Roger Ebert and the art of video games - Page 2

I think the problem with what Rushdie was saying is that he seems to see "games" at the Super Mario/Pac-Man/Space Invaders stage. There are games now that do more interesting things with narrative. Not many, true, but games are now introducing elements of moral choice that make the interaction between player and game much more culturally interesting.

Stuff like GTA or Deus Ex introduce variables that Mario never had to deal with. To kill or not to kill. What sort of personality will I be in this virtual world?

Is that art? Maybe a sort of performance art collaboration between the games designers and the player. Why not?

You can get those same variables in Dungeons & Dragons. Is that art?

If the dungeon keeper (or master, or whatever they call them) is creating a narrative for the other players to experience, then yeah. I'd say that's a sort of art, some sort of interactive oral storytelling. There'll be guys who are good at it, and guys who are bad at it.

Maybe. I'll admit, I don't know enough about how D&D works to say for sure.

But the crux of the argument is this - nobody is saying that every videogame is a work of sublime art, the equal of Citizen Kane, Salvador Dali or Handel's Messiah, or even on a more abstract level. But Ebert's assertion that the medium of interactive software could never be considered art is arrogant and shortsighted.

It's not there yet - but there are a reasonable number of games that fulfil the mechanics of gameplay, and aspire to be something more. Certainly enough to make me think that in five, ten maybe fifteen years time there'll be a game that does it.

In the meantime, there's reams of study about how people interact and "perform" in virtual worlds. It's a valid cultural development, and I'm sure "art" will result from it.

We can continue to throw things backwards and forwards and say "Is art", "Isn't" but that's the basis of it - it's a creative medium. To say it can never be art is to be the same as people who dismissed the moving image as a crude distraction.

"I don't consider this art. There's no point to it. It doesn't evoke any sort of emotion in the audience. I can admire the craftsmanship it took to create this, but this seems like the sort of thing that anybody could create with the right training, and therefore it's not art."

Come on, Devin...you have to see that the EXACT SAME anti-game argument can be applied to modern art without changing a single word.

Wave Race: Blue Storm. The game does not have a story, but it has brilliant gameplay. The way your vehicle interacts with the intricately modeled waves and water physics creates a distinct visceral feeling. To achieve that kind of gameplay balance is rare. I would call it art.

The interactivity is what sets games apart from movies, books, paintings, etc. However, a game has the capacity to CONTAIN all those other mediums within itself. Sprites, textures, and polygon models are visual art in their own right. Non-interactive movies can be intertwined with the experience, like the Metal Gear Solid cinematics. In an RPG you can find yourself reading a book's worth of text.

Have their been in-game cinematics to rival the best of Hollywood films? Not quite, but I'd put some of it up there with the best of Japanese animation. Will you find brilliant literature reading the text dialogues in Final Fantasy? Probably not. There are exceptions to these, but I'd need time to compile a better list. Anyways...

At the top of most best games of all time list, you'll find stuff like Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and Mario 64. What those titles have is brilliant gameplay, and that is most certainly art. It's art of a different kind, though. The design of the Forest Temple in Zelda isn't evocative or thought provoking like a painting; it engages the brain one a different level with exploration and puzzle solving.

To create an artificial world that the player can really get caught up in is a beautiful thing, I think.

Ok, but we can even ignore the issue of whether or not there have been any games which have achieved artistic merit. I'm of the opinion that the mere construction of certain games, the gameplay mechanics and logistics themselves are an art... but say it isn't.

That in no way entails that videogames cannot be art. Everything that makes movies art is present in videogames, videogames have simply not made as good a use of them. I gaurantee that will change in the next 10 years however, if not sooner (especially as more and more Hollywood talent ventures into the interactive world).

I've been trying to think of a game for which it would be difficult to say: "this is absolutely not art". I think Dragon's Lair and Space Ace may qualify. I mean, you could just watch them as cartoons and they'd basically be animated shorts. Aren't they "art"? And if we find one example of video game "art", then Ebert has been refuted.

There's art and there's Art. All things made by people could be considered art. The people who make it would be artisans. But they're not artists, and it's not Art.

