6 ms·

Video Games are already art, Mr Ebert

33 points by nikgregory 16y ago

tumult 16y ago
I love video games, and have been playing them my entire life (beyond as far back as my memory goes), and I would not consider the majority of games to be art. "Is it art or not" is a stupid debate. What is art? You cannot even have this argument, because two opposing viewpoints will not have the same definition of art. Great essay on this matter: http://johnhenrylambert.com/essays/bad_words.html http://johnhenrylambert.com/essays/bad_words.html Are video games fine art? No. Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely. Almost never, for the sort of game you can buy for a console from the store. Are they art like industrial design, transportation, bridges, etc? Probably not, since the games themselves are usually only software. Is software art? Sometimes, probably. Then are games art like software is art? Could be, but most people think of the game as the entire package itself, not just the code that powers the engine. Are the in-game assets art? The characters, scenery, etc? Individually, certainly. As a whole? Debatable. Individually, the assets have no purpose other than their form. Collectively, they take the form as fulfilling part of an exchange the consumer (who paid money with the understanding that he or she will receive a minimum amount of stimulation and entertainment) has made with the producer of the game. Few people expect to pay $60, put a disc into their console, and look at pictures of chairs nailed to a wall and read a marker-felted diatribe about the uselessness of progressing fashionable design standards if the functional form does not change over time. If you pay $60 to go through a museum of modern art and don't like it, well, too fucking bad. Most commercially produced games, just like with most commercially produced movies, the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled. So by that definition, most Hollywood movies are not art, either. Which I would also agree with. Entertainment is not exactly the same thing as many of the more formal definitions of art.
- danieldon 16y ago
  I liked the part where you called it a "stupid debate" and said "You cannot even have this argument" and then wrote a long post doing exactly what you criticized. Also, "[x] is not art" statements are a tremendous bore.
  - tumult 16y ago
    Stupid debates can be fun
- sueders100 16y ago
  "the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled." That's a very broad statement that disqualifies nearly all paid performances as a form of art. Video games are art, or much or what is commonly considered art isn't. Gesamtkunstwerk is a word/concept that describes a whole artwork made up of other pieces of art. It isn't a new concept. It's been around for nearly two centuries. Take a look at theater for instance. No one doubts that it's art, but it is made up of costume design, acting, the score, etc. This whole debate like everything else will finally end when all the older people who don't believe video games are art grow old and die.
  - tumult 16y ago
    I don't consider most theater to be art in that sense. Art in the sense of craft or technique, certainly. But not a kind of derivative of fine art.
- ido 16y ago
  Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely. The argument was that games by definition cannot be art. The counter argument was not that all (or even many) games are art, but that at least one game can be.
- narag 16y ago
  The definition of Art suffered its crisis a long time ago, with some people proclaiming the end of art. I remember reading books in the eighties by Gino Dorfles or Arnold Hauser (I hope the names are correctly spelled) and about the Bauhaus or Andy Warhol. My humble conclusion was that Art is now defined more as a concepts than as a technique. The concepts are the kind of making spectator think about interesting ideas (the basic questions we all ask) or even the media through which they're transmitted and their relation to the message. I don't think what you pay for it is the key, nor is the technical excellence (an ad can be technically superior to some classic paintings) but the intention and ability to make us question our nature and society's. In this sense, video games are not Art, the same way that design isn't. They can be art in other sense that two hundred years ago was associated with art works, but was later dissociated by the industrial, and now digital, revolution.
tman 16y ago
Very few films are "art". Who's the video game equivalent of Kubrick or Kurosawa or Bergman? Penny Arcade's comment on this is wonderfully wrong: "If a hundred artists create art for five years, how could the result not be art?" Interestingly, that's exactly the sort of film that fails to be art. Great films are, without exception, products of a single driving vision, not designed by committee. The only way to really claim that video games are art is to say, "Here, this game X is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai." Only that's not going to happen, because it doesn't exist. And because it doesn't exist, Ebert gets pummeled with long screeds of gamer angst rather than the only answer that would matter: "Game X is art."
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gommm 16y ago
  Could you say that the Mona Lisa is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai? If so in what way is it equivalent? How do you define art? I for one would say that the Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, the Secret of Monkey Island and Sanitarium are art. But that's according to my definition of Art... I feel that they are games with great stories, great vision and that make me feel emotions.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Half Life is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai. I have Half Life. Yes, I have The Seven Samurai, in its black and white goodness. They both helped define in their respective areas the future. Half Life was that game for me. I still remember the feeling of finally seeing the soldiers, and then coming to a firm realization in horror that they were trying to kill me as well. The entire pulled me in at the time. Art is, at it's core, something someone creates to experience. A painting is art because you experience it with your eyes. A song is art because you experience it with your ears. Both were creations intended to be experienced. Architecture is art, not just because you can see it, but because you can actually feel it, move through it, use it. Beautiful architecture can be functional, and usually is. It solves a problem while being beautiful. So, why does a game not become art? Winning, as described by Ebert? Architecture's goal isn't being art, it's to be a structure. The purpose of the art doesn't dictate whether it's art. The Mona Lisa isn't less art because it was commissioned. The goal of the Mona Lisa was in celebration of a birth, but does this diminish it's artistic value? The 'players' here used the painting for another purpose. So, it can't be the goal. Winning isn't why I played Half Life. The story was why I played, the emotions it pulled on. You make the argument that great films are driven by a single vision. But The Seven Samurai was not driven by a single person. So, if a game is designed by a single vision, can it become art? The argument against games as an art is not new. Movies weren't art. Pictures weren't art. So many things weren't art before their time, and had to become art, evolve to art. No. Discounting games as art diminishes all other forms of art.
