Blow-Back From Ebert's Latest Games Assertion 158
Last week's new diatribe from Roger Ebert on the merits of games had some people up in arms. Commentary ranged from the respectful at Ars Technica, to the dismissive statements at GameCritics. N'Gai Croal, of Newsweek's LevelUp, has a lengthy and thoughtful look at the issue from both sides. From his comments: "It's the right of someone with the maturity of an honest and articulate four-year-old to forget the history of his own favored art form and close his mind to the potential of another. In the meantime, those of us who care about the possibilities inherent in this medium will have to rely upon ourselves and one another to keep doing the heavy lifting necessary to suss out where the art of videogames lies; to determine how the craft can enhance that art; and to continue the fight to push this young medium from squalling infancy into graceful adulthood. Let's get cracking."
Why care? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because lots of people respect him and their opinions can be swayed by his comments.
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Re:Why care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sigh, No. (Score:5, Interesting)
The answer is simple. We see it here every day. Why do people put inflammatory crap on their websites? To drive traffic.
Ebert's not an idiot. He is, however, largely irrelevant in terms of the internet...Movie reviewers are a dime a dozen here. Anyone ever been to his site for anything else? I never have.
But with one clever piece of pure flamebait, he drove his web traffic through the roof. Read his article...No, actually don't, just read someone else who's quoted it...No more traffic for you! Not yours! It's pure flamebait, right down to ad hominems and poop jokes at the expense of his target.
So let the irrelevant blowhard pass on by. By even caring about his hilariously irrelevant opinion, you're giving him what he wants.
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As games get more cinematic and more (I might as well say it) important, from an entertainment standpoint, it stands as a barrier to an industry that literally butters his bread. His, and his bretheren, rely on the publ
Re:Sigh, No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now we're dealing with the same crap from their descendants. It's no surprise. People are crappy at handling change.
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Honestly.. From all he's done in his career I'd say Ebert deserves some credibility. The guy's a physical wreck (recovering from cancer) and he's certainly made his fortune. If money was his only motivation he could have retired long ago but he continues to write because he genuinely loves writing about movies. Nothing I've read of his indicates that he writes from anything other than a love of cinema, and if you look back at
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I read his "rebuttal" of Barker's defense of gaming, and frankly, that was enough for me. He didn't address the points, he used repeated rhetorica
Re:Why care? (Score:5, Funny)
And Rush Limbaugh is a college dropout who has worked his way up in the radio industry from Disk Jocky to where he is now.
That surely doesn't qualify him to comment on immigration or international trade but he does and people seem to listen to him... go figure.
I hear it has something to do with Charisma, I wouldn't know since I spent all my points in Wisdom and Constitution.
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I kept waiting on him to stand up, shake a cane at the cameraman and scream "GET OFF MY LAWN!"
Well, maybe not. But if he were younger, I imagine he'd spend a lot of time wearing a black turtleneck and beret in Starbucks with his MacBook, blogging poetry with no real synta
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Re:Why care? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that lots of people need Ebert's opinion in this case. For the most part people align themselves with others who fortify their own ideals. It doesn't speak well of Ebert to have those voicing their support for him, the only thing that they're supporting is the words that came out of his mouth at that point in time.
Without Ebert we're still going to have a mass of people who view gaming as less of a pastime then watching "the game" on Sunday or re-runs of M*A*S*H. The artistic or potential artistic merits of gaming aren't even a question to these people and citing Ebert only makes them feel justified, Ebert didn't turn them on to a new way of thinking. A lot of people do that with quotes from other mouthpieces around here like John Dvorak. Even though John is mostly wrong in his predictions there are those who will latch onto his words as true wisdom when he speaks out on something that they have convictions over.
Forget Ebert. His "supporters" didn't need for him to take up the banner of the anti-gaming sect. He follows them as much as they follow him.