I don't believe that any game is Art. As Rushdie says, they're puzzles. Is Soduko Art?

Do you think videogames can ever achieve status as proper Art? or no? If not, why?

Shadow of the Colossus.

Simplifying all games to being "just puzzles" is nonsense--it's like saying all comics are just a bunch of pictures or all modern art is a bunch of squiggles or all rap music is about being a thug.

I think the line that separates Star Wars Episode III with something like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is pretty fucking thin. Both feature worlds that are largely invented and created by a bunch of nerds sitting in front of their computers. Both are made in order to make money. Both are designed around thrusting the audience into one exciting sequence after the next. Both are interested in trying to tell a very particular type of story. Honestly, the only real difference is that one of them features mostly live actors instead of computer models, and the other features a script that's forty hours long instead of two. Calling one of them art (bad art, sure, but still art) and the other just a puzzle is ignorant.

Video games are just puzzles. The stories are excuses to get players from puzzle to puzzle. Or worse, stories are interrupted to present puzzles.

Honestly, if video games were more than that, there would be more examples that you could cite over the form's twenty year history.

I don't accept that all video games are puzzles, but even if they are... Why aren't puzzles art? (Not gonna use the bullshit capitalization).

It's not bullshit. My fucking couch is art. But is it Art? Art means something, says something. It's a message from the artist to the reader/viewer. It's a statement.

But hey, you're right. That lineoleum in your kitchen? Congrats, it's art! Your remote control? Also art! Everything is art, including Legend of Zelda. You guys win!

See, there's no discussion here of what art is, just the assertion that your hobby falls into that category. It's part of the modern death of low culture that I hate so much. People have to have rationalizations for the things they like - they can't just like it for what it is. It has to be objectively good, or worthy. The world seems split into art and guilty pleasures, leaving a big chasm in the middle.

Oh, and I know that a definition of art was put forward, but it's so insanely vague, and obviously not talking about what Ebert is talking about.

And to follow up, I think anything CAN be art when used by an artist to convey concepts or emotions. As the only emotions video games convey to those not frighteningly caught up in them (I am looking at the people who cry at Final Fantasy games) are frustration and excitement, I don't think they count.

How is that ANY different from 95% of Hollywood's summer blockbuster, where the stories are excuses to get characters from action scene to action scene? Or worse, stories are interrupted to present action scenes?

And I never claimed there were very many good examples of gaming as art. I'll be the first to admit that most games aim low, and few aspire to be anything more than simple time wasters. But just because something is bad art doesn't mean it's not art, as any art critic will gladly tell you that the vast majority of art simply isn't very good.

You want examples of games that either are (or come close to being) art? Fine. I think both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus are examples of genuine art. I think Katamari Damacy approaches a sort of surreal pop art brilliance at times. I'd stack Tim Schafer's screenplay for Psychonauts up against the screenplay for any animated feature produced this year, hands down. The Knights of the Old Republic games are famous for having better writing, direction and acting than any of the Star Wars prequels. I don't particularly like them, but the Xenogears games are notorious for being dense intellectual meditations on the nature of religion and reality. I think that the architectual design alone in games like Grand Theft Auto and God of War qualifies as an artform. I could point to any number of musical scores over the last ten years that rival Hollywood's best. And this is all just off the top of my head.

I think you're confusing quality with intentions. Art doesn't have to be good.

Actually, I've seen some good discussion from Reese, Whitehead, Pariah, Crow, Slater, and others about what art is and how videogames can and sometimes do qualify. It's YOU, Devin, who is adding nothing to the discussion other than attempts to embarrass us with reductio ad absurdum arguments and the unwavering conviction that video games can't be art FULL STOP, without so much as a cursory glance at where the boundaries of expression in the medium might lie and whether critiquing Super Mario Brothers or Pong or goddamn Dungeons and Dragons actually encompasses the breadth of it.

Lower case art doesn't. That's why any building is lower case art. Any painting anyone does is lower case art.

You're using shitty examples. As good as any animated feature? Brilliant. You point out visual arts elements that existed before video games, but for these games to be a new form of art they need to synthesize those elements in a new way, as film did.

Quit being such an ass, forget the shitty arguments that have been put forward and at least answer the legitimate ones.

