The Ebert of Videogames

[Ipsen]

Point #2 is more about the way Ebert regarded films as an artform, and relayed it in a way that the average person could understand. I don't /want/ games to get more artistic, because games don't do arty all that well, and attempts to force them to be arty tend to result in terrible games. Good art, maybe -- that's totally in the eye of the beholder -- but terrible games. Some people would argue that that's because we haven't discovered how to properly use the medium yet, but I'd say we were doing it right from day one, with titles like Pong and Spacewar. These new "art games" are more like poorly directed movies than good games.

Good point, sir, but I still personally side for the 'games as art' angle. More for the fact that, at this point in my life and keeping up with this hobby, I'm more excited for new experiences, ultimately over what I'd call 'fun'. I'm older now, and I can have other avenues for 'fun' than video games, so they can stand to be bad every once in a while. Alongside of that, and I think reflects the drive of many for 'artsy' games is that video games (in a general perspective) can be kind of bland (or I should say have few types of fun), especially in this generation, what with the prevalence of the first-person shooter. Even some of the more artsy games of this generation, say your Braid, Thomas Was Alone, etc. step heavily into aged genres (both here being platformers). I think us looking for art in games are just looking for as novel an experience as possible, or perhaps the next genre in games (...so there can be more retreads).

As for video games' Ebert, I don't think we'll have one for quite some time. The gaming community seems so...fractured. 'We're' split between genres we don't like (to the point of almost hating a person for liking it), and we're split by the pricing for games; not so much that prices differ, but the high investment of games prevents us from having the fun of experimenting with other games. 'We', in my eyes, have hardly a community at all; hell, look at the Phil Fish fiasco . Regardless of the man acting like a douche, who else in gaming would you respect, if not the developers, the people crafting your hobby (and I am implying that not all of us can craft our hobby, at least now)? But it seems we can't do even that. Just from this perspective alone, would the large majority of us follow a particular 'academic' of games? I would even question if they really knew more than any of us who try to keep up with the news through the internet.

The biggest problem Extra Credits is that they know absolutely nothing about anything they touch on. They are good at dressing there shit up in a academic manner to make it seem high-minded but that's all it is, dress-up.

The sad thing is that they're still people who think this, yet their whole point was to create a food for thought; a discussion between people who might, and just only might KNOW MORE ABOUT ANYTHING THEY TOUCH UPON. Get over your blatant fear of academia; you might see better for it.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

The truth here is that gaming is a minority thing

Not even close. The majority of people, in the West and Japan and Korea at least, are gamers.

I know that the budgets of AAA games have gone up massively but they are still smaller than your average summer blockbuster.

There are 16 films that have ever made over $1 billion. Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2 both made that much in two weeks. And it's not just money. Sticking with Black Ops 2, over 10 million sales in its first month, and millions of people queuing up to buy for a midnight release. There's a reason it's described as the biggest entertainment launch ever - because it was bigger than any film has ever been. And obviously it's not just a couple of popular games that are like this. Wii Sports - over 80 million copies sold. Super Mario Bros, a game originally released in the 80s, has over 40 million copies sold. World of Warcraft is considered to be slipping because it's dropped below 10 million subscribers - not sales, but people who actually pay money every month to carry on playing. Farmville is currently in freefall, and has dropped all the way down to 13 million people playing it every single day. Angry Birds has been downloaded nearly 2 billion times.

Or forget about specific examples and simply look at the industry as a whole [http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry] (from 2008):

Video game industry in the US - $22 billion
Movie industry - $9.5 billion

If you throw in DVD sales as well then video games are still a bit behind, and up to date global figures seem a bit hard to come by. But the idea that video games are still some niche thing not worth the attention of the mainstream press is just ludicrous. Whether they've actually become the biggest sector of the entertainment industry or not, they're certainly very much up there with the big boys.

The Avengers sold 79,601,474 tickets in the US. Cod MW3 sold 26 million units worldwide.