Why care? Here's why. (Score:4, Insightful)
Cinema was seen as a medium for serious art from its very birth. The mercantile value of cinema developed subsequently, though quickly. Today, video games are primarily mercantile, yet they have enormous potential as an art form, a potential that goes largely unexplored.
Critical theory is a field with which I am well acquainted, and the attention of a first-rate critic like Ebert can only help video gaming. As fans we just have to love the medium enough to see that there is much work to be done and not feel challenged and wet ourselves just because someone says, quite correctly, that video games have not developed artistically as far or as fast as they could have. Nor will they as long as our fandom supersedes our ability to think critically about them. (Fanbois take note)
Re:Why care? Here's why. (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you talking about? It was treated just as video games. From the wiki [wikipedia.org] (and recalling that films first arose in the 1890s):
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Plus, I think the demo scene does not yet touch the narrative potential of video games. That narrative is what Ebert was describing in his excellent critique.
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Even the movies of the Lumieres were public sensations. The often excellent demo scene work is way way beneath the radar.
Yeah, but that is due to the fact that movies were new and exciting and public, while the demo scene is something that is very specific - you have to have a certain computer and be in a certain environment to even be exposed to it. Either way, I don't see how public awareness has anything to do with whether something is art.
Plus, I think the demo scene does not yet touch the narrative potential of video games. That narrative is what Ebert was describing in his excellent critique.
Personally, I don't think the narrative potential has anything to do with whether it's art. Are dadaistic works not art because there's no narrative potential?
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This is very difficult. I understand exactly what you mean, but in a way, public awareness, at least to the level of knowing about the form itself, is required for an art form to reach its potential. Otherwise, all you get is a small inbred group making art for each other, which eventually dies out when something new comes along.
And to your second point, no, narrative doesn't have anything to do with whether some
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I understand exactly what you mean, but in a way, public awareness, at least to the level of knowing about the form itself, is required for an art form to reach its potential.
Of course, but it's still art. During Van Gogh's lifetime, his art was not appreciated by most people. Only after his death did it become famous. Does that mean that his paintings weren't art while he was still alive, just because there was no public awareness?
Otherwise, all you get is a small inbred group making art for each other, which eventually dies out when something new comes along.
That is so, but again, I question whether public awareness has any connection to whether something should be considered to be art.
And to your second point, no, narrative doesn't have anything to do with whether something is art, but narrative potential is a very large part of the potential of video games to be art. Yes, there will be dada and abstract video games, God willing, but I was specifically comparing video games with cinema, the art form they most resemble.
I think there already are abstract video games. Rez, for example, does not have any story (I think?), but I would
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Re:Why care? (Score:5, Funny)
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Again, lots of people don't care what Ebert says, he doesn't influence people. Hell I bet if you went out and asked some of his readers what Ebert things of games they're going to look at you funny and say, "I dunno." People don't care that much about him. They don't even really care about is reviews, only if it got a good score or not and still, they are more
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this is the same guy who didn't like the Usual Suspects basically because he was too stupid to pick up on the hints as it built toward the ending. An ending he said was there to be a "shock ending" but which I (and everyone I know) was awake enough to see coming an hour into the movie (and it's nearly two long).
He's just a stupid old man who gets paid to watch movies and talk about them.
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I'd go a step further than that. Who cares if people consider video games to be art?
Re:Why care? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Porno is obscene tool.
And thus pornography is restricted in its distribution.
If games aren't artistic, then they would have to have literary, political, or scientific value to avoid being considered obscene. I'd be hard pressed to categorize Super Mario Bros. in only those terms ("Thank you Mario. But our princess is in another castle!" has literary value?).
So, should Super Mario Bros. have to be put in the back room with the other obscene material: pornography? There'd be no market left for serious non-adult video games and
the answer is obvious (Score:3, Interesting)
In my opinion Ebert is A, an old man, and B, afraid. He is afraid of interactivity and doesn't trust the people he writes for - the passive consumers of one-way art - to be capable enough to play along when given the chance. Newsflash, Ebert: art is what YOU make of it, not what the artist makes.
