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Revisiting Ebert — Games Can Be Art, But Are They?
At the recent Game Developers Conference, industry vet Brian Moriarty spoke at length about the old videogames-as-art debate. Moriarty found himself reluctantly defending one part of Roger Ebert's infamous argument against the notion: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers." What followed was a thoughtful discussion of how games fit in with the definition of art and how the commercialization that almost universally surrounds them can inhibit true artistic expression. Quoting:
"Unlike Mr. Ebert, I have played many of the games widely regarded as great and seminal. I have the privilege of knowing many of the authors personally. But as much as I admire games like M.U.L.E., Balance of Power, Sim City and Civilization, it would never even occur to me to compare them to the treasures of world literature, painting or music. ... Video games are an industry. You are attending a giant industry conference. Industries make products. Video game products contain plenty of art, but it's product art, which is to say, kitsch art. Kitsch art is not bad art. It's commercial art. Art designed to be sold, easily and in quantity. And the bigger the audience, the kitschier it's gonna get."
So ture
You are attending a giant industry conference. Industries make products. Video game products contain plenty of art, but it's product art, which is to say, kitsch art.
No shit, Sherlock.
Art lies in the artistic act itself. Whatever tangible result produced by the artistic act is but its trace.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
There are games that are made for artistic purposes, such as The Graveyard. There are other games that are so beautiful, in audio and video, that you can call them art (ICO may be part of this group). There are games like LSD that end up being extremely artistic without actively trying to be such. There's also a small genre of games like Yume Nikki that some may consider art, even though the graphic style of the game is generic, the game itself is like a good novel.
The article has to be trolling. Are we supposed to point out that many novels, books, paintings etc. were also products of an industry? Plus who cares what is or isn't art, anyway?
I feel that anyone seriously considering responding to this should probably do a little more reading first. A good start would be a published article by Aaron Smuts (Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin) which was published in November 2005.
http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=299
He puts far more detailed discussion and argument in there than TFA listed above. At the end of the day though, as Len Wein said, "Art is always in the eyes of the beholder." If you think it is art, then for you - it is art. Doesn't really matter what anyone else says about it.
The motion picture INDUSTRY cranks out product art too. Green screens and CGI abound. But Hollywood puts on better self-congratulatory award shows. Sometimes.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
People who talk about "Kitch" art are generally the kind of people who think that true "Art" consists of splotches of paint on canvas and rusty iron walls. I'm not going to dwell on this, but I will add that yes, some art is crass and cheap.
But some art is heartfelt, and worked hard on, and that shows through in the final product. And there are video games which meet that standard.
Since art is in the eye of the beholder, we could all list off a half dozen games which we consider to be artistic or art, or artsy. These all generally follow some notion of what the general public considers to be "high art", or at least we'd like to think they do. I'm sure art critics would probably scoff.
But under one of the primary definitions of art, something that evokes emotional response or intellectual thought, it's actually very clear that games are art. I think most people on the forum will have played a game--however primitive--which moved them deeply in some way. And moved them in a more genuine and heartfelt way than any picture of circles has ever moved any art critic.
I'm sure that for many years, if not forever, games will be dismissed as shallow, sophomoric art. And while it's true that many indeed are, such prejudices will always deny truely great games the recognition, or even the respect, that they honestly deserve.
May the Maths Be with you!
Film, art, music, all of that are products of industry too. Barely any of it is made for the sake of making it because those people enjoy it.
Difficulty in making an artistic piece does not make decide whether it is considered art or not. That is STUPID.
Many artistic pieces through the years have costed loads in currency to produce over long periods, especially architectural art pieces.
There are game developers out there who make games for the sake of making games, for their love and passion of games.
Looks like that makes their games art going by this silly argument.
Also, why the hell to people listen to, and give attention to, that idiot Roger? He is as bad as Jack Thompson. Stop giving these people attention, PLEASE.
I don't care if he was the best and greatest of yesterdecades, he is a tit NOW. I'm getting tired hearing about his awful elitism bullshit.
What about Braid? That had a very moving story, that you were involved in helping to move along personally. Trine is another example.
The Space Quest series, Kings Quest, Police Quest, Day Of The Tentacle, Monkey Island, etc. all had excellent stories and were very artistic in their own fashion. Along the same lines, Beneath a Steel Sky is probably on par at the very least with Bladerunner, and all-time cult classic in terms of dystopian stories akin to Brazil.
There are hundreds of more games I haven't even played yet that the same could be said for.
...treasures of world literature, painting or music. ... Video games are an industry... Industries make products. Video game products contain plenty of art, but it's product art, which is to say, kitsch art. Kitsch art is not bad art. It's commercial art. Art designed to be sold, easily and in quantity. And the bigger the audience, the kitschier it's gonna get.
It's not like there's a giant commercial industry of movie makers. Or novelists. Or painters. Or musicians. Is this guy high?
I'm a psychologist (amongst other things).
...he hasn't played Psychonauts by Tim Schafer. It is absolutely masterful in its depiction of humanity. While maintaining an amusing cartoonish style, it touches on the most difficult and painful parts of life. Like art, it teaches us something about life that cannot be taught in any other way.
In my opinion, intent defines whether something is art or not. The way I see it, if the intent of creating something is to sell it to people, it can never be considered art. And if the intent of creating something so that it will be useful for other people, it can never be considered art. Only when the intent of creating something simply for the sake of creating that thing, it can be considered art in my view.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Why do video games have to reach some mythical, arbitrary level of artistic worth? "Hey, that's a great game that's fun to play, but....oh, it's not a 200 year old painting of nude fat women. Sorry, it's worth less now on the Society Scorecard".
Get over it already. So some people think video games aren't art. Hell, so what if 99% of the world feels this way. So fucking what? Dickens wasn't writing to make art, he was writing to entertain and sell a product. Michelangelo created David because someone paid him to do so. In another 100 years people may start really feeling this way about video games....or maybe they won't. In the end, it doesn't make a shit bit of difference. Play video games, enjoy them. Stop worrying what other people think about them.
