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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!
...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.
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.
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.
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.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
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".
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.
src, http://www.forumopolis.com/showpost.php?p=3306484&postcount=150
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.
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.