether it be "art" or "censorship" or "natural" or whatever). You will typically find that the reason both sides are trying to fight for a particular definition is because that word carries with it a whole slew of additional meaning/emotional-baggage/etc. ("art is deep and important", "censorship is bad", "natural is good", etc.).

So instead of arguing over the definition, you should just step back and argue about the characteristics of the things itself. ("Regardless of whether this is technically censorship or not, let's discuss whether this action is a net positive or negative, whether it is immoral, and whether it should be illegal." "Regardless of whether this product is 'natural' or not, let's study whether it is a net positive or negative with respect to human health." Etc.)

In this case, I don't know exactly what ground he thinks he is defending by excluding video games from the "art" category. When he says things like:

"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets."

I can only guess that he comparing all would-be art to some theoretical perfect art (Platonic ideal?) that any person would be immediately moved by. And by his reckoning, video games don't comes close enough to qualify. I disagree with his implication that we can all agree so objectively on what makes "good art" versus "bad art". I think it's quite obvious that video games have an impact on many people--oftentimes a real emotional impact or one that produces thought and reflection. Again, regardless of whether or not you are willing to call that "art" is of little importance to me: video games have cultural impact.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[tool462]

Art doesn't seem to have a good objective definition. It's always defined in terms of the things people consider to BE art. Any definition that doesn't use specific works seems to be an attempt at finding a common thread among the works that person considers to be art. Those themes can vary from person to person.

For some, emotional impact is key. A "sterile", though accurate drawing can never be art to them.
For some, technical skill is important. I know I've refused to call a lot of abstract works "art".
For others, social commentary or message is important. A pop singer is mere entertainment (the horror), but replace her lyrics about her boyfriend with ones about the hardships of poverty and she becomes an artist.

I've played video games that could pass muster in any of these categories, and some arguably in all three.

Wth Mr. Ebert, though, a work of art needs to be static. Interactivity, open-endedness, and an ability to win means it's not art. If you make a video game that is missing these pieces, he neatly claims it's no longer a video game. A very nice circular definition if you ask me.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[RyanFenton]

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

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[cptdondo]

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.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[sammyF70]

Portal, as any other video game is art. Whether it's ~good~ art or not is extremely subjective (which, actually, makes it even more "artful"). I think the reason why portal is mentioned that often is that it was one of the few commercially successful games in the last years which involved the player emotionally (through its story, setting and overall atmosphere).

How is a completely blue canvas art? How is a multicolored photocopy (I know .. not photocopy at all, butyou get the gist) of Marilyn Monroe's face art? Why are anatomically and perspectivically incorrect pictures of madonnas with big boobiçes, painted in the middle age, art? what about crude stick drawings of what could possibly be elefants on a cave side? ... and that's just paintings. If it's the fact that the audience is not participating, then I urge you to consider theater plays living off audience participation, or even concerts relying to a big part on the participation of the audience (Frank Zappa was known for it, so is Bobby Mc Ferrin).

Egbert is just old and grumpy if you ask me ... and quite full of himself.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[PopeRatzo]

At this point it's almost like he's desperately trying

Yes.

Roger Ebert is a very talented and erudite film critic and scholar. His first-hand experience in the movie business gives him an insight beyond that of many other great film critics.

However, he's succumbed to something that is common to people who have succeeded in one area: they start to believe their expertise in one thing makes then expert in all things. There are talented engineers who believe their success at engineering makes their opinions about climate change valuable. There are chemists who decide late in life to write a "Theory of Everything" that includes quantum mechanics and astrophysics. Bono made hit records and believed that qualifies him to solve great world problems. It comes with success in an age of celebrity.

Roger Ebert has been through a lot in the past years. He's battled an extremely aggressive disease that has left him deformed and disabled. The pain alone was probably enough to have made him borderline insane. I'm going to give him a pass on this idiotic statement for two reasons. Number One is because he's written brilliantly about film. There are only a handful of film critics who have worked at such a high level for so long. Number Two is because he's had some medical issues that would have warped anyone's better judgment. I give him credit for trying so hard to continue his career and I wish him the best.

But video games, though not yet there, are certainly capable of being great art.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[hrimhari]

It's deeper than that. In his arguments, he cites "bad writing" in a way that it sounds like not being art, as if art for him implies being "good".

I get the impression that that's his problem. He focuses on "good art" as if that was the only kind of "art", when the "good" part of it carries a huge amount of personal opinion.

But see, he explicitly says that he doesn't care if gamers want to say that their games are art. It just means that he emitted his opinion and he's not willing to discuss it. In fact, he starts his post saying just that: he doesn't want to discuss it:

Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it.