I think it's a mistake to look at the storyline in a computer game and compare it to literature, look at the graphics and compare it to movies or paintings, etc. You need to look at the game as a whole to make a meaningful assessment. And to do that, you need to get your hands dirty and actually play it for an extended period of time. Only then do the strengths of computer games appear: interactivity, immersion and problem-solving.
Different forms of art compete in different categories. If motion pictures had been judged by the standard of stage plays when they first appeared, they'd have been dismissed as shallow, crude and completely lacking in dialogue. And it would have been just as unfair as comparing computer games to literature or visual arts.
Perhaps there are no computer games which can be considered truly great works of art (although I think the original Civilization game should qualify), but popular art is also an important form of art.
Go take a look at Newgrounds.com at the variety of games including fun, experimental, commercial, indie, weird, user-created, ...., games. Then try to say this is not art.
I examined Ebert's comments back when he made them and thought about them after the initial knee-jerk reaction of "YES THEY ARE!!!!" and, sadly, also agreed.
My reasoning is that video games *contain* art. but can't be considered art as a *whole*.
Think about it. A museum *contains* art. However museums themselves, as a whole, are *not* art. Walking through a museum isn't a piece of art, although there are quite a few pieces of art within it. The art within the museum, however, can be removed from the museum and *still* contain as much of that quality deemed as artistic as they did within the museums. Video games, then, are containers of various bits of art. Be they the graphics, the storylines, the music or what have you are each *individually* easily labeled as art, however the video game as a *whole* was not something I could consider to be art.
Of course, this is just based on the dozens/hundredish games that I've personally played. Perhaps, out there is a game where the very control scheme, the experience as a whole, not the story, not the designs, not the music, but a combination of them all in tandem with the gameplay mechanics/control scheme/what have you combine in such a way that there's some form of gestalt, delivering a final experience with resonates with my very soul, but I don't see that happening with anything I've played as is.
Yes, some stories are amazing and touch the soul, but that's merely the story. Yes, some of the graphics are evocative of something ephemeral, but that's just the graphics. Yes, some music is truly awe inspiring and shakes the foundations of my being, but that's just the music. The story or the graphics or the music or even the combination of the three does *not* constitute an actual game. Those things could be separated from the game itself and still hold the same power as they did within the game, perhaps even becoming *stronger* without the necessity of gameplay interrupting the story. Games involve gameplay, anything else is just a movie. And I have not ever seen a game where everything, *together*, combined into something that reflected the human spirit.
Sorry friends. Games are not art. Games *contain* art, and some are quite amazing. However games as a whole are not art. Or...at least not yet.
the treasures of world literature, painting or music
I think these things are kind of overrated; if we rated them realistically, it'd be easier to see that games are equally worthy of attention (where the worth is "sure, enjoy them if you want, but they aren't universally life-changing")
Industries make products
There are also literature, painting, and music industries; and indie games created by individuals with vision
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
I didn't realise art had to be *good* to be /art/. Like, I've seen loads of mediocre paintings, etc. and I'm pretty sure they're still counted as art.
This whole thing sounds like pretentious BS to me, and that whole world revolves round having something to look down on.
They were short and to the point. A video game is made by many people practicing many artistic disciplines. It is absurd to think that the final product isn't art.
No, it's bullshit.
Almost all art ever made, was made to be sold and most of it was commissioned by some rich client.
Probably the best example is the Sistine Chapel. It wasn't done as some work of vision and love by Michelangelo. Michelangelo was good at painting, to be sure, but he considered it an inferior art form and he preferred sculpture. He only did that epic fresco because he was offered a shitload of money to do something he didn't like. I.e., he sold out. And even then he hid various FU-s at the pope's expense in it, sorta the renaissance painter's version of hiding a "fuck the pointy haired boss" comment in some obscure source file.
Is anyone prepared to say that that's not art, because it's commercial? WTF? When did that idiotic notion originate, anyway?
Art done as an industry, again, is as old as recorded history. There were plenty of professional sculptors and painters who did it as a full time job, and as their way of earning their bread. In fact, the vast majority of them were, by sheer virtue of living in poorer times when you didn't have the luxury of sitting around on the dole and creating art not tainted by commercialism.
Many made it into an extremely profitable trade, and were very much aware of money and of what the clients want. E.g., Titian is a prime example of that. He even diversified into grain trade in between painting masterpieces. Is anyone prepared to say that Titian isn't art? You know, THE fucking Titian?
Many had studios where they created a ton of paintings with apprentices. E.g., since I mentioned Titian already, he started as such an apprentice for Giorgione, and apparently quite a bit of Giorgione's art is now considered to be most certainly done by his apprentice Titian. And when he started working in his own name, Titian too in turn took such apprentices to help churn commercial art to be sold, e.g., copies of his earlier paintings.
He's not even the only one. Leonardo da Vinci is for example another guy who financed his other studies with selling art, started as a worker in such a painter's workshot, and later had one of his own. Mona Lisa, you know, THE famous painting, is heavily "photoshopped", or rather the renaissance equivalent of that: it appears that what was first painted was rounder face, and then he made her thinner and sexier. Presumably because that's what the paying customer wanted. And in the end it was used by Leonardo as basically a way to sell himself, as a sample of what quality shit he can paint. Is anyone prepared to say that Leonardo's stuff isn't art because he sold out? Or WTH?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If what passes for "modern" art is art than even the most kitsch, banal, and derivative of video games is high bloody art.
It is true however that there are few "high art" video games. Most games if they were translated to movies would either be 2nd rate summer blockbusters or "made for TV". But that is due to the market not the genre. Most movies and books are similarly crap.
However video games can impart an experience in a much more powerful way than any other form of media due to the amount players can relate to the character. When you as the player have to make an important decision it is much more real than reading about a character making that important decision.
"Art" games are rarely made because there is little professional recognition and support compared to "art" movies or books. Which is needed because the public doesn't buy "art" enough to make it commercially viable.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers.
Didn't some University have an English class that studied the game BioShock in place of a text?
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
What is the sex of the great A'tuin?
It seems to mean "everything but games" at the moment.
What kind of things are art?
Well, the Mona Lisa is definitely art. But so is a big, black square. Geometric shapes also work. Scribbling a beard and moustache on the Mona Lisa is also art, if you're famous enough at least.