hzzn 16y ago
Games are mechanisms for play. Play is not art. Play is dynamic, art is static. Play engages, art coerces. I think Ebert is mostly right, but we shouldn't give much serious attention to someone who has had so little experience with games. That's like arguing about Hermann Hesse with someone who staunchly refuses to read anything longer than a road sign. We should be proud of the distinction between play and art. If we're going to argue at all, our position should be that play is potentially as important as art, if not more so. --- (Emphasis on "potentially". Game developers still have a lot of ground to cover. The linked article was praising games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect as positive examples of storytelling in games. Yikes.) BioWare has got lost in the dense tangle of what it was trying to accomplish. It hasn't been able to see the wood for the trees. It has summoned an entire world into existence in the most meticulous detail, but failed to give it an identity beyond the blandest cliché. It has created living characters that respond like humans, but speak like dictionaries and move like mannequins. It has engineered solidly absorbing RPG gameplay and character progression and stranded them in a succession of hackneyed and hide-bound scenarios. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dragon-age-origins-review
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Play is not art... why? Art is static? So fountains, kinetic sculptures, improvisational comedy, and rose gardens are not art? I find your definitions lacking.
  - nikgregory 16y ago
    Fine art is (generally) static, but film and theatre are not, they're the performing arts and this is where I believe video games fall. Where is the difference between Titanic and Avatar? Is Avatar not art or is it excluded because of graphics? Is Shreck not art because it's even more computerised? Where is the line? There isn't one, people insist there is a line somewhere yet they, like Ebert, fail to define where and why that line is. As I said, there are many things I wouldn't consider art, but I know for a fact 90% of people disagree with me.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
gizmo 16y ago
I agree with the premise (video games can be art), but I find his arguments unconvincing. Some games I consider art because of the story, the immersion, and so on. From the top of my head: PlaneScape: Torment, and perhaps The Longest Journey. These games are great because they are great novels, and more. Other games, such as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (the one by LucasArts) and Grim Fandango I consider art because they are great movies and more. It's really more of an interactive movie than a game. Watching somebody play games like this is almost as much fun as playing it yourself. Some games I consider art because they make me stop and think. Sanatarium for instance. On the other end of the spectrum you can have a game like Super Mario. Mario is reductionist. Everything that can be left out, is left out. You walk, you run, you jump. There is no story, you don't need one. I imagine people will still play and enjoy Super Mario 30 years from now, perhaps a 100 years from now. If a game stands the test of time like that, it almost must be art by definition. A great game, when you pick it up, can immediately blow you away because it's just that good. In the same way a painting can take your breath away or keep you captivated for hours. Music can do this to you too. Paintings, Music and Games can be art because the artists can decide what to leave in and what to take away. They completely own the medium, and so the artist owns the experience. With movies, this isn't the case. They're clumsy because there are too many details, too many uncontrollable factors, too many budgetary issues. Movies are never perfect. No matter how great a movie is, there are always jarring imperfections. But if there is a perfect movie, a movie that can't be improved upon, that can be really considered art... you'd probably end up with a movie from Pixar.
- Radix 16y ago
  I think yours will be the best comment on this article. The trouble with this discussion is people keep attempting to define objective attributes of art. But art doesn't have objective attributes; they are all subjective. Art is a feeling we get when we look at something others call art. We see three paintings, all "art", and two of them give you a certain feeling, so you call it "art" and suppose they feel the same about the third painting. And there it is. You now have an idea called "art" to develop. It is in this way that our idea of art overlaps with each others, appearing to be the same from a distance, but irreconcilable at proximity. This is why this concept is so fuzzy and difficult to sketch out. We really do need to experience art before we can believe it as art. So, Mr. Ebert's right. Video games aren't art - to him.
zupatol 16y ago
This argument is all about what's good enough to be art. If the first film ever made was boring, film was not yet art. If the second film was good, film suddenly became art. Including the first film? Is a really really good film art, or must it be at least really really really really good? There is no film everyone likes, so the only way to recognize a good film is by majority. Must it be filibuster-proof? This debate makes no sense.
philk 16y ago
Why do we care what Ebert thinks?
- ktf 16y ago
  This was my reaction too, at first. But Ebert is a hugely influential cultural figure, spreading ill-informed opinions to a public who would rather listen to what he says than think for themselves. Willful ignorance is a metavirus.

