Videogames as Art

[Quorothorn]

What was wrong with Turok again? (although I never played it myself) also so I guess he doesn't really hate everything

If I remember aright, Turok was basically everything he disliked about bad console FPSes in one neat package for him to dismember.

Also welcome to the escapist and remind me, what is it he doesn't like about FPS....es???

Thanks for the welcome! As I recall, he gave a list that went roughly as follows: bad aiming controls (for consoles), health regeneration, grenades that don't work as area weapons, ripping off Aliens, and ripping off Halo.

 

[likalaruku]

I don't agree with Ebert that films are art; not anymore Halloywood has been wallering in the septic tank so long that when something manages to be at least mediocre, it's hailed as a brillient piece of work rather than the piece of clover sprouting out of a massive pile of shit.

 

[black-magic]

I feel art is anything you create, in that sense video games, food, children, houses, they are all (and most are generally accepted as) art.

 

[Uncompetative]

...I just don't think that it's worth engaging Egbert (sic) on his own terms because it leads to the same sort of nullification that Yahtzee describes. Honestly, I don't see the subtle irony that you mention, unless you simply mean using Egbert's own work against him...

That is exactly it.

It is ironic that the art normally classified as Fine Art (The Fountain by Marcel Duchamp) is utterly pathetic and a total waste of space. It is doubly ironic that Roger Ebert (who has asserted that Film contains examples that are comparable to Fine Art) should have been responsible for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls being inflicted on culture. It is triply ironic that Ebert not only knows of no game worthy of comparison to his cherished "Cinema", but asserts that "no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form". It is quadruply ironic that the film critic Roger Ebert should attempt to pass final judgement on an entire, emergent, cultural medium when he has apparently avoided engaging with one of its most famous, seminal and cinematic cult classics.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ico

Sure, I will be the first to admit that you could count the number of games as 'culturally significant masterpieces' on the fingers of one hand, but Roger Ebert needs someone to tell him that 5 > 0. Either that, or to get him to stop saying uneducated inflammatory remarks like:

"I was correct when I wrote, 'No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.' To which I could have added painters, composers, and so on, but my point is clear."

see: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html

Just to add to the old man's embarrassment, here is a video game critique that is better than Ebert's film criticism:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/za-critique-ico/

 

[jdhays]

Why would videogames want to be Art?
Art is paint sploches on a canvas that almost got thrown out by the cleaning crew.
Art is a painting of the Madonna with elephant dung for a breast designed to generate controversy and free PR.
Art is a bent mass of metal pipes in from of town hall that your tax dollars paid for.
Hardcore porn is art. Uwe Boll movies are art.
F*** Art.

 

[lijenstina]

The general 90% of everything stinks rule - most of the human endeavors are just senseless cr*p - that applies on games too.

Of the remaining 10% something is art something isn't.
Test of time will decide.

 

[powergamer101]

Ebert clearly has not seen God of War 3. Do you know how many action-commands i missed because i was too busy staring at the background? The visuals in that game were beautiful and could easily combat movies in terms of "art".

 

[elricik]

I wouldn't care that much about people's opinion on video games as art if it didn't effect the industry so much. If we look at the legal side of things if video games aren't considered art, they are not protected under the constitution and therefore can be banned. All it would take is one extremist nut job to get write up a bill banning something in video games such as a nude scene or a very violent scene, and they could do it with no real legal battle because video games aren't considered art in society. And for those of you who call me a conspiracy theorist, look what happened to Manhunt 2 a couple years ago, it will happen again if video games aren't protected under the constitution.

(As you can see my opinion need not apply to a country other than America. But my personal feelings are video games are art.)

 

[ostro-whiskey]

This is the first time Yahtzee has made himself look like a moron, I think hes ego has gotten the better of him.

Videogames are not art for one simple reason, videogames are directly participatory, as such they are entertainment. If an artist relinquishes his art to free tampering by the audeince he is no longer an artist.

When an artist creates a piece of work everything has an implication and the audience simply observe, this immutability allows us to enter the mind and world of the artist.

Videogames remove this immutability, allowing the audience to interact with the world and story, cheapening them by revealing that they are an illusion we can manipulate. As such videogames kill the connection between character and story.

The reason confusion exists is because artists create games, you have concept artists, graphic designers, writers, composers, etc. As such games have artistic elements but the nature of the videogame - the audience being able to edit, change or omit elements of the creation remove the connection with what art is meant to be.

Think of graphics painted on a car, the graphics are art, is the car art ?
The car was created to serve the purpose of transporting people, and does this as always intended.


To claim games are art is to claim that pong or asteroids are also art, as todays games are made to serve the same desires that were being served when they were created.

If one looks at the history of film, since its origins it was artistic in vision and design, films like Nosferatu and Metropolis are evidence of this.


