Videogames as Art

BloodyThoughts

EPIC PIRATE DANCE PARTY!
Jan 4, 2010
23,003
0
0
Yeah, I agree to disagree but not ***** over it like you do Yahtzee. It really is getting annoying reading about how Roger Ebert doesn't know anything about art because he does. He understands what art is perfectly. What he doesn't know is that basically everything can be considered art. Therefore, Games are art.
 

GoodApprentice

New member
Apr 27, 2010
122
0
0
Roger Ebert has been involved in the movie business forever, and I find it a little ironic that his most memorable and enduring comments may be the ones regarding video games as art (I personally can't quote him on anything else). I'm sure it's not the legacy he was hoping for.

I also disagree with some of the things Yatzee wrote about. I think it's important and healthy to reflect on the nature of games and to be able to respond coherently to those who know very little about our passion. Let's not just shrug them off as Yatzee suggests and say "who cares about people who don't know gaming". What's the point of only preaching to the choir? It's great that Ebert generated such passion and dialogue in gamers. I don't know anyone who was actually upset by his comment, but I know lots of people who talked and debated about it, who reflected on their gaming memories and tried to define the nature of art. I say it's fantastic! Such intelligent reflection and debate in our forums can only be a good thing.
 

rddj623

"Breathe Deep, Seek Peace"
Sep 28, 2009
644
0
0
You sir are both a scholar and a crazy mofo. I'd have said gentleman but I think you may have taken offense to that. Brilliant article. I share your feelings. The thing about critics, of all media, is that you need to find one that you feel represents your own feelings most of the time. That's when a critic is most helpful. When you find one who's opinions mirror your own. That will never be a 100% surety but it is helpful in making decisions on what to watch, play, read, etc.
 

DrTrevelyan

New member
Aug 14, 2009
82
0
0
I'm surprised Yahtzee thinks so highly of Ebert, considering how low he thinks of the rest of the world.
 

dochmbi

New member
Sep 15, 2008
753
0
0
Before you could even begin to argue whether video games are art or not, you had to come to an agreement on exactly what art is, and as you can see here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/ it's not an easy task.
 

UMNiK

New member
Feb 10, 2010
31
0
0
OMG guys and whatnot, STOP FEEDING THAT TROLL. He never even played a game ffs. All his "argument" is not only pitiful, but a simple contradiction to that one particular presentation (it is/isn't style, too! With a bit of added flavour of "never read "Doctor Zhivago", but i disapprove in any case"...). Its just sad, people. Borne, Yahtzee... Who else will fall, i wonder?.. Well, not me. Successful troll is successful, and that should have been Ebert's only response.
 

Hussmann54

New member
Dec 14, 2009
1,288
0
0
Redlin5 said:
Finally someone with some sense! Ebert's opinion is just that, an opinion. Everyone I was talking to was thinking "Oh, Yahtzee is probably going to word rape that stupid Ebert's entire article." I think gaming gets a black mark in the art community because of our more extreme fanboys who would rather burn the Mona Lisa than admit that Ebert can have an outsiders view of video gaming. That said, I disagree in the extreme but not to the point where I'll go burn his house down for being the wrong kind of critic.
What he said.... minus the last part, I dont actually consider games art, so much as entertainment. I think its because I heavily criticize anything claiming to be art (Go to a liberal arts college, and you will see what I mean.) For instance, some girl at our school took a thirty yard long, five feet wide piece of cloth, and painted it various colors of the spectrum around the reds oranges and yellows, and hung it up in the student center so it wound in and out and around the light fixtures on the ceiling and called it "art" because it represented the "Flowing presence of humanity through time". I saw nothing but a waste of good material and a ton of red-ish colors. of course they tried to chew me out by saying that I wasnt "Cultured" enough to understand....
 

TraderJimmy

New member
Apr 17, 2010
293
0
0
riottrio said:
i agree with the whole, everyone to their own opinion thing, i just found this one sentence odd

"Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form" - an extract from the quote Yahtzee took from this Ebert

couldn't i just re-word that to say
" Let me just say that no movie watcher now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form"
or
"Let me just say that no painting-viewer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form"

i find that sentence somewhat stupid... but maybe i'm just the stupid one and have misinterpreted it...
I am sure, afterall, that people have spent much more time playing one singular game, then any person has ever spent looking at a painting... i may be mistaken however (i am sure the artist looked at it longer)... i cannot say, with confidence, that people spend more time on a single game than another person would spend watching a single movie... i swear my little sister has capped 30 hours+ watching a particular chick-flik

And indeed the novel was seen as a pointless past-time by most when they first emerged - novel-reading was for silly women, who stayed in the library instead of learning to crochet and finding a good man. Silly women like Jane Austen, as it turned out, one of the sharpest minds of her time (little competition in the days of fluffy-headed romanticism, the picturesque fad and hot-blooded revolution (not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that!) but you take my point).