33 points by nikgregory 16y ago

I love video games, and have been playing them my entire life (beyond as far back as my memory goes), and I would not consider the majority of games to be art. "Is it art or not" is a stupid debate. What is art? You cannot even have this argument, because two opposing viewpoints will not have the same definition of art. Great essay on this matter: http://johnhenrylambert.com/essays/bad_words.html http://johnhenrylambert.com/essays/bad_words.html Are video games fine art? No. Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely. Almost never, for the sort of game you can buy for a console from the store. Are they art like industrial design, transportation, bridges, etc? Probably not, since the games themselves are usually only software. Is software art? Sometimes, probably. Then are games art like software is art? Could be, but most people think of the game as the entire package itself, not just the code that powers the engine. Are the in-game assets art? The characters, scenery, etc? Individually, certainly. As a whole? Debatable. Individually, the assets have no purpose other than their form. Collectively, they take the form as fulfilling part of an exchange the consumer (who paid money with the understanding that he or she will receive a minimum amount of stimulation and entertainment) has made with the producer of the game. Few people expect to pay $60, put a disc into their console, and look at pictures of chairs nailed to a wall and read a marker-felted diatribe about the uselessness of progressing fashionable design standards if the functional form does not change over time. If you pay $60 to go through a museum of modern art and don't like it, well, too fucking bad. Most commercially produced games, just like with most commercially produced movies, the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled. So by that definition, most Hollywood movies are not art, either. Which I would also agree with. Entertainment is not exactly the same thing as many of the more formal definitions of art.