Of course it doesn't have to be a painting. It can be pretty much anything. An urinal, a room with a light that goes on and off, the artist's shit, wrapping the Reichstag in cloth, or apparently even a dog starving to death in an art gallery. Movies initially weren't art, but now they are.
It doesn't need to have an intention behind it, even. If you make up any random bullshit and manage to convince enough people that is art by inventing some convoluted explanation, then after you admit it's all made up nonsense everybody else will just say that you can make art without intending to.
I think Duchamp really nailed it by proving that whatever you can get an art gallery to exhibit becomes art. So there's an easy way of solving this: somebody just needs to figure a way of getting Tetris exhibited in a gallery, and problem solved.
Personally, I think video games can never be art, simply due to the nature of games. Games are defined by rules, and the intention of games is to provide entertainment and challenges. If you are being entertained or are competing, do you really have the time for being inspired, for contemplating life, for challenging your philosophical views, for developing yourselves as a empathetic human being? That is not what games give opportunity for IMHO. Instead, games serve the purpose games always have served: to compete, to train and enjoy it, to develop problem solving skills, to have a recreational activity, to have something to get together about (LAN parties, MMO's, hobby, etc.).
If you make a video game that doesn't contain rules, that doesn't have challenges, without social interaction, but instead does the same thing "great art" does, then yes, that game could likely be called "great art". But would it then really be a video game, or would it be interactive art? IMO, games can never be art, and they shouldn't be confused with interactive art. Conversely, interactive art is definitely possible, and several of the examples given earlier of artful video "games" seems to fit the category of "interactive art" much better than the definition of a game. And this "interactive art" definitely have the potential to be very great art, due to the possibilities of interactivity.
Am I the only one who noticed that this guy only referenced strategy games?
Like arcade games, this genre isn't intended to be artsy but simply entertaining.
ITT: Engineers discussing art.
Braid was Art. Deus Ex got more depth than half the books my mother reads. Art is subjective and we only agree on the tip of the iceberg's looks. Everyone agrees that Braid IS art. But then we can name and argue about the rest, just as we can argue whether Bieber's musique can be put in the same category as Shakespeare's litterature. And second, it's true that "video games" is an industry delivering products, we just can't say Half-Life is similar to CoD. For each it's own appeal, feeling and nature. And just because one of them is less "Artistic", it doesn't mean that what is similar is also "Not-Artistic".
Rez
Collector's Edition
The thing that bugs me is that everyone is comparing games to contemporary art. But books, plays, and music have been developed and refined for centuries, millenia even. Games have been around for, if you stretch things, fourty years.
If you're going to make comparisons, make them to the early works. Compare games to the early classics - make comparisons to Homer, Euripedes, Aristophanes. There's some surprising parallels between the Illiad and Super Mario Bros., come to think of it.
If you must make comparisons to films, make comparison to early films. It was fifty years after the invention of film that we got our first real "masterpiece", Citizen Kane. By that logic, we won't have a game masterpiece for another decade.
"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers." It seems to me that art is considered great based on the amount of emotional response it stirs up in the person interacting or observing whatever medium the art is based on. I would almost agree with the gentleman speaking, almost. There have been a few games that really get up into your soul, get under your skin and get your heart pounding. Thats as close as the industry really gets, except for System Shock 2. That game was a bonafide masterpiece of art. Maybe I'd even go so far as to say Gears of War 2 multiplayer can be some fantastic performance art, under certain situations, like when the last man standing on his team hunts down and chainsaws the remaining three men on the other team. If I've gone that far I'd have to include BF1942 as well, if there is two teams playing very seriously sitting back and watching is incredible. It's like a war movie. "Hero" the old movie filmed within the engine, theres a word for this, mechinama? mechina? something? was quite a good short film. Except that there are no lives on the line, almost no human interest sections, gears and bf1942 can be beautiful, and raise an emotional response like sports can. System Shock 2 is the only game to transcend the trappings of the industry. And it does it through the emotion of fear, which is kinda hilarious. my 2 cents.
Yeah? So I turned your toaster into an alarm clock. I'm an EET thats what we do.
I have a BA in Fine Studies (along with a Acc. in Computer Science) and I can tell you with 100% certainty that video games are art. Art is at it's most basic level the conveying of an idea or ideas through a craft (simplified statement). This doesn't mean that all video game are high art and in fact I'm not sure any meet that standard but they are art. It is fair to compare them to films because it's popular art, and it's fair to say that many games are the Art equivalent of Men in Black II. But there are a good number of games which convey a number of great visual, emotional, and cultural ideas.
Art critics are the zealots of a religion. They look for some spark of divinity in the product of man's efforts but like all other religions fail to substantively prove their point. What is divine and what is not? What is ART and what is not? I suppose our unelected clergy might be able to tell us!
It is up to every human on the planet to decide for themselves what they consider to be art. To believe otherwise is to become sheep bound mindlessly to a misguided flock.
Video games are an industry. You are attending a giant industry conference. Industries make products. Video game products contain plenty of art, but it's product art, which is to say, kitsch art. Kitsch art is not bad art. It's commercial art. Art designed to be sold, easily and in quantity. And the bigger the audience, the kitschier it's gonna get.
You need to stop looking at the video game industry, and start looking at individual titles.
There is a movie industry, but there are still movies that are called art. There's a publishing industry, but there are still novels that are called art.
But as much as I admire games like M.U.L.E., Balance of Power, Sim City and Civilization, it would never even occur to me to compare them to the treasures of world literature, painting or music.
And you need to look at video games for what they are, instead of what they aren't. You can't really talk about plotlines and character development when you're looking at a painting. You can't talk about colors and media usage and brush strokes when you're looking at a novel. And dissecting video games based on the criteria we use for things that aren't video games just isn't going to work well.
Video games offer immersion and interactivity that traditional media like painting and sculpture and film and prose do not. You aren't told how a room looks. You aren't given a static image of the room. You aren't given a nice camera pan of the room. You actually walk into the room, choose what to look at, approach the things that interest you.