For one thing, do you think videogames can ever be art? If not, why not?

Forgetting for a moment whether or not the construction of gameplay and game design can be considered an art, and I think there are legitimate arguments that it can be, but leaving that aside, everything that is present in movies is present in videogames, except the skill in execution. Regardless of what videogames have accomplished in that regard up until now is irrelevant. It is not only possible, but likely that videogames will be able to push the same emotional buttons that movies already do, sometime in the near future. And on a related note, it is also likely that videogames will achieve original, involving, complex stories and characters.

What reason do you have to presume this won't be the case?

Now, let's get back to gameplay.

Is playing chess art? No. But what about the artisans who create elaborate, beautiful chess boards and pieces? Are you telling me that some chess boards could not be considered works of art in and of themselves?

But let's take things a step further, let's assume for a moment that a single individual invented chess (I don't know if this is the case, or if we don't know, or if it simply evolved over the years, but let's assume for the sake of argument). To invent such a wonderful, complex, strategic game, is that not artistry? And please, comparing the creation of chess to the creation of a cross-word is a tenuous correlation at best so let's not go there. One would have required a long period of time involving much care and thought, resulting in something unique and timeless; the other would not.

Answer these questions and maybe we can get somewhere.

You're asking stupid questions, honestly. The chessboard question is like saying that the design of the 360 box qualifies all games as art.

I can't prove a negative. It's impossible. But seemingly no one can prove the positive either, since Shadows of the Colussus is the only real example I have seen here, and just because it makes you think a little bit more than Three's Company.

No it's not anything like saying that "the design of an Xbox 360 qualifies all games as art." That's fucking retarded, and shows either an inability to admit that you're wrong, or an inability to accurately interpret analogy.

The chess board is analogous to a game engine, the game of chess itself is analogous to the gameplay used within an engine.

Yes, you could argue that a chess board is like a 360 in that it is required to enable the playing of the game, but this is a superfluous distinction and neither adds nor detracts from our discussion.

No it's not. You can play a game of chess on a piece of paper with black squares. It will still be the same game. The rules are like the game engine.

No, you obviously don't understand what a game engine is.

Consider that Metal Gear Solid and MGS:Twin Snakes are the same exact game, with the same exact gameplay, using completely different engines.

Playing chess on a piece of paper is like playing a really great game within a really shitty engine

That seems like a pretty arbitrary qualifier. And if I wanted to twist your words, I could use it to argue that Birth of a Nation should be the only film considered a work of art, since every film that has followed has used the same basic narrative structure without synthesizing any new mediums. But that's a bullshit semantics game and we both know it.

So assuming that I accept your statement as true, that something must introduce or synthesize elements in a new way to be considered a genuine artform, then doesn't the fact that games are an interactive medium qualify? Because honestly, that's the biggest difference between a game and a movie--with a movie, the audience has no influence on the outcome of a story. Allowing players to make moral judgements and narrative decisions that affect the outcome is certainly something that's unique to gaming. It's personalized storytelling. Shit, what could have more artistic potential than that?

Devin is just being stubborn. Gee, what a surprise.

Slater, what are you talking about? Some things to think about:

Film as a form, not as a specific example. FIrst of all, BIRTH OF A NATION wouldn't be the movie you want to use, but rather something by Eisenstein, who invented film language. Second, film has a language all its own - it does things no other medium can do. That's what makes it its own artform. It takes elements of writing and acting and photography and adds them together in its own way and then further creates its own things. There are aspects of narrative that can only be truly acheived in cinema. Comic books come closest, but even they have their own unique language that qualifies them as more than just a copy of film.

Second, a game has no real interactive element. You can't actually play a game to a conclusion that hasn't been scripted out in advance. Video games are the movie CLUE. But further, interactivity takes away from art, which is a statement by an artist. If you're going to use interactivity as the aspect that sets it apart, you've just said that games are a tool - that the art isn't created until you're done playing. Video games are like paintbrushes - but what they end up making is another kind of movie.

