Roger Ebert still maintains that video games can't be art.

[Kryzantine]

Non-competitive games, mostly RPGs could easily be artistic. Look at KOTOR, a game that contributed more to Star Wars than the new trilogy; or Okami, which is more visual art and style; or Shadow of the Colossus, which is just one very large underlying theme. If Ebert acknowledges chess to be an art form, then RTS games should equally be considered art. After all, it is the same concept; players are given tools with specific advantages, disadvantages, and values; and they are to beat an opponent using strategy.

You can trust Ebert on movies and absolutely nothing else.

 

[kingpocky]

Hypothetically, you could probably call anything art. However, there's another side to this in that you could say that anything is not art.

Seriously, name one thing in the history of humanity that undeniably is art. If you try hard enough, it is possible to create a psuedo-reasonable argument for why anything doesn't qualify as art. And in most cases, you wouldn't need to jump through any more logical hoops than Ebert has here.

Although really, we shouldn't care if critics think games are art or not. The majority of them will be dead soon enough anyway, and they'll take their place among the countless critics of the past who were unable to understand how art changes.

 

[Ericb]

One thing that would really improve the discussion is for people to stop using the term "art" as an adjective of quality.

Art is intention and execution, not a grade of excelence. There is good art and bad art.

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

honestly i'm okay with games not being considered art. Typically when things think of them self as art they decided that it's more important to say something than to appeal to the masses. Thats fine when we're talking about a painting or such but a game is meant to be fun! Now there's plenty of amazing art that goes into a game (be it visual, narrative, or musical) but the game it's self should always think of it's self as a product. When games consider themselves art than you get things like Final Fantasy 13, where they designers are so worried about the game always being gourgeous and cineamatic that they all but cut the player out of the mix.

Games should be fun first! If they happen to be pretty or say something than thats just a bonus.

 

[kingpocky]

honestly i'm okay with games not being considered art. Typically when things think of them self as art they decided that it's more important to say something than to appeal to the masses. Thats fine when we're talking about a painting or such but a game is meant to be fun! Now there's plenty of amazing art that goes into a game (be it visual, narrative, or musical) but the game it's self should always think of it's self as a product. When games consider themselves art than you get things like Final Fantasy 13, where they designers are so worried about the game always being gourgeous and cineamatic that they all but cut the player out of the mix.

Games should be fun first! If they happen to be pretty or say something than thats just a bonus.

Of course, that's a problem with any art form. The message and the substance of art should work together. There are thousands of songs/stories/movies that sacrifice substance to get the message across, only to come off as pretentious or preachy, ruining the message anyway.

 

[Lamppenkeyboard]

I don't think that games are an art form, but I believe that some games have an impact similar to art. Flower was the last one I really felt affected by.

 

[Korolev]

And let him make such claims if he wants.

He doesn't play video-games. He doesn't know anything about them, most probably, like most old people. He probably still thinks that Pac-man is all the rage. He doesn't know how far technology has come since the 80's. He hasn't played Mass Effect 2 or Uncharted 2.

He's an old man who doesn't understand the things around him. He's like those old guys in the patent office who told Alexander Bell that the telephone was "Just a toy". He's like those old writers in the 30's who adamantly maintained that a TV show would never, COULD never, rival a book or a play. He's a film critic who should really stick to reviewing films. He's a old man who is old, and old people never really learn to catch up after they turn 50.

Old man is old. What do you want from him? You can't expect him to appreciate something he doesn't play, doesn't have an interest in, and doesn't understand. It would be like asking a skiing expert to comment on the quality and artistry of making an ice sculpture. Both involve snow in some form, both provide entertainment and art in their own way, but aficionados of either category would have a hard time understanding the other.

But I can blame Ebert for hating something he doesn't understand. When I am confronted by a medium I can't relate to (90% of all manga and anime), I understand that it's not for me, but others can love it and enjoy it. I don't proclaim that anime and manga can never be artistic - they quite clearly can be, and some of that stuff is (Grave of the fireflies for example). Ebert, on the other hand, can't understand X so he says that no one else can understand or enjoy X. It's a simplistic world view, a limiting one. I'm not asking him to understand how games can be artistic. I just want him to stop making such grand proclamations, as if he was someone the grand artistic critic of our generation. He's not. He's just one critic. A fairly good critic, but still just one critic.

 

[Korolev]

What I'm trying to say is - he's one guy. He's old. He doesn't understand video games. He doesn't play them. So his opinion is meaningless. I can't criticize a movie I haven't seen, and he can't criticize and entire media format he doesn't play or understand.