He shouldn't have changed his mind.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[Cryacin]

I think his definition when applied to art and any medium makes sense. A pencil itself is not art, but a pencil jabbed sideways into a watermelon is art.

By this definition, yes, art can be a pencil, but a pencil is not by itself art.

The bit that I don't think Ebert gets, is that he is saying that the pencil can never be art.

This is a false argument, in exactly the same way that a video game can never be art.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[Dalambertian]

After reading the article, it is apparent that EBERT HAS NOT PLAYED ANY OF THE GAMES HE IS CRITICIZING! This would be like saying A Clockwork Orange isn't art while refusing to watch it. Worse than that, it is like claiming that all of film cannot be art because some TEDster can't prove it from stills of Kubrick's films. And for crying out loud, if you want to give good examples of videogames-as-art, the terrorism scene in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 spoke volumes to millions of people around the world, more so than that POS Waco Resurrection. Or, sit down with GTA IV for five minutes. Don't do any of the missions, just walk around and experience an entire world devoted to critiquing post 9-11 American consumerism, paranoia, and even health care. Ebert shall shit his pants when he realizes that not only are videogames art, they are capable of expressing the artist's intent in deeper ways than film ever could.

Re:Is it me or is he sounding more desperate?

[DavidTC]

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.

Sony should mail him a copy of ICO.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Nuff said.

ICO is art.

Shadow of the Colossus, was also incredible but it did not have the emotional impact of ICO. However Shadow of the Colossus remains one of the most visually epic games to date, with a very insightful story... it misses the mark a bit but its there if you break it all down. Its an incredible game.

Re:Nintendogs

[eln]

You may not be able to win at Nintendogs, but if you're playing it at all you've already lost.

Oh, Grandpa!

[RyanFenton]

Are the rules of games art? Perhaps not.

Are games themselves generally composed of art? Yes.

Does applying rules of games to the art in games negate the artistry? No.

Is Ebert being a curmudgeon again? Yeah.

The average first-rate game contain a good book worth of creative written material, galleries of fascinating and provocative artistic images, and a couple albums worth of creative sound. These things are art - they give the game rules context that creates a story the player enacts... they are a play with a branching script, performed with audience participation.

If that's not art, your definition is flawed.

Ryan Fenton

Art For Whom?

[Rary]

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?

Ballroom Dancing

[Noexit]

It's dance, and an art. And yet, you can win at it.

Making a game and PLAYING a game are NOT the same

[marquinhocb]

Is Roger Ebert really that dense?

It's like making the argument that a movie isn't art because you're sitting on your ass while watching it, whereas a painting you have to stand up for.

Art is not about the person VIEWING or EXPERIENCING - it is about the creator.

Clearly WATCHING a movie or PLAYING a video game is not art.

MAKING one, on the other hand, can be.

Re:They can be art

[almightyon11]

Oh really, mister Tzu?

Schopenhauer

[Potor]

There are much older definitions of art, like Schopenhauer's. He argues that artistic judgment is the disinterested contemplation of beauty or the sublime. That is a technical definition, but it basically means that art is free from your will, or desire.

If Schopenhauer is right and art is free from the will, then Ebert's idea is not so stupid, and has some intellectual pedigree. For, a game is the embodiment of the will, in that you want to triumph.

Re:Schopenhauer

[Necreia]

Would that suggest, then, that if an observer and not player of such game - with no interest in victory for the player - appreciates it, that it is then art?

Heavy Rain

[ink]

You don't "win" or "lose" Heavy Rain. You experience it. It's even less of a game than Flower. I suppose Ebert could say that it has passed through being a video game, and gone on to being an interactive movie (hello Fahrenheit 451) -- but your skill, lack thereof, or intentional supression of it determines how the narrative unfolds. It's unlike most any other "game" you have played, and very moving.

That said, I fundamentally disagree with him. Art evokes an emotional response -- and video games do that in spades. From becoming an avatar in Ultima, to avoiding zombies in Resident Evil, losing Arith in FF VII, exploring your coldwar inner child in post-apocalyptic DC in Fallout 3 and discovering who GladOS is in Portal, video games do that. Denying such is just being snobbish.

Consider the source.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Ebert is a movie critic. As such he has a vested interest in keeping people interested in spending their eyeball time on movies rather than "diverting" it to other passtimes, such as video games. This constitutes a conflict of interest whenever he attempts to analyze those passtimes.

Again, Ebert is a movie critic. This means he thinks movies are something more worthy of his attention than other passtimes. This can be expected to produce a subjective bias whenever he attempts to analyze other passtimes.