danieldon 16y ago
I liked the part where you called it a "stupid debate" and said "You cannot even have this argument" and then wrote a long post doing exactly what you criticized. Also, "[x] is not art" statements are a tremendous bore.
- tumult 16y ago
  Stupid debates can be fun
sueders100 16y ago
"the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled." That's a very broad statement that disqualifies nearly all paid performances as a form of art. Video games are art, or much or what is commonly considered art isn't. Gesamtkunstwerk is a word/concept that describes a whole artwork made up of other pieces of art. It isn't a new concept. It's been around for nearly two centuries. Take a look at theater for instance. No one doubts that it's art, but it is made up of costume design, acting, the score, etc. This whole debate like everything else will finally end when all the older people who don't believe video games are art grow old and die.
- tumult 16y ago
  I don't consider most theater to be art in that sense. Art in the sense of craft or technique, certainly. But not a kind of derivative of fine art.
ido 16y ago
Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely. The argument was that games by definition cannot be art. The counter argument was not that all (or even many) games are art, but that at least one game can be.
narag 16y ago
The definition of Art suffered its crisis a long time ago, with some people proclaiming the end of art. I remember reading books in the eighties by Gino Dorfles or Arnold Hauser (I hope the names are correctly spelled) and about the Bauhaus or Andy Warhol. My humble conclusion was that Art is now defined more as a concepts than as a technique. The concepts are the kind of making spectator think about interesting ideas (the basic questions we all ask) or even the media through which they're transmitted and their relation to the message. I don't think what you pay for it is the key, nor is the technical excellence (an ad can be technically superior to some classic paintings) but the intention and ability to make us question our nature and society's. In this sense, video games are not Art, the same way that design isn't. They can be art in other sense that two hundred years ago was associated with art works, but was later dissociated by the industrial, and now digital, revolution.

tman 16y ago

Very few films are "art". Who's the video game equivalent of Kubrick or Kurosawa or Bergman? Penny Arcade's comment on this is wonderfully wrong: "If a hundred artists create art for five years, how could the result not be art?" Interestingly, that's exactly the sort of film that fails to be art. Great films are, without exception, products of a single driving vision, not designed by committee. The only way to really claim that video games are art is to say, "Here, this game X is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai." Only that's not going to happen, because it doesn't exist. And because it doesn't exist, Ebert gets pummeled with long screeds of gamer angst rather than the only answer that would matter: "Game X is art."

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
gommm 16y ago
Could you say that the Mona Lisa is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai? If so in what way is it equivalent? How do you define art? I for one would say that the Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, the Secret of Monkey Island and Sanitarium are art. But that's according to my definition of Art... I feel that they are games with great stories, great vision and that make me feel emotions.
jasonlotito 16y ago
Half Life is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai. I have Half Life. Yes, I have The Seven Samurai, in its black and white goodness. They both helped define in their respective areas the future. Half Life was that game for me. I still remember the feeling of finally seeing the soldiers, and then coming to a firm realization in horror that they were trying to kill me as well. The entire pulled me in at the time. Art is, at it's core, something someone creates to experience. A painting is art because you experience it with your eyes. A song is art because you experience it with your ears. Both were creations intended to be experienced. Architecture is art, not just because you can see it, but because you can actually feel it, move through it, use it. Beautiful architecture can be functional, and usually is. It solves a problem while being beautiful. So, why does a game not become art? Winning, as described by Ebert? Architecture's goal isn't being art, it's to be a structure. The purpose of the art doesn't dictate whether it's art. The Mona Lisa isn't less art because it was commissioned. The goal of the Mona Lisa was in celebration of a birth, but does this diminish it's artistic value? The 'players' here used the painting for another purpose. So, it can't be the goal. Winning isn't why I played Half Life. The story was why I played, the emotions it pulled on. You make the argument that great films are driven by a single vision. But The Seven Samurai was not driven by a single person. So, if a game is designed by a single vision, can it become art? The argument against games as an art is not new. Movies weren't art. Pictures weren't art. So many things weren't art before their time, and had to become art, evolve to art. No. Discounting games as art diminishes all other forms of art.

