This argument is turning into a chestnut...
on
Are Videogames Art?
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· Score: 1
Not that the subject isn't an important one, but I think all of us have firmly established at this point that games are most certainly art. Back in February, I read James Mielke's excellent interview with visionary game designer and producer, Hideo Kojima in the February issue of The Official U.S. Playstation Magazine. In the course of their conversation, Mielke and Kojima get into a brief discussion on Roger Ebert's assessment that videogames can never be viewed as art, and Kojima's apparent concession to Ebert's point.
I believe it is instructive to understand Kojima and Ebert's viewpoints. Ebert says that: "...I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control...[T]he nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship [however elegant or sophisticated] to the stature of art. To my knowledge, 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... for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic."
In typical Japanese fashion, Kojima is rather elliptical in his reply: "...art is something that radiates the artist, the person who creates that piece of art. If 100 people walk by and a single person is captivated by whatever that piece radiates, it's art. But videogames aren't trying to capture one person. A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame. It's something of a service. It's not art. But I guess the way of providing service with that videogame is an artistic style, a form of art."
Ebert's argument falls under the assertion of "authorial control." Regardless, his definition falls down all over the place. Yes, books and movies do walk the experiencer through a narrative that the author controls. But try applying this narrow definition to poetry, or even worse, to a painting. A painter may have a certain feeling that he wants to convey, but the affect of all art exists in this tenuous, liminal space between the experiencer, the work, and the artist. In any given work, the reader's own mind exerts dramatic control over their final experience of the work. Whether this happens based on overt choices on the part of the player or simply on how they mull a work over internally is immaterial. The viewer is always an integral part of constructing the final artistic experience. Ebert simply points out how games differ from film and literature, but that doesn't mean that one is art and the other isn't.
Ebert would do well to examine what fellow film critic, Pauline Kael had to say about that other old chestnut of what's appropriate to film versus what's appropriate to stage performance: "What movies share with other arts is perhaps more important than what they may, or may not, have exclusively." I assert, the same can be said of games.
Although I feel that Kojima's thesis differs in significant ways from Ebert's, they share a notion that art is an expression of an individual: an "artist." And that the intention of this expression is intrinsic to the definition of "art." It is unstated, but implied that the artist intends for his or her expression to be rather singular in intent and interpretation. Kojima's thesis seems to argue in part, that since he is trying to make a popular work, it cannot express his authorial vision, and therefore is not art. But Ebert offers the additional claim that the act of playing games holds no inherent value.
Frankly, neither thesis even begins to make sense. Shakespeare wrote plays that needed to be popular, but that in no way means they
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I believe it is instructive to understand Kojima and Ebert's viewpoints. Ebert says that: "...I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control...[T]he nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship [however elegant or sophisticated] to the stature of art. To my knowledge, 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... for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic."
In typical Japanese fashion, Kojima is rather elliptical in his reply: "...art is something that radiates the artist, the person who creates that piece of art. If 100 people walk by and a single person is captivated by whatever that piece radiates, it's art. But videogames aren't trying to capture one person. A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame. It's something of a service. It's not art. But I guess the way of providing service with that videogame is an artistic style, a form of art."
Ebert's argument falls under the assertion of "authorial control." Regardless, his definition falls down all over the place. Yes, books and movies do walk the experiencer through a narrative that the author controls. But try applying this narrow definition to poetry, or even worse, to a painting. A painter may have a certain feeling that he wants to convey, but the affect of all art exists in this tenuous, liminal space between the experiencer, the work, and the artist. In any given work, the reader's own mind exerts dramatic control over their final experience of the work. Whether this happens based on overt choices on the part of the player or simply on how they mull a work over internally is immaterial. The viewer is always an integral part of constructing the final artistic experience. Ebert simply points out how games differ from film and literature, but that doesn't mean that one is art and the other isn't.
Ebert would do well to examine what fellow film critic, Pauline Kael had to say about that other old chestnut of what's appropriate to film versus what's appropriate to stage performance: "What movies share with other arts is perhaps more important than what they may, or may not, have exclusively." I assert, the same can be said of games.
Although I feel that Kojima's thesis differs in significant ways from Ebert's, they share a notion that art is an expression of an individual: an "artist." And that the intention of this expression is intrinsic to the definition of "art." It is unstated, but implied that the artist intends for his or her expression to be rather singular in intent and interpretation. Kojima's thesis seems to argue in part, that since he is trying to make a popular work, it cannot express his authorial vision, and therefore is not art. But Ebert offers the additional claim that the act of playing games holds no inherent value.
Frankly, neither thesis even begins to make sense. Shakespeare wrote plays that needed to be popular, but that in no way means they