Sadly, MW3 probably still made more (or at least comparable -- I know MW2 was the most profitable /entertainment product/ of all time when it came out) money, because of how expensive the individual games are. We're talking $60 a pop + another $30-$60 worth of DLC for the full experience vs. $9-15 a pop, plus maybe $10 on snacks if you don't just smuggle your own in. Part of the reason prices on games are so high despite many people not being able to afford it is the publishers are happy to take more money from a smaller audience, and they're unwilling to experiment and see if they could make more money by pricing a major title lower and selling it to more people, the way

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

As for getting a Roger Ebert of gaming: why would I ever want that? We have tons of them, they're called games as art hipsters and they annoy the crap out of me with there incessant attempts to "move the medium forward" by removing everything I love about it and replacing it with things better done in books and movies. I think I speak for everyone who was ever annoyed by an episode of Extra Credits when I say "screw that."

This is why Ebert reviews art and not board games. I think this is missing the point. There is room in the world for all things. There is no need to feel threatened.

Point #2 is more about the way Ebert regarded films as an artform, and relayed it in a way that the average person could understand. I don't /want/ games to get more artistic, because games don't do arty all that well, and attempts to force them to be arty tend to result in terrible games. Good art, maybe -- that's totally in the eye of the beholder -- but terrible games. Some people would argue that that's because we haven't discovered how to properly use the medium yet, but I'd say we were doing it right from day one, with titles like Pong and Spacewar. These new "art games" are more like poorly directed movies than good games.

That's the idea. You might have 1000s and only 1 is any good. But if they are not being made than the good ones will never emerge. Video games are like movies or books (among other mediums) except even more visceral. If the game doesn't approach the medium in that way then its disqualified from comparison with traditional media. And its firmly in the board game or sport camp. You don't compare a movie to ESPN or the game show channel.

EDITED: So if this thread is about Roger Ebert vs. video games. Games that cannot be compared to movies do not have any place in this thread. Anymore than Ebert would sit down and tell us about Mouse Trap.... unless it was Mouse Trap: The Movie. Then he'd have to I guess.

The good ones exist, though. I was playing one today. Saying Ebert wouldn't sit down and tell us about Mouse Trap is exactly the point: this is not a good choice for an artistic medium. Focusing on it as an art form (or at least as a story telling medium, which is the area of art that that focus keeps landing on) only emphasizes the things it does poorly while skipping over the things it does well. There are many things videogames are good at, telling stories is not one of them. If you want to focus on the artistic merits of gaming as a medium, that's the wrong direction to be aiming in.

 

[Albino Boo]

The truth here is that gaming is a minority thing

Not even close. The majority of people, in the West and Japan and Korea at least, are gamers.

I know that the budgets of AAA games have gone up massively but they are still smaller than your average summer blockbuster.

There are 16 films that have ever made over $1 billion. Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2 both made that much in two weeks. And it's not just money. Sticking with Black Ops 2, over 10 million sales in its first month, and millions of people queuing up to buy for a midnight release. There's a reason it's described as the biggest entertainment launch ever - because it was bigger than any film has ever been. And obviously it's not just a couple of popular games that are like this. Wii Sports - over 80 million copies sold. Super Mario Bros, a game originally released in the 80s, has over 40 million copies sold. World of Warcraft is considered to be slipping because it's dropped below 10 million subscribers - not sales, but people who actually pay money every month to carry on playing. Farmville is currently in freefall, and has dropped all the way down to 13 million people playing it every single day. Angry Birds has been downloaded nearly 2 billion times.

Or forget about specific examples and simply look at the industry as a whole [http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry] (from 2008):

Video game industry in the US - $22 billion
Movie industry - $9.5 billion

If you throw in DVD sales as well then video games are still a bit behind, and up to date global figures seem a bit hard to come by. But the idea that video games are still some niche thing not worth the attention of the mainstream press is just ludicrous. Whether they've actually become the biggest sector of the entertainment industry or not, they're certainly very much up there with the big boys.

The Avengers sold 79,601,474 tickets in the US. Cod MW3 sold 26 million units worldwide.

Sadly, MW3 probably still made more (or at least comparable -- I know MW2 was the most profitable /entertainment product/ of all time when it came out) money, because of how expensive the individual games are. We're talking $60 a pop + another $30-$60 worth of DLC for the full experience vs. $9-15 a pop, plus maybe $10 on snacks if you don't just smuggle your own in. Part of the reason prices on games are so high despite many people not being able to afford it is the publishers are happy to take more money from a smaller audience, and they're unwilling to experiment and see if they could make more money by pricing a major title lower and selling it to more people, the way

I was pretty much making the same point in my original post which that guy edited down.