And we outnumber him.

So who cares what Ebert thinks about video games? I'll read his opinion on a film, but that's about all.

 

[thenoblitt]

he should play ico, or shadow of the colussus

 

[squid5580]

dbl post stupid internet

 

[Knight Templar]

I read the enitre thing and can't find him producing a single solid argument.

Not liking something doesn't mean it isn't art.

 

[squid5580]

They can only be art until society accepts it as art, until then it's

not.

I find very little confort in leaving definitions of anything in the hands of society in general.

Masses have a tendency to make very poor judgements.

I don't think games should be called art because art is non interactive

in my opinion

So you can probably throw any music concert of any genre and artistic interactive performance (like a LOT of modern

theater, from the 19th Century onwards) out the window, as far as art is concerned.

IMO videogames cannot be an art form until we get the graphics

bullshit out the way. By this I mean we have to get to a stage where the development of graphics is so lifelike that

we no longer quibble over their level of realism.

You had something going there, but then you mentioned that utopic stage of graphical realism.

This is besides the point, because there is a lot of good art that is very life-like without actually being

realistic.

IMO videogames cannot be an art form until we get the graphics

bullshit out the way. By this I mean we have to get to a stage where the development of graphics is so lifelike that

we no longer quibble over their level of realism.

You had something going there, but then you mentioned that utopic stage of graphical realism.

This is besides the point, because there is a lot of good art that is very life-like without actually being

realistic.

I don't consider a painting of a soup can art. I don't consider a bunch

of random splashes of paint art. I don't consider a piece of metal twisted into a pile of junk art. Am I wrong??

Nope because that is my opinion. You may think I am wrong but that is your opinion.

Adding subjecvity to protect your view from criticism is very convenient.

The other point I agree

with him on is: why are we so concerned with all this "games are art" stuff? I own Shadow of the Colossus, I love

the game, I don't feel the need to tell all my friends about how artistic it is. I own and love Silent Hill 2 and

feel that it tells it's (beautiful) story in a way that is far more visceral and impactful than just text or film

could ever be. However, I don't need to justify me playing it by calling it art.

I think it's because many of us don't like to think we're being looked down upon by self-proclaimed artistic

elitists. It feels condescending to me, anyway.

That's precisely why I feel the need to defend this, you know?

Because it is not a criticism of such and such creation, it is a jab at the essential validity of the entire medium,

spanning all decades that passed by and all that will come to pass.

And also because there are not that much people out there who would put upt a stand about this. Remembering the case

of the Fallujah game that never was, a lot of people, even inside the industry, turned tail and ran. And that

sounded like an amazing exploration of what war might actually be like. Not an power fantasy fulfillment, but

an horror in depeht exploration of each moment of the experience.

Or that's what they said anyway, we might never know. Because many people did not find it a worthy medium to express

this, even though most news outlets ignored the fact that the very soldiers who survived that battle asked for that

game.

He's just an attention whore and want to say things that alot of

people reacts to so that he can make more money and get more famous.

But maybe he is right. Would one call a board game art? No, because you are mean't to win the game not admire it,

you know what I'm sayin'? :]

And yet, there is Anti-Monopoly:

"In the original 1973 version the board is "monopolized" at the beginning of the game, and players compete to return

the state of the board to a free market system"

A direct answer to the philosophy behind the rules of Monopoly, and a socio-economical commentary all rolled up into

one.

I think there is something to admire in it all right.

The sport isn't. The game isn't.

The throwing of the ball to the team members is not art. The shooting of the corpser in GoW 2 is not art.

The stadium can be art. The music, the packaging, the cgi movies, can be art.

But the sport isn't, nor is the game.

Accidental Fallacy.

I think there is more than one fallacy in your argument right here, but this is the one that sticks out to me.

There is nothing beautiful or appealing to me about a blank

canvas. I'm sure the artist had a "vision", but since when did that become an excuse to turn whatever shit they

created into an art form? It is also, not "of more than ordinary significance." It's a blank fucking canvas.

I actually seen a black canvas with a green vertical stripe painted across it. Big difference, huh? =]

At a cost of 5000 bucks, I'd say you'd benefit from buygin the material and do the painting yourself.

In this day and age we like to think that we've abandoned the idea of "high art" but we haven't have we?

Ebert sure hasn't.

High or low, there's truth and honesty to be found if the author(s) placed them there in the first place.