Roger Ebert is not an academic, or more pertinently a philosopher, and people are angered by his dismissal of games - and his elevation of chess ABOVE video games, which just cements his clear role as defender of the status quo.

I personally feel there's nothing wrong with the old use of art to mean skill, as in "by his/her art it is made". This allows for technical death metal and conceptual art, concrete poems and novels to live under the same roof: whether a skill is practical or intellectual, the application of that skill is art, and something we can all admire.

I loved this article, one of the many extra punctuations that make me genuinely admire Yahtzee as a journalist. May he sell out and become an old media print whore like Charlie Brooker, and end his days making scathing remarks on gameshows with David Mitchell.
 

Agh-a-meme-knottle

New member
Nov 9, 2008
12
0
0
Somewhere between enraged gamers, who feel Ebert should be put in his place, and YC, who feels there's no point in arguing with him, lies middle ground that is being sadly neglected. No, it isn't necessary to beat Ebert in the debate team sense, or condescendingly suggest that, one day, he'll understand. But there is every reason to continue the debate Ebert's opened up for discussion and to formulate and articulate the reasons he's ultimately wrong.

For one thing, Ebert isn't fragile or stupid. If you made your point well, and it stuck and he had time to consider it, he'd probably acknowledge it. For another, the argument that games *are* art can only be served by further refinement whether Ebert happens to notice or not. You "win" not by beating the opponent but by clarifying the thought behind your own beliefs. You win in the sense that your own understanding is enhanced.

The problem with the examples given by Kellee Santiago is that they are all predicated on "ideas," or premises, that she expects us to praise as intelligent and, therefore, artistic. But unless you're talking about conceptual art, most art is about the complexity of the experience and the execution. Art is not a topic sentence and neither are the games that come closest to achieving artistic excellence. Ebert wins his argument in a sense because Santiago chose the wrong argument and the wrong examples.

I would argue that certain games should be considered narrative art on the level of commercial film-making (and not just in the States). They should not be considered perfect art, as the form needs to evolve (and to be embraced by artists and developers who can afford to have no interest in making money) before it can aspire to ultimate levels of stylistic finesse.

Certain games are art in the *specific sense that B movies can be art*: embarrassing and inconsistent in certain ways, but moving, effective, ironic and aesthetically brilliant in others.

The fact Ebert can't conceive of a game that is based on narrative pull rather than winning means he's effectively media-illiterate: He hasn't studied post-web innovations in fiction and art enough to see the connection between the hypertext novel as taught by Michael Joyce at Brown and the structure of a multiple-choice novel transposed to games (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, Hotel Dusk, etc.). He hasn't seen the games that do the same thing for visual media (Ico, Colossus, etc.). He doesn't seem to know that survival horror games, the equivalent of horror films, evolved into two basic forms, and one of those *doesn't have anything to do with winning*, killing bonus zombies or much else that crowns the player and immortalizes their high score. In games like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame, winning is simply getting to the ending. If the ending turns out to be that the protagonist drives off a pier with his dead beloved and drowns, then how can player be said to have won in the obvious sense?

Ebert is an engaging writer and a fun person to argue with, but I have yet to see him grasp that games are the future of film. There is not one ultimate future for gaming but rather several. Here are a few:

Simm warfare group experiences in MMORPGs; ultimate vacations from social and spatial restrictions in sandbox games; and the refinement of novels and films into one active, immersive, participatory work: a film in which you can move through landscapes and speak with other characters, a film experience that will only become more inclusive as tech improves and our senses can be fooled in an ever-widening sense. We admire it when a novelist or filmmaker creates a world; in narrative games, artists and writers are able to create the effect of being born into that world. Your controls are your christening.

Whether you're a gamer or not, vidgames are the most exciting thing to happen to art since movie-making. The limitations of the medium are entirely imposed by the artist and commercial expectations. That will expand over time: indie devs will be able to do massive things without seed money, and academics will make a place for narrative game work at the highest levels of artistic expression. It's a simple fact, in my opinion, that the Fatal Frame series is more artistic, strange and surprising than the majority of horror films made in any decade since the forties.