Re:the answer is obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing is, however, that a large portion of the "high art" contemporary art world is actively exploring audience interaction. The catch there is though, is that an awful lot of contemporary critics refuse to believe that anything that became a part of popular culture could no longer be considered art, as it was something else now. What else? They don't know, don't bother to know, don't care. Thus video games != art.
I actually wrote a lengthy paper for a Contemporary Art class debating whether or not video games could be considered art. The snag I ran into with my professor was pretty much the exact moot point I found Ebert stumbling on. What always got me laughing was that at some point or another in the history of art, there is a counter example for every point these contemporary critics believe prove A. is art but B. is not. Take when photography first began as a medium, for example. Walter Benjamin wrote that photographs could not be considered art, because they were reproductions of the work, and no longer had the "aura" that true art contained. But today, photographs can most certainly be considered art. This also kind of derides the argument that what exists in popular culture can not be art, because the only differentiating factor from that is the amount of people that acknowledge the work, due to mass copying. Film as well, was criticized because it incorporated new elements. Instead of just a stand still picture, there was sound, and a plot! But film today can be considered art (not to mention all of the basic elements within film can exist independently as an art form).
Basically, the argument by "true" art critics comes down to 2 points. They either refuse to acknowledge interactivity as a new element, or they believe that the video game medium is a mash-up of other art forms, but where the collected parts are not as great as the whole. Both of these arguments can be countered in the "true" art world, as I stated previously.
I do agree with you that art is a personal choice, and whatever a person chooses to consider art becomes art to themselves. But when you enter the "high" art culture, the argument becomes a whole nother ballgame, complete with flimsy logic and cloudy thoughts. At the end of my paper, I came down to these two points, disproving them (in a much more eloquent fashion however), but essentially ended on the point that ultimately, it becomes the artists' job to create something out of that medium that can be considered art by more than a few. And what happened in the end? My professor hated it. For him to even acknowledge I could be right, would essentially destroy his entire lifes' work as an artist. It would show that popular culture can produce mediums that are art worthy, and one doesn't not need to be in this exclusive circle in order to be a true artist.
But then again, those that we acknowledge today as great artists were more often than not, considered to be almost treasonous to their craft. Look at the history of Modern Art. From Manet, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso...(it's a long list)..and I'll stop at Pollock since he springs most to mind as the most recent debate within the art world, well, every single one of them caused a great divide between "art" and "not art", but ultimately, they created the revolution that allowed art to progress.
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other way around. =D
Re:the answer is obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
For me, and I am certainly no authority on the subject, for something to be art it must be something man-made that causes me to stop and appreciate it, forces me to evaluate it, and makes me consider a topic from a new perspective. This evaluation is interactive. Art cannot be consumed without initiative from the consumer.
I find video games doubly artistic because the player is challenged to evaluate the universe as himself and simultaneously as his avatar. This becomes even more complex when a game is presented in the first person perspective, as the player must work even harder to validate this duality.
Another interesting aspect to consider is the fact that video games are usually spawned from the ideas of a lead designer and actualised by many teams working under him over many months. This is similar to movies, but whereas movies strive to present the universe from a limited perspective (e.g., cardboard cutouts from the front) games must allow for exploration. The lead designer's vision must be much clearer and "realer" to be brought to fruition; so much so that, in my opinion, media like movies and paintings are flat in comparison.
I'm all over the map here, I know. This is a tricky subject I suppose, but then again it isn't. In the end, who's got the right to tell me what is or isn't art? Isn't that up to me? In truth, video games are so important to me that it's a sort of religion. The concept of a man-made reality is pretty astounding and makes me wonder what's so special about this world if man can create his own.
What all these media have in common is that they are man-made using limited tools and all convey a scene or story or mood or all three. If an end table can be art, why not Katamari Damacy?
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I'd be interested to read your essay too if you've got it online.