Yahtzees definition of art is so far beyond stupidity I would have fired him if I were the baws. "My personal definition of art is something that provokes emotional attachment."
By this logic beating a woman is art, so is watching your team win the world cup, and going to a gig of a kick ass band.

Improvisation Theatre is considered art and that is interactive.

But not through the audience, please put more thought into what you say.

Someone's snippy.

There's plenty of art that involves viewer interaction. Galleries full of video cameras that record the viewers and project them onto a wall. Blank spaces that invite the viewer to draw or write on them. The whole point of that kind of art is that it makes a statement about the audience and their reactions to the piece, as part of the piece itself. Games do it too on a very individual level.

omfg, I dont think you understand my point, is the audience allowed to adjust facial features on Picasso's abstract portraits ?
Is the audience allowed to make Batman go apeshit and start killing civillians in The Dark Knight ?

I think the problem is that many of you dont even understand the purpose of art, and therefore cannot appreciate what it means to be an artist, which is why you have no problem in devaluing art by trying to frame videogames with it.

 

[justnotcricket]

Now that was some good, old fashioned and surprisingly temperate common sense. There's no point fighting over what is and what isn't art. Just enjoy what you enjoy. In a recent, high profile nationwide art contest here, the winner was the guy who didn't even turn up, but just sent a message saying that his entry would be the wrappings from all the other entries piled up in a heap on the ground. My jaw hit the floor over that one, I admit (mostly because at least the other people had, you know, actually *made* something), but on some level, it's still 'art', and if nothing else he probably deserved the $15,000 just for sheer audacity.

 

[Dr. Danger]

I'll stick with the never say never counter-argument and leave it at that. The notion of something never happening -- especially a subject like this -- is mind boggling.

 

[Galebaby]

I don't care what Yahtzee says!!!

I'll impregnate that dishwasher if its the last thing I do!

 

[Guffe]

You did this one very well Yahtzee!!!

 

[mechanixis]

This is the first time Yahtzee has made himself look like a moron, I think hes ego has gotten the better of him.

Videogames are not art for one simple reason, videogames are directly participatory, as such they are entertainment. If an artist relinquishes his art to free tampering by the audeince he is no longer an artist.

When an artist creates a piece of work everything has an implication and the audience simply observe, this immutability allows us to enter the mind and world of the artist.

Videogames remove this immutability, allowing the audience to interact with the world and story, cheapening them by revealing that they are an illusion we can manipulate. As such videogames kill the connection between character and story.

The reason confusion exists is because artists create games, you have concept artists, graphic designers, writers, composers, etc. As such games have artistic elements but the nature of the videogame - the audience being able to edit, change or omit elements of the creation remove the connection with what art is meant to be.

Think of graphics painted on a car, the graphics are art, is the car art ?
The car was created to serve the purpose of transporting people, and does this as always intended.


To claim games are art is to claim that pong or asteroids are also art, as todays games are made to serve the same desires that were being served when they were created.

If one looks at the history of film, since its origins it was artistic in vision and design, films like Nosferatu and Metropolis are evidence of this.


Yahtzees definition of art is so far beyond stupidity I would have fired him if I were the baws. "My personal definition of art is something that provokes emotional attachment."
By this logic beating a woman is art, so is watching your team win the world cup, and going to a gig of a kick ass band.

Improvisation Theatre is considered art and that is interactive.

But not through the audience, please put more thought into what you say.

Someone's snippy.

There's plenty of art that involves viewer interaction. Galleries full of video cameras that record the viewers and project them onto a wall. Blank spaces that invite the viewer to draw or write on them. The whole point of that kind of art is that it makes a statement about the audience and their reactions to the piece, as part of the piece itself. Games do it too on a very individual level.

omfg, I dont think you understand my point, is the audience allowed to adjust facial features on Picasso's abstract portraits ?
Is the audience allowed to make Batman go apeshit and start killing civillians in The Dark Knight ?

I think the problem is that many of you dont even understand the purpose of art, and therefore cannot appreciate what it means to be an artist, which is why you have no problem in devaluing art by trying to frame videogames with it.

Yeah, so, thanks for saying 'You don't understand art' and then not explaining why not or what art is. Real solid debating. What, so you're saying the examples I gave aren't actually art? Why not? It's still an artist conveying an emotional and intellectual statement, and a component of that statement is how the audience behaves when they experience it. Your definition of what constitutes a statement is simply narrower. You can't manipulate The Dark Knight or Picasso because they aren't pieces about the audience. Games are.

[small]I would like to add I fully grasp the irony of arguing about this underneath an article that says arguing about this is pointless.[/small]

 

[end_boss]

Extra Punctuation: Videogames as Art

Yahtzee responds to Ebert's claim of "videogames are not art."