Sorry but WRONG!!! I don't need to protect myself from criticism because frankly there is nothing to criticize. Is anyone going to tell me I am wrong for not liking mushrooms? Or romantic comedies? Or sports games? Just because we happen to be on a forum doesn't give you or anyone else any right to try and control my feelings or tell me I that my feelings are wrong. And if a person can't accept that oh well. No sweat of my back. And since thier opinion at that point would matter less to me than the gunk I find on the bottom of my shoes I don't need to protect myself. Good try though.

 

[squid5580]

While I completely disagree with Ebert on this one, I'd like people to stop mentioning Heavy Rain. I mean of course, it's a very cinematic piece and does hold a lot of value which art would, but the game itself is very poorly done if you were to compare it with a movie of the same genre (disregarding its gameplay elements). Not to say it's bad but... Just saying'

Oh come on if you were to judge it as a movie it would get low scores. It was the PG version of Saw. With Jigsaw's retard brother thinking up the traps.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Games are technical programs that contain art elements, my view anyways. Art is far to ambiguous a term, especially nowdays when anything is labeled art so I suppose one could call games art.
That said there is not one game out there that I would term art, yes Okami was colorful, yes heavy rain is cinematic, but all in all its a graphics engine, physics engine, and colored polygons thats meant to be interacted with rather than the more emotional passive experience that is art.
I think that's one issue with games being labeled art, the interactivity and purposeful(utilitarian) design of games does not lend itself to an artistic experience. It has elements of art (cutscenes story etc) but to term actual gameplay art is a tough sell for me.

 

[squid5580]

Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?...

Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, "I'm studying a great form of art?"

Why are stick-up-their-ass art critics so intensly concerned anyway that games are not defined as art?

Do they require superiority? In attacking gamining do they want to be able to look down from their self elevated platform on works that they decry as inferior but are no less capable of engaging emotions, making people think and imitating nature than any piece of "art" that they enjoy.

Lets face it compared to an artistic award winning empty room with a couple of flashing lights [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1698032.stm] pretty much any video game could be considered a fucking masterpiece.

Why are you so concerned if they are? Do we gamers win if the world agrees that games are art? Do we get cookies if we can change thier minds? DO you require the superiority?

We may not get a cookie but it would be nice to see some coverage of games where its worth as a way of inspiring thought or exploring morality was examined rather than how they are a tool for corrupting the minds of children. Violence in movies can be seen as a harrowing lesson in about self-destruction but violence in games is just seen as a way to turn kids into killers.

Recognising video games as an art form obviously wouldn't stop those sorts of stories but it does still seem that games are seen by many as a childish pastime of little value and that has been an argument against any sort of mature game being allowed by those looking to ban them. Maybe if more people saw that, at least in certain contexts games can have an artistic value as well then perhaps there would be some defence to that.

I'm not saying that games are a better art form that paintings, sculptures or movies so no I am not looking for superiority. A little equality would be nice. People can and do debate the artistic worth of individual films as it is accepted that films can have artistic merit. To simply dismiss all games as having none just seems incredibly closed minded.

Ok first off there is tons of pro game coverage. Sure the dinosaurs may not be all into it but honestly who cares? We all know what happens to dinosaurs. They go extinct and the new breed takes over. To some they are a childish pastime and no matter what you say, do or show them that is how they will always percieve them. And there is nothing wrong with that on either side. Since there is a difference between "childish" and "for children". And when the world has come to the understanding that all books and movies are fine and no one wants to do away with either one anymore and VGs are the only thing being targeted then you will have a point. But until that day there is just as much call for bannings on both sides. Or have you not seen any (insert game or console here) sucks and should cease to exist posts lately? Makes gamers just as guilty as Fox and Friends or the Titmouse guy. People seem to think just because they don't like or understand something it shouldn't exist. At least when they get behind a keyboard.

 

[Kimarous]

My personal stance on the matter is that games HAVE art; however, they are not art in and of themselves. A game may have a beautiful score; listen to that same score out of the game and it may be just as compelling, if not more so. A game may have beautiful graphics as well; if you take a screenshot, print it out, and frame it on the wall, it may be just as beautiful.

From an artistic standpoint, the playing of a game is as much an artistic experience as visiting a vast gallery while an orchestra plays in the background. Games are much more than that, true, but gameplay itself is not art. Heavy Rain's awkward control scheme that I hated all to heck... that, in and of itself, is not art in the slightest.

But seriously, why fuss over such snobby definitions anyhow? Games are first and foremost about fun, and if artistic appreciation enters the mix, all the better.