The characters in a video game may not qualify as art. The graphics and imagery may not qualify as art. The soundtrack may not qualify as art. But, taken as a whole, the experience of moving through and discovering this world may very well qualify as art.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
It's not like there's a giant commercial industry of movie makers. Or novelists. Or painters. Or musicians.
I see your sarcasm. But unlike the video game consoles, those media don't have a cryptographic lockout preventing those outside the "giant commercial industry" from even getting started.
I am Reversebert. I have played thousands of videogames, and consider myself a well versed videogame critic. The other day I watched Transformers: The Movie. And I read a Mills & Boone novel. Then I played Shadow of the Colossus. Based on that, I have decided that movies and books can never attain the level of art that games have. I couldn't interact with the movie or novel in any way! I was a passive spectator and felt like both experiences were already determined for me. Based on such an unfair comparison, neither movies nor books can ever hope to attain the level of art that videogames have.
"It's commercial art. Art designed to be sold, easily and in quantity. And the bigger the audience, the kitschier it's gonna get."
And what art pray tell isn't designed to be produced, bought, resold, reproduced... all for consumption by an adoring audience... for profit? I have a gut feeling MOST of the works attributable as artistic classics were done, commissioned, solely for their commercial potential. If that's the line of reasoning then perhaps all those traditional "artists" wouldn't mind returning their coin on principal in defense of their superior, pure "art".
*crickets*
Yeah, didn't think so.
If it's something done as a means of making a living it's more akin to a craft/trade (skilled and though highly subjective in the "artistic" case...). In and of itself, "art" is a subset categorically filed under PRODUCT. Just as literature, painting, music, and film are industries with their respective commodities driving their little slice of the economy.
Long story short, bad definitions of "what is" is. A bullshit question deserves a bullshit answer.
It seems to me that art is considered great based on the amount of emotional response it stirs up in the person interacting or observing whatever medium the art is based on.
TFA rebuts this with the example of a video of someone stomping on animals.
That said, loop it, give it a pretentious title, and display it in a gallery -- someone would call it art.
Art is an arbitrary designation that only recently has become important in any way. It has become a snobbish way of creating a division between the masses and the "intellectuals". These days art is stuff that the average person hates, stuff that's of no value unless you subscribe to the propaganda spewed by artists. Calling things "art" is a way of tagging popular things as unimportant while making niche things seem more important than they are.
The art propaganda wants people to believe that in order to be good humans they must join the faith of the art movement and love the crazy smears produced by artists that have found a way to get the maximum amount of sellable product with the minimum of effort. Is it not a testament to the worthlessness of modern art that the masses cannot appreciate it? The idea that popularity and value as art are separate is fostered by bad artists. The great masters of the past? Their works appealed to the masses, that's why they are so valuable. The artists who produce works only a small clique sees as a good thing get forgotten.
there's about as many games that could be argued are 'art' that there are movies.
was spiderman 3 art? then mass effect 3 could be art...
is ICO art or just a moody puzzler? was schindlers list art or just a history lesson? did you care more about the girl in the red coat or about Aeris (Aerith) when she died?
I mean they put this crap in museums as "art"
*anything* can be art or artistic. games can be moving and emotional visually stunning just as much as movies. both have independent branches and corporate franchises. the concept of art is up to interpretation and the argument is all a bit silly.
Games can't be compared to literature, music or paint because they are a combinations of two or more of those media, god damn it, it's like comparing the general quality of the assembly of a motor with the individual quality of it's parts. If you are going to make comparitions it should be with things like theater or movies, that are also combinations of diferentes media.
Also if crap like Twilight can be considered art just because they were released as novels, then my frikin Shadow of The Colosus deserve it's own exhibiton on the Louvre presented as screenshots.
I love this idea. It means I can tell my wife she's stifling my artistic studies when she nags me to stop playing that video game at 3:30 am. ;-)
Indeed it would be, but it would not be taken seriously, unless it was someone smashing a urinal perhaps? I jest I jest. I would think that some of the more abhorrent emotions wouldn't be considered, but there is certainly lots of people who love having certain emotions stimulated, as evidenced by the commercial success of films like SAW.
Yeah? So I turned your toaster into an alarm clock. I'm an EET thats what we do.
src, http://www.forumopolis.com/showpost.php?p=3306484&postcount=150
From wikipedia:
"is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value."
Mr Moriarty, in the words of my favorite giant "I do not think that word means what you think it means".
Movies are an industry. For decades they were the biggest entertainment industry there was. Even movies like The Godfather and Citizen Kane were made by the industrial machine, for the purpose of turning a profit. Unless you're going to call every movie to come out of Hollywood 'kitsch art' (which is just a euphemism for 'bad'), then I don't think this is an argument that holds much water.
In my opinion, intent defines whether something is art or not. The way I see it, if the intent of creating something is to sell it to people, it can never be considered art. And if the intent of creating something so that it will be useful for other people, it can never be considered art. Only when the intent of creating something simply for the sake of creating that thing, it can be considered art in my view.
I write for love, but I publish for money.
-- (attr.) Vladimir Nabokov (author of "Lolite")
Some people think that covering a room in spaghetti or throwing paint randomly on canvas is art.
I don't consider it art because any 4 year old can do it. However it still is art.
Others think that industrial gore metal (or whatever that banging of instruments and screaming is called) is art.
Again, I don't consider it that because it sounds horrible, however all of the fans of that music would disagree with me. Notice I still called it music, and music is art.
On the other hand, I think that games like Alice, Half-life 1&2, Doom and Mario Bros 3&64 are art. Many gamers would probably agree with me, many other people probably feel insulted at the thought.
The definition of Art should be: Something created to serve no other purpose than entertainment, i.e. to be enjoyed by those who want to enjoy it.
~Syberz
... is just a euphemism for high achievement. It's too bad that pretentiousness and cliquishness gets in the way of merely acknowledging the the highly skilled works and the people responsible for them,
Art is all about being in the club. To be considered art you have to know art people. The actual idea of an object, painting, a game or whatever being art has no link to any quality of the actual piece.