JuddL, I no longer know what you're talking about. A game engine is the set of rules that the computer reads to make a game work. It's the programming. Isn't it? If so, I guess Microsoft Word is a great piece of art. Further, chess is no shittier when played on a chessboard, a piece of paper, or on a giant life sized field. The game's the thing, not the setting.

You're confusing art and aesthetics, which a lot of people do. It's why people look at some art and think it can't be art because it's ugly.

I thought I just offered Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Remove the gameplay element and they're basically animated cartoons (and they are actually entertaining). Are they not art?

So comics are not art as well?

Just kidding.

If it's a fancy cartoon, it's a cartoon. Why even ask?

I'm asking because I want to hear your answer. I assume that you feel cartoons can be art. Do you reject that Space Ace and Dragon's Lair (due to the fact that they are presented via video-games) are art? I'm just curious to know. If not, do you reject them as art because they are video-games, or because you think they are crappy cartoons that don't qualify as art.

What's Electroplankton?

I think they're poor in general. They're gimmick cartoons. It's like asking if a 3D cartoon still qualifies. Movies in "smellovision" aren't a new form.

A tool. Are we really going to play Stump Devin here? It's obviously a tool. It's a tool to make music. Quick, show me a calculator and ask me if that's art too!

Is a musical instrument a tool? I suppose it is. And can that musical instrument, itself, be a work of art? And can that musical instrument be used to express, create, recreate other art?

Video games... some video games... can allow the "player" to create performance art using the toolsets provided. Performance art where the performer and the audience are probably the same person. That's just one of the things video games can do.

If Electroplankton is a "tool", it's a tool unlike anything you can find in other media. It's something between a musical instrument, a music video, Tetris, and it's own unique visual and aural substance. There's your unique mode of expression, Devin. And there's my answer to your claim that there can be no true interactivity in video games.

And yeah, I am playing Stump Devin. I'm trying to show video games don't necessarily fit into the narrow limits you've defined.

God, it's like talking to a wall. A tool is not art. It can be made artistically, but a drum is not art. Especially not in the frame of reference we're using here. We're not talking about video games as an object, we're talking about them as a form. If you believe a guitar is an artform, you need some remedial English.

Further, you're not understanding what I mean when I say that the artform needs to have its own unique aspect. A woodwind is not a different artform than a stringed instrument. A film is a different artform than photography or theater.

I agree. It's a lot like talking to a wall.

On the subject of musical instruments not being art... Alrighty then. The list of things that can't be art grows and grows, with no objective reasoning provided. I'm still looking for a single concrete reason VIDEO GAMES can't be art and I really would rather not tackle why an entire separate craft can't produce works of art at this time.

Further, I never said Electroplankton was an artform. I said- or implied- that designing it and playing it could be artforms. I'll pass on the remedial English.

Finally, though there's obvious similarities that you first emphasized, Electroplankton is NOT a musical instrument. For one thing, it would be very difficult to get the same composition out of the thing twice in a row. For another, the visual interaction is just as important as the aural interaction (something the musical instrument analogy ignores). It IS unique. We can say it's kinda-sorta like a guitar or a woodwind but it simply escapes that categorization. It is its own kind of thing, and it's as reductionist to call it a "trumpet with a screen" as it would be to call a movie a "painting that moves".

Not quite. A film is really a combination of both those artforms, along with music. Why then does film qualify, and games don't when they're the sum total of all of those things? The only difference is that experiencing the whole piece is reliant on the viewer's own motivations.

A tool is what you use to create art. A controller's what you use to experience it.

Wow - this discussion has gotten so bogged down in semantics I can't imagine how anyone can sort through it all. That said - my perspective?

Not all films are art, though some can be. Not all paintings are art, though some can be. Not all songs are art, though some can be. Video games, a game of chess, etc...well they really can't be art. Why? What's the difference? Well...

There are no rules or restrictions on how you can experience films, songs or paintings.

If you take 10 people to see an Art film, all 10 will walk out of the theatre with something different. Same with paintings and songs that are truly art. The experiences will be different. I don't care how beautiful a video game is - the experience is the same for every single person who plays it. That's what seperates them. The experience and the ability of the artist to intentionally create something that will elicit something entirely different from every single person who experiences it. However, those are just my opinions.

That's goddamn hilarious coming from you.