hzzn 16y ago

Games are mechanisms for play. Play is not art. Play is dynamic, art is static. Play engages, art coerces. I think Ebert is mostly right, but we shouldn't give much serious attention to someone who has had so little experience with games. That's like arguing about Hermann Hesse with someone who staunchly refuses to read anything longer than a road sign. We should be proud of the distinction between play and art. If we're going to argue at all, our position should be that play is potentially as important as art, if not more so. --- (Emphasis on "potentially". Game developers still have a lot of ground to cover. The linked article was praising games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect as positive examples of storytelling in games. Yikes.) BioWare has got lost in the dense tangle of what it was trying to accomplish. It hasn't been able to see the wood for the trees. It has summoned an entire world into existence in the most meticulous detail, but failed to give it an identity beyond the blandest cliché. It has created living characters that respond like humans, but speak like dictionaries and move like mannequins. It has engineered solidly absorbing RPG gameplay and character progression and stranded them in a succession of hackneyed and hide-bound scenarios. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dragon-age-origins-review

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Play is not art... why? Art is static? So fountains, kinetic sculptures, improvisational comedy, and rose gardens are not art? I find your definitions lacking.
- nikgregory 16y ago
  Fine art is (generally) static, but film and theatre are not, they're the performing arts and this is where I believe video games fall. Where is the difference between Titanic and Avatar? Is Avatar not art or is it excluded because of graphics? Is Shreck not art because it's even more computerised? Where is the line? There isn't one, people insist there is a line somewhere yet they, like Ebert, fail to define where and why that line is. As I said, there are many things I wouldn't consider art, but I know for a fact 90% of people disagree with me.
jasonlotito 16y ago

gizmo 16y ago

I agree with the premise (video games can be art), but I find his arguments unconvincing. Some games I consider art because of the story, the immersion, and so on. From the top of my head: PlaneScape: Torment, and perhaps The Longest Journey. These games are great because they are great novels, and more. Other games, such as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (the one by LucasArts) and Grim Fandango I consider art because they are great movies and more. It's really more of an interactive movie than a game. Watching somebody play games like this is almost as much fun as playing it yourself. Some games I consider art because they make me stop and think. Sanatarium for instance. On the other end of the spectrum you can have a game like Super Mario. Mario is reductionist. Everything that can be left out, is left out. You walk, you run, you jump. There is no story, you don't need one. I imagine people will still play and enjoy Super Mario 30 years from now, perhaps a 100 years from now. If a game stands the test of time like that, it almost must be art by definition. A great game, when you pick it up, can immediately blow you away because it's just that good. In the same way a painting can take your breath away or keep you captivated for hours. Music can do this to you too. Paintings, Music and Games can be art because the artists can decide what to leave in and what to take away. They completely own the medium, and so the artist owns the experience. With movies, this isn't the case. They're clumsy because there are too many details, too many uncontrollable factors, too many budgetary issues. Movies are never perfect. No matter how great a movie is, there are always jarring imperfections. But if there is a perfect movie, a movie that can't be improved upon, that can be really considered art... you'd probably end up with a movie from Pixar.

Radix 16y ago
I think yours will be the best comment on this article. The trouble with this discussion is people keep attempting to define objective attributes of art. But art doesn't have objective attributes; they are all subjective. Art is a feeling we get when we look at something others call art. We see three paintings, all "art", and two of them give you a certain feeling, so you call it "art" and suppose they feel the same about the third painting. And there it is. You now have an idea called "art" to develop. It is in this way that our idea of art overlaps with each others, appearing to be the same from a distance, but irreconcilable at proximity. This is why this concept is so fuzzy and difficult to sketch out. We really do need to experience art before we can believe it as art. So, Mr. Ebert's right. Video games aren't art - to him.

zupatol 16y ago

This argument is all about what's good enough to be art. If the first film ever made was boring, film was not yet art. If the second film was good, film suddenly became art. Including the first film? Is a really really good film art, or must it be at least really really really really good? There is no film everyone likes, so the only way to recognize a good film is by majority. Must it be filibuster-proof? This debate makes no sense.

philk 16y ago

Why do we care what Ebert thinks?

ktf 16y ago
This was my reaction too, at first. But Ebert is a hugely influential cultural figure, spreading ill-informed opinions to a public who would rather listen to what he says than think for themselves. Willful ignorance is a metavirus.