Someone needs to ask Ebert whether graphic novels can be art -- my suspicion is that he'll say they can. If he does, then anyone can point to and explain the inconsistency of his denying the same status to Silent Hill or Heavy Rain that he does to a book by Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman (since I'm guessing those are the two examples Ebert would know best).
 

neilsaccount

New member
Jun 17, 2009
479
0
0
Yahtzee Croshaw said:
Extra Punctuation: Videogames as Art

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

Read Full Article
great article, also, im going to have me some sweet sweet dishwasher loving, and no im not questioning your opinion, your awesome
 

Agh-a-meme-knottle

New member
Nov 9, 2008
12
0
0
neilsaccount said:
and no im not questioning your opinion, your awesome
Why would questioning his opinion have to mean you didn't think he was awesome? I like his writing and respect him as a critic but differ with a lot of his opinions.

He's almost always fun to read and listen to, but skepticism is also fun.
 

neilsaccount

New member
Jun 17, 2009
479
0
0
Agh-a-meme-knottle said:
neilsaccount said:
and no im not questioning your opinion, your awesome
Why would questioning his opinion have to mean you didn't think he was awesome? I like his writing and respect him as a critic but differ with a lot of his opinions. Sometimes the people with whom we agree aren't as fun to read.
no no no i was saying that i wasnt questioning his opinion because i implied that i would be having sex with a dishwasher, and saying hes awesome was a little endnote
 

Agh-a-meme-knottle

New member
Nov 9, 2008
12
0
0
Sounds as if you have one of those antiquated dishwashers that lacked a viscous appendage insert. The newer ones have more attractive "features."
 

godfunk

New member
May 2, 2010
1
0
0
Couldn't help myself. Took the plunge.

Roger's my favorite film critic, you're my favorite video game critic. So it's by some compulsive need for symmetrical satisfaction that I share my message to Mr. Thumbs-Up/Thumbs-down:

Hey, Rog. Longtime listener, first time caller. Fan of your work, actually.

I'd truly love to break down your arguments and compliment all those thoughtful witticisms with my own brand of empirical gymnastics, but as a lifelong gamer and enormous fan of all artistic mediums I have to say that this blog entry pisses me the fuck off.

You don't play games! You don't play them. So how in God's Green Earth can you ever expect to make a rational argument against their merit?!

Attempting to judge video games without playing them is like attempting to review a film without a goddamn head! Interactivity is the whole point of the exercise, it's the genius stroke that raises the bar on the emotional experience. Identifying with a character you see on the screen is one thing. Being that character on the screen is something exponentially more effective.

I feel honored that I have been around long enough to witness the full evolution of video games, and am humbled by its remarkable, practically geometric growth. The modern production of a really good game--the design, the music, the writing, the acting... the out-and-out, dare-I-say ARTISTRY of the undertaking, should be enough to put the whole claim to bed before it's even an issue. But I won't start there. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Pac Man is art. Donkey Kong is art. Robotron 2084 is art. Space Invaders is art. They were art straight out of the gate, because they were able to draw the attention, interest, and psychological stake of several generations straight into the heart of the machine with a few well-placed pixels and some primitive bloops and bleeps. I can't understand how somebody can give Tron a four-star rating and not know this already.

Of the thousands of games created during the 80's boom, only a relative handful really stood out. Already, there is the implication that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that designers, still scraping off the afterbirth of their medium, had to innovate far beyond the technical limitations of the hardware.

And even if I was to smooth down my bristling hairs and accept that every single game from that period was nothing but a timewaster, and mindless, and not worthy of whosie-whatsit even if they stimulate several senses simultaneously in practically the exact same way as have long-accepted artforms, my jaw just has to drop at the head-exploding gall it takes to completely ignore the incontestable progress games have made in every single conceivable way since.

You're a fuddy-duddy! A few drops of the quarter, a few involuntary "aww-shucks" jerks of the arm at the decimation of your player, and you not only gave up on playing, you gave up on an entire medium, and I can't think of anything sadder for someone who has based his entire existence on critical thought. You had made up your mind about video games back at their inception, back when you could truly boil down the tenants of each individual experience to a--at best--five-to-ten minute slice. But they have grown, my friend, they have improved, and they are wonderful in ways I truly don't think you are capable of imagining.

Yes, the truth is that both video games and Roger Ebert do not need each other to continue, as I'm sure you both will, with relative success. But it pains me to think that we lost a possible ally so early in this battle for respectability, especially considering how much video-games have increasingly emulated older-brother cinema over the years. I'm sure you had to defend film against the poetry-sculpture-ballet-Shakesperian snuffheads from time to time, and many of those arguments would be transferrable to electronic entertainment. I can give you a personal assurance that the appreciation of either one of these mediums need not be mutually exclusive. I have no doubt that a majority of the video game fans you are alienating with your comments are in fact loyal fans of film.