I'll repeat Russ's stance: Shadow Of The Colosseus. Ico. Killer7. Games can be art, case closed. If Bad Boys 2 can be considered "art", so can those.

Of course this is a very old argument we are all having

I just find it a little sad that people talk in the same snottery tones about video games as they once did about film. As they once talked about photography and before that printed books...and split infinitives...and on and on with the same modernist crap...

If you could clarify your position somewhat. What do you mean when you say "message" or "statement?" By this do you mean a literal message, such as "the Holocaust was bad" or "war is hell", that can be deciphered from the depictions in the Art? Or can it be something far more abstract, such as whatever meaning one might get out of a Jackson Pollack splatter painting?

Agreed.

Once again, Electroplankton. Or if that's too damn eccentric for you, Spore. I don't see how you can state that seriously unless you're just unaware of some of the less linear games.

Well, I don't think anyone could legitimately consider BB2 "art" but that's besides the point. What's hilarious is that the condescending, smart ass, know it all fails to properly grasp one analogy after another. Oh, and he thinks it's impossible to prove a negative.

For Devin an actual list of games that while I would not classify as high art definitely show how video games are headed in that direction. These are in no particular order and just off the top of my head

Bioforge
System Shock 2
Half Life 1 & 2
Call of Duty
Neverwinter Nights
Knights of the Old Republic
Thief (series)
Deus Ex
Black & White
No One Lives Forever
Sacrifice
Full Throttle
American McGee’s Alice
The Secrets Of Monkey Island (series taken as whole)
Phantasmagoria
Darkseed
Wing Commander III
Max Payne 1 & 2
Planescape: Torment
Bad Mojo
Morrowind
Omnikron
Baldur’s Gate
Grim Fandango
The Dig
Loom

Once again just off the top of my head and for the most part PC games. One thing most of these games share is the fact that what makes them special is the journey they take you on challenging philosophy, perspective, morality, ethics. Another thing about many of these titles-- while basic tenants of the main story will remain static, the journey itself evolves each time someone chooses to start again. At this point though technology is still prohibitive. For a game to evolve beyond limited structure and controlled narrative we need more powerful technology. How much from the silent era of movie making is high art? How much is written in hieroglyphs or Semitic script that is regarded as great literature today? Yes video games are not high art at this time, but it is a question of when not if.

I'm still on the fence, personally. But for me, it all comes down to Mario Paint.

You guys arguing for games as "Art" have excellent points, and I'd say it's possible with any medium to create art/Art and that examples given prove they are on the right track (stop giving poor movie examples, though!). I agree that the removal of linear gameplay is key, but think that Games as Art is an objective few have (and fewer still in the future, until shitty games stop acting as cash cows - something I don't see happening any time soon).

Devin's got a point when he implies (as I read it) that this is simply wishful thinking. Games are meant to do very specific things, even the most complicated ones. It's a collection of 'if-then' statements. Is a mind-boggling math equation Art? To the one who solves it, yes. But technically, no. Perhaps the way in which it is solved. But I don't think the potential for the evolution of an interactive artform doesn't exist, because, like any other accepted artform, there is more that goes into it than just the base elements.

If anything, Devin's (perhaps intentional) typo on SotC's part might be indicative of why he feels so strongly on the subject. It doesn't sound as though he has played it/"experienced" it, and I don't think he'd change his mind if he did. Based on what I've devined is his definition of "Art", games aint it. They're "games". And, frankly, I'll give him that. But I did find his statement that games offer no true interactivity, followed by how the presence of interactivity negates the possibilty that it could be true Art, a bit odd.

I'd love to say that Ico and Shadow.... are unequivocally works of Art. But in the strictest sense of the word, they are not without semantic intervention. But I think they could be.

No. Editing is what makes film its own art.

How so?

I think this comment is why the argument is going nowhere. Your problem is with the people making the argument. You don't like "gamers", that much is clear. And when you see them trying to classify videogames as art (or "Art" if you want to continue splitting hairs) then it pushes your buttons in the same way that people trying to pass The Goonies off as a classic film do.

