Ebert Reclassifies Games as Sports

You may recall last year's spirited debate touched off by film critic Roger Ebert's assertion that games are not art. He's once again touching that nerve, this time stating that he was too loose with his words. He points out that 'a soup can' can be art; what he meant to say is that games cannot be 'high art'. Says Ebert: "How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in Myst, and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports." The critic goes on to discuss comments from Clive Barker from last year, a gent who took great exception to Ebert's view.

Definition of Art

[Shifty Jim]

I think I a lot of people lash out because they fail to understand what Ebert defines at "high art" or "great art." While I respect Mr. Ebert and regularly read and enjoy his critiques on various movies, I'm not in total agreement with him on this point. But, that doesn't not change the fact that he's being attack by people who do not totally understand his argument.

From the Article:

Barker: "I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written 'Romeo and Juliet' as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn't taken the damn poison. If only he'd have gotten there quicker."

Ebert: He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would "Romeo and Juliet" have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. "King Lear" was also subjected to rewrites; it's such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare's or Barker's, is superior, deeper, more moving, more "artistic"?

Barker: "We should be stretching the imaginations of our players and ourselves. Let's invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art."

Ebert: If you can go through "every emotional journey available," doesn't that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time, I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what?

That said, let me confess I enjoy entertainments, but I think it important to know what they are. I like the circus as much as the ballet. I like crime novels. (I just finished an advance copy of Henry Kisor's Cache of Corpses, about GPS geo-caching gamesters and a macabre murder conspiracy. Couldn't put it down.) And I like horror stories, where Edgar Allen Poe in particular represents art. I think I know what Stan Brakhage meant when he said Poe invented the cinema, lacking only film.

I treasure escapism in the movies. I tirelessly quote Pauline Kael: The movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have no reason to go. I admired "Spiderman II," "Superman," and many of the "Star Wars," Indiana Jones, James Bond and Harry Potter films. The idea, I think, is to value what is good at whatever level you find it. "Spiderman II" is one of the great comic superhero movies but it is not great art.

That sounds like

[Aexia]

However, were he to encounter a game where you play as Romeo, and no matter what you try you and juliet both die, then is it not art?

Planescape Torment. No matter what choices you make, no matter how good or evil you play, you can't escape your fate.

Re:who cares, who thinks he's an expert?

[gnarlyhotep]

All you need to do is look at his corpus of work and realize he doesn't even have a full understanding of "high art" in film either. The guy has opined over the quality and worth of Russ Meyer moves, ffs (faster pussycat, kill kill! amongst others).

Re:Flawed argument

[lumimies]

Actually, these guys [storytron.com] are trying to do just that -- create emotionally meaningful interaction with game characters, where the experience is designed by the author of the piece.