I think that Portal easily qualifies as "worthy of comparison". In fact, it beats the hell out of the lesser entertainment forms he mentions. I don't even see why people care about having games defined as "art", the great games go so far beyond that. The experience is much more personal in games, you are not forced to spend your time from the outside looking in. You spend your time actually in it. This tool Ebert admits to not have the credentials to make a valid comparison so I don't see why anyone even cares what he thinks.
Fear is the mind killer.
http://insomnia.ac/commentary/for_artfags_only/
Smartest man on the planet says:
"But as for the subject of "art and videogames", this will be the only controversial subject I am going to deal with for which no specialized knowledge is necessary. It is such a simple, trivial issue that any mildly intelligent person off the street should be able to understand it, even if he has never touched a videogame in his life. It's basically an issue of semantics. The question "Can games be art?" is nonsensical, and therefore any answer one might come up with for it will also be nonsensical. Put another way: the question is not a question and the answer is not an answer. It's kind of like asking if the "sky" can be "sad". When you ask such a "question" you are using language in an improper way, and the only solution to the "problem" posed by the "question" is for you to simply STOP ASKING IT."
As rhetoric (in the logical argument sense of the word), Moriarty performs about as well as what you'd expect from an English major. For the sakes of clarity and brevity, I'll just address two of the gaping flaws in his argument.
1. If video games are media, they are the second youngest, assuming that list contains blogging or something. If the categories are film, painting, sculpture, music, literature and television, then video games would have to be the youngest, coming in right after tv at about thirty years old. I point this out because, by saying that there are no "classic" games on a level with film, lit, or other art, both Ebert and Moriarty imply that one necessary qualification for art is age. I note with interest that no example from television was given, either, or dramatic radio.
2. I agree that neither chess, nor go, nor Missile Command represent art, since all three are essentially the same sort of game. None of these games tell a story; they are frameworks for competition, with rules, objectives, and the potential to be replayed without the same events recurring. Let me clarify the last point. While it is theoretically possible to play two games of tennis where the same events occur in the same order, it is so unlikely that it is statistically impossible IMHO. It would be highly unlikely without the collusion of both players, in which case it has ceased to be the game of tennis and has become performance art.
On the other hand, Loom (to use an example close to home) is a game which tells a story. While the player has some freedom to choose the way in which the story is told, there is still a plot, and the point of the exercise is not to see how good the player is at Loom, but rather for the authors of the game to tell the player a story. Now, just like any other story told via the written word or through film or pictures, some are more interesting than others. Some are told better, some are more trite, some are avant garde, some are little more than mediums for advertising or a way to earn a quick buck. But, they aren't fundamentally different.
Is a bad movie art? Is an instructional video art? If it isn't, does that mean that no movie can be art? The same holds true for games.
I didn't like Braid. A whole lot. But, I am forced to admit that there was an aspect of the game that was clearly meant as art. I also don't like Warhol, but 99% of textbooks agree that Warhol was an artist.
Aaaah!
Look, people need to understand something about this stupidity. Leading beigocrats like Ebert mean something stupid when they talk about Art (pretentious capital letter implied by the beigocracy). They mean, "Art that doesn't offend anyone that matters." Often, this is Art made by people who are long dead, although in film it includes films that win Academy awards.
Often, Art that is dismissed as garbage when it comes out, but which still becomes influential will be inducted into the canon. Stuff like a A Clockwork Orange which was scary when it came out but is now safely confined to a small number of film buffs. The important thing is that it has to be safe.
Fight Club is another one of these movies, Ebert claimed it was fascist when it first came out. By his low score review and his claim of fascism, he was basically claiming it was not Art.
Now, with video games, beigocrats like Ebert are still comfortable dismissing the entire form. So, they can make stupid claims like video games are not capital 'A' Art. Ebert will even argue, stupidly, that video games are not small 'a' art, just out of sheer bloody minded beigian fanaticism.
Ebert is offended by the entire videogame form, and he speaks for enough of the beigocracy, for the time being, that he is safe in dismissing all videogames. Really, though, all he's doing is what some people's parents do when they say, "That's not music, that's noise. Now the Beach Boys, that was music," just on a much larger scale.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
...and we shit on it every day.
Today's games are still just cave paintings compared to what we will have in the future. Get kids off of finger painting and on to world editors, then we will see what develops.
Ironically enough, a bunch of art we still have from, say, the Romans was essentially "No Trespassing" signs. Early Romans used to use a statue of Priapus with an enormous erect dick as just that. Often accompanied by a bit of poetry too, to remind would be thieves and trespassers that they're getting it in the ass if caught.
The Romans, see, were as practical as ever. They didn't mope and wish you ass-rape in prison, they'd just get the job done themselves. That's Romans for you. When they wanted something done, by Jupiter, they'd pull up their sleeves and their tunic and get the job done personally. It's no coincidence that such people built an Empire ;)
But at any rate, they placed images of Priapus near fences as some kind of "Trespassers will be prosec... err... fucked" sign, in some bars and shops as a reminder for would be shoplifters, and so on. It was the ubiquitous "don't even think about it" sign. Where nowadays you'd have a "no trespassing" sign or a "this store uses video surveillance" sign, you'd have the image of a guy with a giant erect dick.
So, yeah, even a no-trespassing sign can be art. We have a bunch of those in museums, even.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's because you're obsessed with getting your game on a Nintendo handheld, when Nintendo is watching its handheld gaming business get overtaken by peoples' cell phones.
Most Android phones cost 70 USD per month for service; a lot of moms would rather pay for a DS or iPod touch and have the kids use the house's existing land line and/or a $5/mo prepaid dumbphone for urgent calls such as needing a ride. But perhaps more importantly, cell phones by and large lack physical directional pads. Not all genres have been shown to work well with a stylus or a finger, and a directional pad faked with multitouch is far less responsive in my experience.
The Android dev kit is free; go get started.
Pocket-size Android devices like Archos 43 that aren't phones don't even have that; instead, they have resistive single-touch screens. Because they lack multitouch, they can't even emulate a D-pad, further limiting available genres. Is there a standard practice workaround for this?
Lockjaw
I haven't touched it for years and don't plan to.
"What can change the nature of a man?"