While this may be his actual honest and informed opinion, rather than a conscious attempt to promote his own subject matter (and thus his career as a critic) or an unconscious bias manifesting as a denigration of other art(or not)forms, I am inclined to take what he says about video-games-as-art with a large salt lick. (The same one I used in the '50s through now when blithely ignoring the mainstream literature establishment's constant criticism of both science fiction - which has an opposing ideology - and graphic novels / "comic books" - which bear the same relationship to written literature as theater does to storytelling.)

I am reminded of the TV show episodes during the rise of various things perceived as competition to network TV - cable, internet-based conferencing (netnews, blogs, ...), and again video games - which attempted to tie video games to crime, drugs, death, etc. (For example I recall one particularly pathetic (and low budget) cop show (involving "The San Diego Chicken" as a major character and witness) where the murder was committed by an executive of one of two cable companies involved in a bidding war.)

I hope Ebert is not sinking to this level.

Just listen to his counterarguments...

[cfalcon]

He's arguing with someone who is actually correct that games are art. Here's how he handles this debate:

"Santiago now supplies samples of a video game named "Waco Resurrection" (above), in which the player, as David Koresh, defends his Branch Davidian compound against FBI agents. The graphics show the protagonist exchanging gunfire with agents according to the rules of the game. Although the player must don a Koresh mask and inspire his followers to play, the game looks from her samples like one more brainless shooting-gallery."

Ok, note the important thing: because games require you to actually play them to appreciate them, he's essentially describing a painting that *he has never even seen*. He's making the conclusion that the game is not art *based on screenshots*.

Really. Super really. He's as qualified to judge whether or not this game is art as my damned dog is to preside over the works of Michelangelo- meaning, he'll ignore that which is on the ceiling, and he'll pee on whatever he can reach.

"Her next example is a game named "Braid" (above). This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game."

For the unfamiliar, we have " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_(video_game) ".

Firstly, in chess, if you are practicing or playing by yourself, taking back a move is one of the things you do to explore the gamespace more thoroughly. Only in a competitive multiplayer environment does time manipulation become something different entirely. He's suddenly gone from exploring a world into cheating. Not related. Plus, the game isn't just a regular game that has time manipulation, as he would again discovered *if only he could type it into google*. Seriously, here's from wikipedia:

"Time and Mystery introduces objects surrounded by a green glow that are unaffected by time manipulation; for example, switches will remain flipped even if time is rewound to before the action occurred. Rewinding can thus be used to change the synchronization between objects that can and cannot be rewound, the basis of many puzzles in this section.[15] This theme is also used in later worlds to denote objects unaffected by the player's time manipulation."

Ok, so, he doesn't know what he's talking about. This isn't "taking back a move" at all. This is something he has never heard of and doesn't understand.

And his third:

"We come to Example 3, "Flower" (above). A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is "about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural." Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn't say. Do you win if you're the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is? "

I don't know man DO YOU? You haven't even TRIED this game out.

What a tool. Seriously, this is like refusing to acknowledge sculpture as art because all you have seen are pictures, or dismissing photography because you heard someone describe how a camera worked and then you were like, wait, does the exposure speed matter? WHY DO YOU NOT SAY NOT ART LOL. Or as I mentioned before, dismissing paintings having never viewed them.

Old man is old.

who is this ebert guy again?

[shadowrat]

He's not a game critic. He's a MOVIE critic. He's watched trailers of games and commented on them with the perspective of a movie critic. Did he play portal? Did he play Braid? Did he play bioshock? Did he play WACO? No.

Now i'm going to play the part of the snob. Even if he did, he's unqualified to judge them. Roger Ebert does not understand the vocabulary of gaming. He hasn't played enough FPS to judge the waco game as an experience beyond you run and shoot people.

Not that i'm defending the waco game as art. i've never played it myself. I don't go into it thinking the point of the experience is to shoot people however. shooting people is common place to gamers. to someone who has played a number of FPS games, they are likely not paying much attention to the fact that they are shooting people. Someone who doesn't instinctively control an fps is likely to spend more time trying to figure out how to move, how to shoot, than to absorb any kind of message or mood the game is trying to convey.

Having gone to art school, i know that art snobs think the knowledge you bring to viewing the art is important in critiquing it. Having a thorough knowledge of principles of design and color theory is essential to being an art snob. Games have their own vocabulary and history, and if you don't posess it, you are just a schmoe saying, "i could have put a red square on a black canvas."

Re:Shadow of the Colossus

[EdZ]

He's Begging the Question. He defines 'games' as 'interactive stories that aren't art', then uses this to prove that games aren't art.