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I'm reminded of a quote from Jacques Derrida (I can't find it exactly right now so I'll paraphrase): You cannot understand new art. If you could understand it, it wouldn't be new.
I think Ebert doesn't fundementally doesn't understand gaming as a medium. Rather than pointing to RPGs where interactivity is second to story, I think a
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Video games COULD be art (Score:2)
1. Second life, allows people to be creative in a virtual world
2. Myst and it's sequels, original concept beautiful artwork within the game
3. That Japanese game where you roll things up into a big ball Katami something or other? I haven't played it but the screen shots
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4. Spoor when it's released?
I looked for games that contain spoor, and I think you have an interesting [planetdeerhunter.com] idea of what constitutes, "art".
Hell, you have an interesting idea of what constitutes a game.
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If I had been really on top of my game yesterday, I would have found some way to work in a poop joke.
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For example the painter Miro's worlds are unique to him, Chopin invented new musical forms and public enemy extended and deepened hip-hop to the point where their 17 year old CDs are still being discussed today.
Note that unlike Ebe
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I know the concept of art is highly debatable, partly because of the speed of digital media evolution, but movies are accepted as Art, no matter how crappy or without sense you think their plot(or lack thereof) are.
Great 3 D movies? Nyet... (Score:2)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/ [imdb.com]
as well say Ingmar Bergman movies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman [wikipedia.org]
however 99.9999% of movies are entertainment as is true of music, video games. There is nothing wrong with entertainment I have my guilty pleasures in music like the Go Gos from the 80s, very fun but I'd never try to claim it was art just fun music with good memories for geezer aged people like myself. I hope you aren't trying to claim all mov
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That's certainly true about the aura of authenticity, but I'm not sure that he said they couldn't be considered art. I thought he was rather saying that the notion of art had to be revised,
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He would sit down at the piano, put his hands on the keys, and just tap his foot counting the rests with a serious face.
The art in the piece he said, was how the audience reacted to the absurd sight of a man just sitting there quietly for 2 minutes and then getting up and bowing as if he had done something. The reactions would range from patience, to confusion, to laughter, back to confusion
Must be art (Score:4, Interesting)
No big deal (Score:1)
Re:No big deal (Score:5, Informative)
Charge! (Score:2)
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Thoughtful? (Score:1)
Re:Thoughtful? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well done, though - you've illustrated nicely what really harms the reputation of gaming: the fact that people automatically assume that gamers are immature, and therefore anything a gamer ever says that might possibly be taken to reinforce that stereotype will be taken out of context and misinterpreted in the worst possible way.
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How does this relate to behavior? It shows that "gamers" are have an independent, consistent, culture. How easy it is to find a "gamer" doesn't change the culture of immaturity resulting from anonymity. The "gamers" in poor countries who game face to face do not suffer from the same immature behavior of outlandish outbursts or petty behavior within the game.
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Only a small percentage of all gamers play online games regularly, and even non-gamers become immature when they are anonymous. I don't really see the correlation between gamers and (im)maturity.
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At least look at his argument (Score:5, Informative)
So it depends on what you consider a videogame. Games like MGS3 are pretty artistic, but it's all conveyed through cutscenes. Nothing wrong with that, but the emotion and depth brough tforward there isn't possible using only interactive elements. It seems to me like the games that are the most artistic, are also the games that are least like GAMES.
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This is true of any movie or novel too. Your point is moot.
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The physical interactivity with a game world that videogames provide add nothing to a story.... Interaction is limited, so the stories are as well. Unless you want to use cutscenes or text... in which case you're using another medium.
So, how do you feel about kinetic sculptures where people are permitted to manipulate it? Or, hell, just a plain static sculpture?
Or do you feel that the real art in the plaque next to the sculpture bearing its name and explaining to you what you're looking at?