But with games, all you have to do is not target consoles. There's a thriving indie sector on the PC
I understand that. But some genres, such as fighting games and party games, do not work well on PC because by and large, PCs are on desks, with one PC per player. Home theater PCs exist, but there are so few that they're a rounding error.
post on this very site
There are also posts on this very site claiming that people by and large don't want to connect a computer to a large monitor for gaming: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Allow me to quote CronoCloud: "Let me say that again: Most non-geek people simply have no desire to hook up their computer to their TV".
Maybe Moriarty makes some good points here, but I'm more impressed by his diversions and fallacies.
I'll try to sum up my objections in really tiny one- or two-sentence paragraphs. I think Moriarty would respect that.
Consider his argument that: Dice and Chess are games. Dice and Chess are not art. No other game is art. Doom is a game. Doom is not art.
I'm not saying if Doom is art or not -- I just used it as an example of title everyone knows, and it's mentioned in TFA -- I'm just saying that just because every game Moriarty can think of is not art, then all games are not art is not a really wonderful argument.
Then there's his assertion that anything commercial can't be art. Of course he makes an exception for art commissioned by the wealthy back in the olden days, because that's art and not kitch. He seems to imply it's art because it's thought provoking and unaffordable.
But lets move on to "kitch". He states:
Three (and most important): Kitsch does not substantially enrich our associations relating to the depicted objects or themes.
The last thing kitsch wants to be is challenging. Pure kitsch is never ironic, ambiguous, troubling, or innovative.
So if it's commercial, it's kitch. But if it's a little thought-provoking, it's not pure kitch. I guess maybe there's a little art in it . . . Isn't this an example of "No true Scotsman"?
But I think my biggest beef with Moriarty is he is defending Ebert by invoking Ebert!
If a connoisseur's disinterested exercise of taste earns the agreement of many over time, he or she is called an expert.
Such an expert is Roger Ebert.
Here is a point I hope we can all agree on. Roger Ebert knows movies.
Appeal to the very authority you are trying to validate? Really?
So my understanding of the apology is this: "I can define art in restrictive enough terms that it excludes video games and games in general."
The slight longer form: "Anything that is commercial is not art. Anything that isn't sufficiently thought-provoking isn't art. Anything interactive isn't art. Anything that can be fully appreciated in one viewing isn't art. Anything that isn't sufficiently expensive or is too broadly available isn't art. If someone might accidentally throw it away, it's not art. If it's inspired by something else, it's not art. And pretty much nothing new is art."
I am not a crackpot.
I agree with you that there have not been great block buster games that I would consider tremendous works of art, but plenty of indy titles stir emotion and feel artistic. This is comparable to how movie block-busters like Iron Man that make millions are not very artistic, but smaller projects that often win the Oscars are.
The issue I see with gaming till now is not that games are made for profit, art and movies are still made for profit, it is that the barrier to entry was too high. To draw or shoot a movie or write a book you simply need paint or a camera or pen and paper respectively. I would put computer knowledge as a barrier as well, but that is a wash with the need for the talent needed to draw or write compelling stories. When it comes to games, people had to either settle for making simple games or they had to work for a studio that will impede their artistic vision for the sake of profit, understandably so since studios are businesses. Now more and more tools are being created to lower the barrier to entry, whether it is open source gaming engines or mobile markets like Android. As the barrier to entry for games continues to lower, their will be more and more games that approach art and it is a matter of time before a game arrives that is a piece of art.
Two examples of games that come close to "art" in my mind is "Bioshock" and "Myst". In my mind, to defined as art, it must have a point of view, and these 2 titles both do, and implement it well.
How do you moderate a post as pretentious?
Pretentious, maybe - but it seems to me that's unavoidable in this discussion.
I mean, arguing about what is "art"... And everyone seems to have their own idea, which they generally justify on the basis of their own sensibilities...
It seems to me people confuse the notion of "art" with the notion of "good art", or "noteworthy art", or even just "art I like". There's also a huge degree of (undeserved?) weight lent to the stuff that gets classified as "art" - all manner of offenses are forgiven because It Is Art and Sophisticated People Are Supposed To Like It.
I mean think about it. How many people would lead off in this kind of discussion by saying "I wouldn't compare video games to works by the great renaissance masters, but..." or something like that? Now, how many of these people do you think made their own mind up about how much respect they give to the great renaissance masters? How many viewed all these works and thought about them, and drew their own conclusions about them, even if those conclusions went against the expectations of their peers and/or teachers? How many look at Mona Lisa, maybe don't like it, and are willing to stand by that conclusion even as everyone around them says it's one of the great masterpieces?
I believe there's a tendency to overvalue those things classified as "art" and undervalue those things seen as "not art" or "lesser art". But what, really, is the relevant distinction? Does such a distinction even exist?
Bow-ties are cool.
Photopia by Adam Cadre.
I disagree the statement that art in video games is not 'real' art. Consider this:
Most traditional art (e.g. portraits such as the Mona Lisa) were commissioned. Does the act of creating the art on behalf of a benefactor (or in modern times, a video game company) diminish the 'artsiness' of the work? Think of a 17th century painter, under commission to paint a biblical scene, to a modern artist, being paid to draw a cutscene for a video game. Both are being produced with the intent to sell the result to an audience. Both take time and require a great deal of imagination.
There may be a difference between game art and traditional art, but "commercialism" isn't it.
that is in the eye of the beholder
I examined Ebert's comments back when he made them and thought about them after the initial knee-jerk reaction of "YES THEY ARE!!!!" and, sadly, also agreed.
My reasoning is that video games *contain* art. but can't be considered art as a *whole*.
Think about it. A museum *contains* art. However museums themselves, as a whole, are *not* art. Walking through a museum isn't a piece of art, although there are quite a few pieces of art within it. The art within the museum, however, can be removed from the museum and *still* contain as much of that quality deemed as artistic as they did within the museums. Video games, then, are containers of various bits of art. Be they the graphics, the storylines, the music or what have you are each *individually* easily labeled as art, however the video game as a *whole* was not something I could consider to be art.
The art in a museum is usually just a collection - whatever the curators could get their hands on and thought was worth showing.
The art in a game is used to form a coherent whole - a single work.