Your argument above is drawn from prejudice. The only people who feel an emotional response to a game must be "frighteningly caught up in them", and therefore you disregard them. If a game can make someone cry, if a game can catch people up in them in that way, how is that different to someone crying at a film? Or a book? How is someone crying at the death of Aeris in FF7 so different to someone crying when ET dies?

Regardless of your disdain for the people in question, it is an emotional response. You can't say "Games can't provoke an emotional response, except when they do, and those don't count because those people are lame".

Most games don't even attempt it, and those that do usually do so through fairly trite and obvious means so far, but games DO elicit emotional responses - and they clearly go beyond the frustration/excitement level that you've dismissively set for them. Games can make people laugh. They can make people scared. Basic responses, yes, but how long did it take movies to evolve beyond the obvious? Can games make people truly question their place in the universe, or ponder the fragility of human emotion? Not yet. But there's no reason to argue that they couldn't, given time.

Games are just puzzles? Again, most of them are. But I don't see how that precludes them from ever becoming Art. Myst is a good example. It's literally just a puzzle, but it's also more than just a wordsearch. Or are you saying that presentation can't change the intent of something?

Comparisons to sofas and remote controls are trite. Even you must see that the production of a game has more in common with a movie than the construction of furniture.

But you say that interactivity negates art, which seems like an arbitrary distinction to make, especially when you also say that games aren't truly interactive. Are you saying that art can't leave room for interpretation? That the meaning or purpose of art must be set in stone by the creator? There are plenty of open-ended games where "success" or "failure" is an abstract concept.

You've dismissed interactivity out of hand as a reason why it can't be art, while not really existing in games, and said that games must come up with some new way of using elements to qualify as art and then dismissed their defining difference in a contradictory way.

If Vib Ribbon was an installation at MOMA, where a wireframe rabbit walks along a line that peaks and troughs as it reacts to the ambient noise of the audience, and each time he stumbles he slips further down the evolutionary chain - would that qualify as Art?

So why does the addition of a joypad so fundamentally reverse its artistic value?

Even if games are just to be accepted as a subset of film, rather than a new artform, how does that preclude them from being art? You can't say something like Space Ace is the same as an animated movie, as a way of countering the argument that games offer something new, and then say that it can't count as art because it's a game.

Something like Half Life 2 is almost identical to a well-written thriller novel or a good blockbuster movie. At least, I get the same entertainment from it as the other things. If you take three things, in three mediums, and they all provide the same entertainment, the same stimulation, and two of them are considered products of valid artforms, how can the third not be?

If you at least accept than by the very process of creation a game can be considered "art", then do you accept that the form has the potential to spawn "Art" in the right hands? Because that's all that most people here are arguing. Not that games are Art, but that the interactive medium has the potential to produce Art.

And it does.

Games have been around for twenty years. They're in their infancy, but the medium is evolving all the time. We look back on early films now and hail them as classics because we can see how they influenced what came afterwards. Games don't have that perspective yet, but you sound like you're already shutting the door on the idea of the medium having any artistic worth.

If you want to argue that no game so far can be classified as Art then I'd agree - though there are many games that have made impressive strides in the right direction.

Rez. Myst. Vib Ribbon. And those are just the first that spring to mind that work on an abstract level. The ones that, just played on a screen in a gallery could be just as valid as Tracey Emin's unmade bed or Cristo's wrapped buildings as a creative statement. Hell, back in 1984 there was a game called Deus Ex Machina by a guy called Mel Croucher, that was described as the game equivalent of Pink Floyd's The Wall. They're few and far between, but there are people out there who see creating games as more than just a hollow technical exercise.

Indigo Prophecy, Fable, Deus Ex and Ico are doing things with narrative and presentation that rival the populist end of the novel and movie market, and that's literally just the beginning.

But if you're arguing that games can never produce Art just because they're games, or because they're interactive, or because they don't offer anything new or just because you don't like gaming nerds then you're being uncharacteristically shortsighted. The arguments you're using are the same ones that people used to decry sampling as "not real music", or comics as "not real artwork".

Maybe gaming hasn't yet discovered it's Afrika Bambaataa or Bomb Squad, it's Spiegelman or Eisner, but I think it's only a matter of time.