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That is a deeply flawed argument, from a logical point of view. (a is in set A. a is in set B. Therefore all members of A are in set B)
And your argument "Emotion and Depth [brought forward through cutscenes] isn't possible using only interactive elements" is seriously lacking in backing. About the BEST you can say
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Also, I take issue with your assertion that games have no advantages when it comes to storytelling. They do. Games really allow you to identify with the protagonist more deeply. The story of the reluctant hero [wikipedia.org] is a lot more interesting when you feel like you are that
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I agree that these statements apply to most games with which I am familiar except that, in some cases, the interactivity adds a visceral component to the drama experienced by the protagonist. I conclude that Eber
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also coming soon... (Score:2)
scandal rocks the news world as debates rage:
What is Art?
What is Love?
What is Beauty?
What is Truth?
What is...the point? Saying it never makes it so (except in baseball), so Roger bloats out to movies while others prefer different eye candy. So be it.
no different than the tabloid:
What is YoungerstersTooSassyForTheirOwnGood?
What is TheBestHolidayDestination?
What is MilkTooOldToDrink?
Choice != sport or low art (Score:4, Insightful)
This is where his unfamiliarity with the medium really shows. The outcome of a game is usually one of a set of outcomes (win or lose being the most basic), and there are certainly designers that want to expand those choices and make them more meaningful. If the game includes any outcome (that has been carefully designed) that would make it high art then the game as a whole must be high art, even though there could be many outcomes that are not. At first this seems to make games a poorer medium for the expression of high art. However, there is little difference between the players that choose the "low art" paths through a game and an audience who "doesn't get" a high art film. Both will come away from the experience thinking that the game or film was low art (or worse). Games only allow the the audience to interact with their low art interpretation of the game if designers allow the player the freedom to do so (eg. shooting everything).*
Games are generally made to be replayed, so that they can be explored in full: choice doesn't turn it into a sport, choice only increases the re-playability, or in terms of other art, the re-experience-ability. Like coming back to a complex and deep book or film and understanding it "better" because of insights learnt from the last time you experienced it, games hide part of their content purposefully. The choice of which content you experience is just more obvious in a game, but the knowledge and experience that allows you to make those choices to see that content is not very different from being able to "see more" in your other art.
Just like someone who can't understand the high art film, Ebert's ignorance of games prevents him from seeing if there are high art games. I'm not sure there are any myself - I'd say there are many that we will look back on and recognize as the precursors and inspiration to those that eventually get acknowledged as the first high art games.
* Note: much of the art of game design can be found in the options or available actions given to players. How the designers restrict the players into particular outcomes is the essence of the art. That Ebert doesn't understand this, or believes that multiple options is somehow incompatible with high art is testament to Ebert's unwillingness (or laziness) to think about games seriously.
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John Cage's work was regularly defined by the audience. Many artists use interactive installations, or interactive performance art. Closer to Ebert's home, there are any number of critics and scholars that believe that Shakespeare's plays exist solely as they are performed. That the text on the page is simply a blueprint, highly mutable depending on the needs of
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Imagine John Cage's 4':33" piece as a good example of a extremely flexible but "properly" (i.e. makes it high art) restricted set of game rules. If you don't know this piece, it involves a pianist sitting at the piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds without playing the piano, instead she lets the audience "play" the piece - the music is the sound of the audience (reacting). This is "high art" music, but it isn't that much of a stretch to call it a "high art
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OK, maybe not Xenogears.
Is "art" context specific? (Score:5, Insightful)
Within Ebert's definition of "high art", it is not unreasonable to state that games do not pass muster. The way he defines high art, it precludes the kind of interactivity that is in most games. Nothing wrong wit that.
But what about the individual elements that go into a game -- like the textures, or background images, or cutscenes, or level designs, or soundtrack -- can those be "high art", even if the game as a whole is not?
The Mona Lisa is, unquestionably, High Art. Would it still be High Art if I used it as a texture for my "Louvre Deathmatch" game mod?