That there isn't a conclusive "games are art" argument, but I think it's a flaw in your analogy that's worth recognizing.
Personally I've come to the conclusion that it's meaningless to say "it is art" or "it isn't art" - IMO it's a meaningless distinction that hides the real questions, such as "what does this thing mean to me?" "how much do I enjoy it?" "has my enjoyment of this art been lasting, or has it had some impact on my life?" People answer questions like those (and also other ones like "does my art teacher say this is Fine Art?" or "was the person who made this an Artist who makes Art?" or "has this piece of art existed long enough, and/or achieved a great enough level of respect to be considered Art?") and then classify things as "art" or "not art".
There is a whole world of art hidden from view because it's contained in "products" that people classify as "not art". Personally I am a modeler, and so all the special effects work stuff (especially that of the 70s-80s - effects miniatures, motion control, stop motion, etc.) is, to me, very significant. By my own standard I would not hesitate to call it "art". How about Peter Weller's performance as Robocop? No big deal, right? Just stomping around on-screen acting robotic? But the dude studied pantomime for that. He took details of that physical performance, nuances most people would assume are no-brainers, and busted his ass to do 'em right. (And then, when his plan wasn't compatible with the suit, he and his coach reworked the plan...) That, to me, is amazing. Things like that convince me that the world is stuffed with art, often in places we wouldn't expect it.
Bow-ties are cool.
.
So when asking whether videogames can be art, we must ask whether we are moved by them. If yes, then it is art. If we are moved to a greater degree than when perceiving a "great" work of art, then isn't the videogame the greater work of the two?
I forget the origin of that quote, but I think video think video games suffer from the same conundrum.
Games and art represent two DIFFERENT APPLICATIONS OF DIFFERENT BEHAVIOUR, based on their use and place within the English language.
Art and games, although different, ARE, however, COMPATIBLE - in that games can be made USING art itself - but because they can and do represent two separate things, they do not define each other. (in the same way that within 'metal table' the word metal does not define the word table).
For this reason, any game which USES art - such as video/board/card games etc., uses another word in combination with the word game, to describe such media being used.
The underlying problem we currently have, however, is that the word game is not fully recognised or understood for WHAT it represents in a manner that is consistent with its use - independently of such (further) applications.
There is very good reason for that, however - the basis of which can be found here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DarrenTomlyn/20110314/7218/Starting_Again__Part_1_Problems_With_The_Word_Game.php
'Stupidity is an often fatal disease' - R. A. Heinlein
really? "M.U.L.E., Balance of Power, Sim City and Civilization," Those are the games you quote as being artistic but failing to be art? Duhhhhhh. Bad selection. Go play a narrative game. I stopped reading there
Nobody tell Feng Mengbo or the PS1 MoMA in NYC (which has lent a gigantic room to host his artistic video game). 'The Long March' Forward' was amazing.
http://ps1.org/exhibitions/view/320
Also, no one tell Bill Viola, creator of trippy-ass video game 'The Night Journey', in which moments of quiet reflection are the main feature of the game. Don't mention it the the Museum of the Moving Image, which features his work, either.
http://www.gamescenes.org/2010/04/art-game-bill-violas-the-night-journey-2010.html
Ebert and Moriarty can eat a dick. It would be more productive then trying to pigeon-hole art. And I can't stand 'artists', or should I say 'art critics' who immediately assume that if art has some sort of mass appeal that it is somehow lesser for it.
Games are art, and art works within the limitations of its medium.
I'm just frustrated that one whole class of mediums (handhelds with D-pads) and another whole class of mediums (single video gaming device suitable for multiple simultaneous players) are available only to established businesses. Is there a good reason why an artist must work in one medium before working in another? Can you draw an analogy to help me understand?
I would say art is making you feel something. In games, that would be for me at the end of Fallout (and Planescape:Torment), at the end, where the hero you've played gets kicked in the metaphoricals. I felt sorry for the character.
THERE'S art for you.
Same for Great Movies. Bambi's mom getting killed, you crying. You come away feeling something from watching it that moved you deeply. Books? "Marley was dead to begin with": evocative, isn't it. Music? Mahler always makes my dad cry from the emotionality of the music, so that's Art there. Some paintings I can't remember the name of moved me to think. The smoking dogs sitting at a card table picture didn't.
It strikes me how Moriarty only mentions semi-historical strategy games. Is he (or Ebert for that matter) even aware of things like Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate, Half-Life, Limbo, World of Goo or even The Void?
I think their notion of videogames leads them to try the ultra-popular stuff from 10-20 years ago and then look at games as one single genre of b-movie like material. The games i mentioned aren't perfect, but i assume everyone here can agree that at least 2 of those list are worthy of another look by the 'art experts'.
Yes. As much as large budget Motion Pictures can be, anyway.
Just because some people don't think something is art, that doesn't mean it is. It's completely subjective. I think that most pictures, statues, and other things generally regarded as art are boring and repetitive and I don't view them as art. That's just my opinion, and it's not a fact.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
My knee-jerk reaction to the "games are not art" crap was orthogonal to most peoples' - "fine then, nothing is art."
Film certainly isn't. I mean, hey, who doesn't like going out on a date to a movie, or having some friends over to watch 300, or putting a rom-com on in the background while making dinner? We're not there for the movie, we're there to enjoy each others' company. Movies are just passive, background entertainment, not to mention totally commercial, and most of them are devoid of any artistic content. Ebert's wasting his time.
Painting and sculpture certainly aren't. I can blast through the Louvre in an hour or two and see most of the crap hung up on the walls there and not really be affected by it. Lots of people can make pretty pictures. Besides, most of "the good stuff" was made by people supported by rich people with agendas, and most everything else is devoid of true artistic content. Talk about commercial.
Writing most definitely isn't, regardless of the era it came from. Who ever got anything out of spending hours consuming a made-up story via one of the slowest mediums we have for transmitting information? Besides, most written word is crap.
Music? Feh. I've had it with corporate jingles, elevator music, and films that all have the same generic orchestral score. Besides, music has pretty much been distilled into a science now anyways - we know what sounds pleasant to human ears and what sound discordant. Besides, most of it is just noise. That certainly precludes it from being art.