They're not exactly Ebert, but the crew at Extra Credits on Penny Arcade (late of the Escapist) does a pretty good job of mixing high-minded rumination with accessibility. The real problem is going to be the Balkanization of popular culture in today's world - even Ebert couldn't be Ebert if he were just starting out today.

Extra credits only reaches a tiny part of the numbers gamers and nothing of the world beyond gamers. Extra credits has no main stream media presence The truth here is that gaming is a minority thing, I know that the budgets of AAA games have gone up massively but they are still smaller than your average summer blockbuster. Look at the price point, the cost of entry into a cinema is far lower than the launch price of AAA game. This is because of the simple reason more people go to the movies than game.

10 to 15 years time gaming might be become more mainstream but at the moment the number of people interested gaming is to small for it to get mainstream critics.

 

[mateushac]

I'm sorry, Shamus, but you've used Campster's super ultra exclusive patented term. I'm afraid we'll have to ask you to turn in your nerd badge now.

 

[Amir Kondori]

"And the question that really eats me is: Even if such a person showed up, would anyone actually read them? I don't just mean the public in general. I mean, would gamers read it? Does the gaming public want artsy ruminations and anecdote-driven analysis of intent and craft? Do people want to talk about kinesthetics, ludonarrative dissonance, narrative mechanics, gamification, and power creep?"

Yes they do. There are podcasts like Three Moves Ahead, Idle Thumbs, and Quart2Three's games podcast that get into that type of stuff and I don't know how popular they are but they keep doing new ones. I think among a certain type of gamer there is a strong hunger for this deeper analysis and commentary, true gaming criticism that just doesn't get done anywhere else.

In fact if you want to make the argument for someone being the Roger Ebert of video games I might throw in the hat of Tom Chick. Go read some of his reviews.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

As for getting a Roger Ebert of gaming: why would I ever want that? We have tons of them, they're called games as art hipsters and they annoy the crap out of me with there incessant attempts to "move the medium forward" by removing everything I love about it and replacing it with things better done in books and movies. I think I speak for everyone who was ever annoyed by an episode of Extra Credits when I say "screw that."

You've got that incredibly, bizarrely backwards. The Extra Credits crowd is consistently on the side of mechanics and narrative through gameplay; it's the big publishers who are trying to push "cinematic" gameplay which amounts to trying to replace meaningful interaction with scripted sequences and cinematic.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

As for getting a Roger Ebert of gaming: why would I ever want that? We have tons of them, they're called games as art hipsters and they annoy the crap out of me with there incessant attempts to "move the medium forward" by removing everything I love about it and replacing it with things better done in books and movies. I think I speak for everyone who was ever annoyed by an episode of Extra Credits when I say "screw that."

You've got that incredibly, bizarrely backwards. The Extra Credits crowd is consistently on the side of mechanics and narrative through gameplay; it's the big publishers who are trying to push "cinematic" gameplay which amounts to trying to replace meaningful interaction with scripted sequences and cinematic.

Yet they gush about things like Dear Esther, which is nothing but a movie in which the player controls the camera -- meaning it's a poorly directed movie. And they occasionally pay lip service to the idea that it's okay for pure gameplay games to coexist with their arty farty crap, but they then proceed to spend the entire rest of the video talking about how horrible games that focus on the gameplay are, and how they need to focus more on the art. The only thing more obnoxious than the videos themselves were the rabid fans we had around here when the show was still on this site, who typically didn't even bother with the lip service in their quest to "move the medium forward."

 

[Deacon Cole]

I do watch Zero Punctuation reviews of games I probably would never play in a million billion million years and would likely run screaming from the room if I found myself playing any of them. But is Yahtzee that much of a critic? Is he communicating structure and craft to the masses the way Ebert did? Come to think of it, did Ebert really communicate craft to the masses regarding film, or did people just read his column to see him write the word "hated" ten times?