But you're caught in this paradoxical bubble, from which it would require an incredible amount of effort and will on your part to escape: games are not worth your time because they are not art, but in order for you to harness the potential to appreciate them, you have to play them.

And that would be fine, but you were the one who made your claim, you were the one who decided to re-open this can of worms, to base your entire thesis on a single fifteen-minute lecture, designating that speaker as the unofficial emissary of the millions of dedicated gamers out there.

I don't think it is our desire for validity that is the driving force behind the cavalcades of dissenting opinions you've invited into your life. Speaking of my own frustration with your take (it's not the first time I've come across it amongst non-gamers) is the utter bafflement that stems from the blind-sided double standards. You're telling us that a work of art comes from the collaboration of a bunch of artists. And like our beloved film, we know that the games today are not merely the products of programmers and technicians but writers, directors, set designers, composers, actors--basically anything you can get an Oscar for and more. But it's not art, because you can win the game... That's pretty arbitrary. That's crazy arbitrary, and is about as reasonable as claiming a poem ain't a poem if it don't rhyme.

"Winning" is only part of it--albeit a sweet part--and it is the covenant the collective makes with the game designer to ensure the full experience of the title is fulfilled. Victory, yes, overcoming the intrinsic challenge, yes--but the whole point of "winning" is to let us know that we've actually finished the fucking game. Metaphorically, it's turning to that last page of a book, and realizing, having no more words to absorb, that you are finally in a position to reflect upon and perhaps judge the individual work. Not before. You quit before you finish, you may judge the experience, the slice, but you are opening yourself to the cinematic equivalent of a mere trailer.

Exactly how far did you get with Braid before you deemed it "pathetic?" Please, in the name of all that is just and holy don't tell me that you based your conclusions on the two minutes worth of footage on your blog. If it's true, we'll work around that, but don't tell me that--because it would utterly destroy any hope that you were truly considering the evidence. You would never judge a painting by only looking at the bottom left corner. You wouldn't judge a Shakespearean play by any one of its monologues. And you hopefully wouldn't walk out on a film before it even got through its opening credits. Braid is art, a true achievement in game design, you need only not ask the people that refuse to play it. And I don't believe I'm ruining anything by saying that the nothing-short-of life-altering ending to that game can Usual Suspects, Sixth Sense, Rose-fucking-bud it with the best of them.

I'm not exactly sure why you abandoned your earlier claim within the Clive Barker Beat-down of 2007 that video games were art, just not high art. That's somewhat reasonable, that at least keeps you on the playing field. But now you are staking your reputation on your indomitable clairvoyance that a medium you have made no reasonable attempt to understand will fail to evolve to your standard of worthiness for at least another century. If you are that sure about your opinion, why stop there? Make the jump into eternity, we won't fault you for being off by a few millennia.

But the question in every gamers mind is, "What would it take?" What would it take for you to decide that video games were indeed art, and that it's never too late for you be suddenly right about something you were too stubborn to admit?

My humble answer to you: play Portal. Beginning to end. Think of it as a Stanley Kubrick companion piece. It's relatively short: you can finish that sucker in about three hours. Keep a veteran gamer around, perhaps a family member, just to get you through the tough patches. We are legion, and any gamer worth his salt would be willing to hold your hand throughout the process, for the good of artistic integrity, even amongst the indignity of finishing a game we've already played. That's sort of what makes us what we are.

There are choices--there are in fact innumerable ways to accomplish your goals, but why should that be a setback? The ending is the same no matter what you do. Just like you or any member of a movie-going audience will experience the film by identifying with different characters, different perspectives. It's all the same ride. You're allowed to sit wherever you want.

We love our games, we love our movies. That the two artforms continue to influence one another is undeniable. We want games to be considered works of art, because it provides the opportunity for game designers to create great games. What we need is an exceptional movie to be made from a video game. It hasn't happened quite yet, admittedly. John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator, Sweeney Todd) is said to be developing a script for BioShock.

Fingers crossed...
 

persona J

New member
May 25, 2009
112
0
0
this guy is stupid, every step of making a game is an art form in itself, lets see warhol make concepts of alien worlds or model a character in 3d.
 

Cameron Sours

New member
May 2, 2010
41
0
0
What is art? Art to me is something that makes you re-evaluate your past and future experiences (at least to some degree). The movie Brazil is art. Jackson Pollocks creations are art (even if only in the context of painting itself).

Desktop Tower Defense is probably not art. Psychonauts may be art. The Game of Life (Conway's game) is art (even if only in the context of computing). I know RPGs (Exile II especially) have affected my dreams (searching for important items, etc).

So, applying my definition of art, what games have made you re-evaluate your point of view?