What if I made an original painting of equal artistic merit as the Mona Lisa, but instead of exhibiting it in a hoighty-toighty gallery I used it in a game -- would my choice of context instantly make my painting become Not Art?
If a famous composer wrote a symphonic work specifically for a game, would it still be High Art? Why (not)?
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In case of emergency, RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
Barker: "I'm not doing an evangelical job here. I'm just saying that gaming is a great way to do what we as human beings need to do all the time -- to take ourselves away from the oppressive facts of our lives and go somewhere where we have our own control."
Ebert: Spoken with the maturity of an honest and articulate 4-year old.
Sculpture (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it just a game? Is it just a sport? Or is it art?
What makes it one and not another?
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Art vs appreciating art (Score:3, Insightful)
There are also games where the "result" could also be considered art (like Spore's creature creation, for example).
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Wrong definition of art. That is art as a skill, e.g. John Carmacks programming is highly skilled and therefore he is worthy of being refered to as a master of the art of programming. It isnt art in the same sense that a piece of music is art.
It is also clearly not the definition Ebert is using as I am quite certain the man isnt stupid enough to believe programming top grade games is something that comes easy.
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If you happen to play it in such a way as to produce something artistic that doesn't make the underlying game art anymore than a painters picture would make the paintcans he used art.
Talk to me when... (Score:2)
On experiancing "art" (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is just a personal anecdote:
The game was Black and White, you're a God, with incarnate consciousnesses, created by some villagers in a desperate cry for help. From there you progress through the game by winning the faith of other peoples. Your choice in actions defines your good/evil alignment. In retrospect, it was a set up, if you didn't go into the game intending to be a certain alignment, you would almost certainly be good, it was natural, you wanted to be kind.
I was at the beginning of a map many levels in, I had many powers and the little angel spoke frequently, the little devil was gone. My tower was ivory and my voice angelic. On this map, the second village was a particularly difficult convertion. I slaved over them, did everything I could to show them my benevolent worth, I aided them in every endeavor, and through hours of painstaking effort I won them over. It was a stunning relief to finally convert them, the worst hurdle overcome. A few moments later the enemy God retaliated, sending a pack of wolves to punish the villagers. I destroyed many of the wolves, but I don't think they were really stoppable. The village turned on me, setting me back to a condition far worse than I had started the map.
I sat there, staring at the screen in disbelief. I was angry beyond reason. At which point, a little evil voice, no animation, just a soft voice of evil said: "Go on boss, do it, do the bad thing." (It sounds cheesy, but it was the kicker for my already trembling hand.)
By the end, I had created an ever-burning pit into which I cast those who denied me. I took the land in a display of brutal rage, right down to destroying my enemy while listening to his pleas for mercy. I was the God of fire and brimstone. I drifted back toward the light after passing beyond that map, but it wasn't the same, I wasn't the same. I was a darker, more vengeful God from there on.
It was an emotional event, it was like stepping into Lucifers shoes, just before the fall. It was a lesson about absolute power and corruption. It was awesome. It's left an impression. It was art.
Lack of complete narrative control doesn't preclude success, much as possessing narrative control doe not ensure it.
In a video game, when they have achieved a level high art, you have to be willing and/or lucky enough, to be led where they are trying to take you. That is certainly true of music, movies, painting, photography, and other artistic mediums I have experienced. (Joshua Bell performed in a busy Metro station, to minimal acclaim, it was not the art that was lacking.)
-- Res
kind of true (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:kind of true, kinda false. All subjective.... (Score:2)
To date, many people don't think any Video Games have achieved "High art status", and that is a result of how they classify "art". If you view Art as "____" then it may be obvious to you that Video games "clearly aren't, nor could they be art..." but if you view Art as "____" then it may be obvious that Video games "Are, or certainly could they be art..." and that is the discussion.
I
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Ebert has never player Total War (Score:2)
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Honestly, I think GameCritics.com would do gamers a service not to enter into this discussion.