Read Full Article

Thank you very much for that article, Yahtzee. I actually wrote a long write-up very similar to what you wrote, a few days ago, but I deleted it because I'm just another poster and people don't really read my words very carefully if I break the three paragraph barrier. I'm glad we shared an almost identical view on this, so that people can hear it from you - a voice of authority to many of the Escapist posters - and realize that it's not worth getting worked up over, and that outside of this, Ebert is a very insightful columnist. As a film person myself, I must say that I learned more about film theory from reading his articles over the years than I learned in actual university courses.

Bottom line is that Ebert himself admits that he doesn't play video games. I've seen quite a few interviews with people who don't play video games try to criticize the medium (particularly during the Mass Effect controversy) and it's clear that they can only think of interactive media in terms of Pac-Man, Frogger and Mario.

This article has given me the strong hope that people will finally realize that arguing Ebert's column (and not even in a platform where he will ever see it, either) is like talking to aquatic life from the seat of an airplane in flight.

 

[Tonimata]

So basically what Yahtzee is saying here is what he very wisely said once
"Art is only as good as the culture that surrounds it"

 

[blindthrall]

I can't take Yahtzee seriously anymore. he liked The Spirit. That's bad taste that transcends mediums.

I would say Planescape Torment is art in terms of storytelling, a novelization of that game could readily be construed as art. I'll say that Bioshock had art in it, and Farcry 2 was kind of just a moving landscape portrait. But I can't actually think of a game in which the whole experience would be art, one that actually used the interactivity to its full potential. The problem is that's like a mad-libbed Moby Dick- some versions will say "From hell's heart I stab at thee" while another could say "now you...WILL DIE, evil manatee!" Hitman's a good example. Played by someone who knows what they're doing, it's an elegant and intelligent game. Played by a noob, it's quickly just another routine shoot-em-up. Interactive art has never really progressed beyond the drum circle, so expecting an interactive medium to just suddenly become art is setting the bar too high.

Anybody that played Heavy Rain and considered it art? It does seem to somewhat solve the interactive problem.

 

[elvor0]

While I do agree to Yahtzee to an extent, in that he isn't really that qualified to talk about it, I'm still adamant that games can be art, surely something crafted to invoke emotional response or attachment and is a spectacle (I think that's the right word), qualified as art?

I distinctly remember being moved to tears when Aries died, of course I was only about 9/10 at the time...I think, I know I played it a few years after it came out, and one of my earliest moments of gaming is the bit where you fight the scorpion. It would be another year before I would explore the game further, due to killing the scorpion at a friends house, I would then borrow the game off of someone else, because he bought it thinking it was a football game due to the comet on the cover, and then the disc broke during the bit where you reconstruct clouds head. Another year passes before I actually finish that game.

Of course I've played through it many times after that, due to the impact it had on me, at the time it was a well crafted experience, and while the graphics do remove some of that NOW, I feel that if it's crafted well enough, it still has the same effects on you whoever you are, heck I cried when Gualf died in FF5, when ever Anthology came out.

 

[omegawyrm]

Oh no. This article/forum combination is so filled with self righteousness that it makes people like the overzealous hate-mailers look sane. The fact is Mr. Ebert is someone who people largely regard as an intelligent and considerate man, meaning when he says things people listen. I'm glad everyone here is safe and secure knowing that everyone else other than the people validated here will take videogames as a legitimate waste of time and energy. Just because everyone is so resolute to ignore something does not mean by any stretch that it will go away.

While I too heartily disagree with that videogames are not art, after all art is just something people make that can be shared and can convey emotion. I do not know about the rest of you but I actually want to see the point where videogames become widely accepted as art, because I care about the medium. Yahtzee certainly wrote a well written article, but the fact is I doubt he really cared about this one, because frankly, and quite contrarily to popular belief, what people think ACTUALLY MATTERS. What I'm trying to say here is Yahtzee has made a fine play by simultaneously satisfying his fan base, not upsetting the general populous, and somewhat sounding deep and reasonable without actually saying anything.

In conclusion I'm deeply disappointed by all of you who have chosen to do nothing, and instead are sitting around pretending to be so profound and mature. The reality is you actually are being quite cowardly and lazy by letting the public stomp on your beloved 'art', and doing nothing about it.

Thank you MrLumber, I'm glad I'm not the only one a little bit frustrated with all the posts on here parroting Yahtzee's "I'm just too damn cool to feel strongly about things," opinion.


Guys, think back when some of us were kids and played our first Zelda game and marveled at the huge world that opens up before you and the experience of being a hero, or played your first Final Fantasy (7 for most people) and got emotionally involved with the people that guided you through this grand story, or the days of fun you had discussing and trading Pokemon with your friends, or the sense of accomplishment by winning against all odds when you finally destroy the Overmind in the last mission of Starcraft, or admiration as you listened to David Hayter's gruff rendition of Solid Snake for the first time.

Good job lying down and letting all of that be invalidated and tossed aside as meaningless. Really, you're not even going to try to argue that these things are relevant or impacting, way to go.