Photography is so far from art it's not even funny. I mean, come on, you're taking stuff that already exists and recording it into a saved image. And nowadays, most people take that image and edit it anyways! Not to mention that most photos are totally uninspired.
What's that? You mean you can take creative expression in all of the above mediums and ponder it, learn about it and its history, be inspired and moved by it by it, read into its meaning, classify it into genres, think about the author's state of mind when he created it, compare individual works within or across genres, authors and time periods, and in general appreciate it? Hm. Wonder if anyone's ever done that with games.
Just because a lot of people sit and stare at games to kill time or chill with their friends doesn't mean they're not art, and just because games are part of a highly commercialized industry doesn't mean they're not art, and just because there are probably a lot of games out there that shouldn't be considered are doesn't mean that games as a whole aren't art. All of those statements apply equally Ebert's preferred art form as well. Both games and film (and writing, painting, sculpture, music, photography, underwater basket weaving and every other art form out there) are art because they can be appreciated, interpreted, and connected with. People who insist that art is primarily comprised of the mediums that they care about are either snobs or are trying to reassure themselves that the time and money they spend on what they like is more valuable than the time and money that other people spend on what they like.
Shakespeare was written for an audience, to be sold. Is anyone, especially in Hollywood, going to dispute that Shakespeare's plays were art? Their entire industry producing even a modicum of art actually depends on Shakespeare being art, now doesn't it?
This is why whoever gave that talk referenced in the article is also wrong.
The question of whether video games are art or not is nonsensical. Of course they're art! Look at these and tell me if they're art or not. Not a single one would be compared to Michaelangelo's work, yet they're all art:
A Coca Cola bottle (Examples: http://www.antiquebottles.com/coke/)
A Model T car
The latest Apple computer case
An image file someone made for fun
Art is an industry, art makes products. Kitsch is a term used for art of poor quality in both conceptualization and execution. The vast majority of games today are kitschy in the sense that their concepts are juvenile, i.e. they're interactive versions of Hollywood blockbuster movies, which in most people's opinion rarely qualify as art. There is a great resistance from the "fine art" industry to the idea that a video game can be art, mainly because due to the high technical complexity of the medium, its members (coming from a background in the liberal arts), cannot dominate it. Current fine artists and the marketing machinery that supports them (curators, gallery owners and lazy art professors), fear for their livelyhood and have consistently attacked the new medium ever since its inception through its various mouthpieces. A video game can achieve a similar cultural significance as any Marcel Duchamp piece as long as it commits itself to excellence in it's conceptualization and execution. This regularly means substituting juvenile content with subject matter more intimately connected with the human condition, while taking advantage of the high degree of interactivity the medium offers.
Looks like when the word 'games' is used there's no distinction between a game thats explicitly commercialized and one that isn't. There are some that aren't, but all the examples cited are from the 'industry'. Also, games aren't movies or audio; the art is not necessarily in the story or the audio/visual assets, but can also be in the interaction layer.
example:
http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/marriage.html
It's not that much of a stretch to say that interaction or interplay layers can be artistic, the problem lies in defining what they are and why.
It needed to be said.
RIP Hank.
"No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers."
The thing about that is, the vast majority of drama, poetry, films, novels, and music also aren't worthy of comparison to the greatest... and yet they still count as art; most of them are automatically counted as art at the time of their creation, even those predating what would later be known as the greatest examples of their subcategory. Works that are completely un-noteworthy are counted as art. But if you applied the same standard currently used against games to those other fields, you'd end up paring the list down and down and down until you reached the last one and concluded it wasn't art either.
If you apply the standard used to other art categories to games, then even if you can't identify THE definitive "art game", you'd be forced to admit that a large number of games are still contemporaries of that unfound definitive example and therefore would have to also count as art.
Art is subjective. Is Pollock splatter really art? Is Warhol's cheap industrial approach really art? How about the IBM logo? Is Little Big Planet 2 a platform for "art" if you take away the gameplay? Can art only be understood by the black turtle neck crowd? Is a 7 year old capable of making "real" art? Are rock musicians artists/songwriters truly artists?
All this jabbering and no one thinks of MUDs? We're still here, we've got a wide range of quality. And that range sometimes extends to the best scifi and fantasy you've ever read.
http://www.answers.com/topic/multi-user-dungeon <- For the ignorant.
Badanedwa (No account. Hope someone sees this as AC. PS, speaking of art I worked on a big ASCII-art logo that says "MUDS" but the lameness filter won't allow it.)
I don't agree with Ebert but I think he makes an interesting point. Games definitely contain art, but can a game itself be considered a work of art? Some games are actually very similar to movies or books. They may have a lot of cut scenes or written text to tell a story, beautiful 3D or 2D worlds, and characters that the player gets emotionally attached to. But this is just bringing other artistic mediums into a game. It doesn't prove that games themselves are works of art. To do that we would have to look purely at the gameplay. Take the game of Tetris. It's a great game, but has no characters or story, and is pretty much not designed to be visually appealing at all. It is all about the gameplay. We could even look beyond video games, like Chess for example. Is the game of Chess itself a work of art? I would say yes, because it is the creative work of a human being designed to evoke an emotional response. The emotion being the thrill of competition.
The games mentioned aren't even the games widely regarded as art. Sim City? No shit it's not art. How about Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Flower, Okami?
What about the game OKAMI and its just recently released sequal... or Zelda Windwaker? Those games while still products went for very specific Art styles... simply BECAUSE. Definitely not your standard game product.
End of discussion.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
We've been making games for a MUCH shorter time than poetry or plays or novels or even film. How much of the poetry produced in the last 20 years compares to the greats picked out of millennia? It's not because our culture is going down hill (it may or may not be, but that's more or less orthogonal to this discussion), it's because true classics only come along every so often and there's been so much less time for this to happen with games.
I do know that the art industry is not something you should look up to.
I also know that a lot of art was considered not art for a long long time before it became art.
Combining these two nuggets of information I can only respond to such criticism of games with, Fuck off faggot.
Does he look like a gamer to anyone?
Does Brian Moriarty look like one? Age 55 and producer of such great successes: