Why Ebert Was Right 102
Next Generation reports has an article examining how, in some ways, Roger Ebert was right when he criticised the artistic merits of gaming. From the article: "But Ebert cannot be discounted, because, while he may not be the foremost authority on videogames, he knows a great deal about storytelling. He's not even completely ignorant on the subject of gaming; in fact, Roger Ebert is credited with at least one game review, a piece on the obscure Cosmology of Kyoto published in Wired in 1995. He reviewed it positively - he said it was wonderful."
Ebert has the wrong definition of art (Score:1, Interesting)
The art of a statue is not the statue but the sculpting of it. The art of a symphony is not listening to song but the playing and composition of it. The art of literature is not the reading of the book but the writing of the book. We are not a civilization like the Far East or Middle East who conceptionalizes things with the mind. We apply the hand. How else would the gothic cathedrals or symphonies or paintings come about? Art is not a frozen eternal object, it is the fiery act that created it.
A great example would be Shakespeare. There is no 'final version' of a play of Shakespeare. The actors, the acting, the direction, the vision, all make the play different each time it is shown. Ebert, sitting in the audience, thinks art is defined by the perception of the audience. Rather, art is the doing.
Take the example further. The great poems of Humanity were only recently in a 'final form'. They have been sang, with parts added, parts deleted, all for centuries. The great books of Humanity were actually only recently in a 'final form'. They, too, have been written, re-written, with additions added and subtractions made. It is not the book that is the art but the scribbling of the pen. It is not the play that makes the art but the act of 'playing'. It is not the poem that makes the art but the act of singing/chanting/writing it.
Only in this context can video games be understood. Toys are to help children understand (and play) in the world just as art is to help adults understand (and play) in the world. While paintings and movies might be art to the eye, the symphony as art to the ear, it is video games that is art to the hand. Video games revolve around the use of the hand (and when video games refuse to with cutscenes or slideshows, we instinctively refuse to call them video games).
When you play a game (say Mario) and you fall into a hole, you laugh and try again. Ebert would look at that and think it was a bad story, as you fell down the hole. But the player knows that is not what keeps him playing. It is his control, his hand input, that defines and varies the electronic canvas in front of him (within certain game designed rules which the player tries to break anyway).
Ebert might call video games 'fun playing around' but not art. But what else is art but 'fun playing around'? Shakespeare had 'fun playing around' with his plays, that is why he was so good. Mozart had 'fun playing around' with is music. Dickens, Twain, and all the rest had 'fun playing around' with their literature. The reason why academics can never create art is because they never have 'fun playing around'. All great art exudes a sense of play because it was the play that made them.
There are many 'great books' that are sneered by academics because they are 'too enjoyable to read'. The same goes for movies (they hated Star Wars and only praised the boring wacky films). Video games are getting the academic sneer simply because they are FUN. Academics have brainwashed themselves and everyone else that art is not supposed to be fun but to be SERIOUS and that we all must be SERIOUS. And then they wonder why they can't understand why one of the most beloved Shakespeare characters is Falstaff.
Let them be the word pinching tyrants of joy that they are, I'll take Falstaff any day over Ebert. He, at least, knew how to play.