Games are Art: aka. suck it Roger Ebert

[jakonovski]

This is a perfect opportunity to repost An Apology for Roger Ebert by Brian Moriarty. 

[apocrypha]

I thought post-modernism had decided that anything could be art and the only interesting question was if things were good art or not?

I've yet to play a game that I felt crossed the boundary from superb entertainment and into good art, and that's subjective. As art has to be, surely?

[trias_e]

This is a perfect opportunity to repost An Apology for Roger Ebert by Brian Moriarty.  

Excellent read.  Given Moriarty's description of games as following: "Games are purposeful. They are defined as the exercise of choice and will towards a self-maximizing goal."  If this is the case I agree with him wrt 'games as art'.  But I think this is a shallow definition of games, or at least one that what we would normally classify as games can differ from.  While I agree some modicum of choice is necessary for a game to be a game, it's not the case that all choice must work towards a clear self-maximizing goal.  Sandbox games are an obvious counter-example, but I think that the games that bridge the art-game divide specifically make unclear the goals of the game, or perhaps subvert them.  Second, while 'flow' is going to be necessary for a game to be a game, I think that games aren't necessarily prisoners of it.  Gameflow can be used as a sort of fuel or training wheels, something of only transitive importance, instead of being the entire purpose of the game.  If this is the case, then the game can transcend it's own beginnings, using the 'gamey aspects' of itself as a means to an end.

[UnSub]

Agreed - great article.

At this point I believe video games aren't Art because the genre isn't old enough yet to have titles that have stuck around past their time of release. Between the number of different platforms games have been released on (many now obsolete) and the speed at which titles are played and discarded, it'll probably be a while before a title sticks around long enough to be considered Art.

[cironian]

the genre isn't old enough yet to have titles that have stuck around past their time of release

Uh, how many years after release does it take if a game is still considered to have merit at that point?

Serious question, because major releases have been going on for at least a good three decades now and some games from that era are still considered brilliant for their mechanics. Say, the ghost mechanics from Pacman to pick a well-known example: They are not the most straightforward way to add challenge but instead act to give "character" to four rough pixel blobs and allow the player to assign more personality to them than to a state-of-the-art high-polygon enemy in the latest Call of Duty installment.

[Amaron]

This is a perfect opportunity to repost An Apology for Roger Ebert by Brian Moriarty. 

I read that article and the feeling I got was Ebert was trying to say games can't be art because people who are insufficiently snobby might pick the wrong dialog choice.   The irony is when I saw it that way I agreed with him.

[pxib]

The irony is when I saw it that way I agreed with him.

Robyn Miller (half of the brothers who made Cyan) stopped making games after Riven because he wanted to tell stories, and it was difficult to do so when the player could get within two steps of the climax and then wander off to play with toys, or sit and look at the clouds for half an hour, or go back and explore some random unopened door from earlier. You didn't have to write and pace one story, you had to write and pace some absurdist branching conglomeration of stories, most of which were practically guaranteed to suck.

I don't think that means games can't be art. All art is a collaborative effort between artist and audience. What I think it means is that it's orders of magnitude more difficult to produce a game that's great art than to produce a (appeasing Ebert) film that is. Worse yet, games have a higher barrier to entry than films do. The audience must have a computer that can handle it, plus an often impressive amount of manual dexterity, situational awareness, and puzzle solving skill. The audience is expected to do.

So Ebert was probably right de facto (at least within his lifetime) even if he's wrong de jure. Great art may one day be possible in the medium of computer games, just not yet and not for everyone.

[Amaron]

I don't think that means games can't be art. All art is a collaborative effort between artist and audience.

That's how I always saw art until I took art appreciation in college so many years ago.   From my admittedly limited interest in the concept the picture I got was the real definition involves a great deal more snobbery and a whole lot less collaboration.   So basically what I'm saying is it's semantics.   What Ebert is saying and what we think he's saying are completely different.   Using his meanings for those words I think he is in fact probably correct instead of being just some old fogey.

[Morat20]

That's how I always saw art until I took art appreciation in college so many years ago.   From my admittedly limited interest in the concept the picture I got was the real definition involves a great deal more snobbery and a whole lot less collaboration.   So basically what I'm saying is it's semantics.   What Ebert is saying and what we think he's saying are completely different.   Using his meanings for those words I think he is in fact probably correct instead of being just some old fogey.

He's rooted in film art. I'd be shocked if there was ever a video game whose cinematics or story fit into what he considers "Art" in film. After all, by his own admission, very few films do!

It'd be rather surprising for a video game to be as good a movie as a movie is.

There's a lot of handwaving, and a lot of people with their own judgements as to what art is and isn't (many, if not most, rooted in different styles of art -- movies, paintings, photography, literature) trying to view video games through a bad lens. You can't apply art critiques designed for paintings to music, it just doesn't work.

I do agree with the link that says most games are going to be kitcsh, which is still a form of art -- mass-market art, but art nonetheless. But I think the sticking point, the part that Ebert is looking for -- that part where artist and patron communicate -- is built into video games already.

You can see it's beginnings in every "cool" moment in a video game, whether it was scripted action or some emergent behavior or quirk. Whenever a player, somehow, manages to do something that he or she finds memorable.

Whether it's doing clever and innovative things with incendiary rounds and blaster bombs in X-Com, pulling off a clever and unexpected use of Portals in Portal or managing to pull a win out of your ass versus an opponent in SC2 -- that's the potential for that sort of "high art", where the game has led you to a conclusion, an act, or a concept you wouldn't have otherwise encountered.

[pxib]

If anything the critic has less opportunity to mediate between audience and artist where games are concerned. Because the medium is explicitly interactive, the artist can foresee questions the audience might have, alternatives they might explore, and nuances they might like to realize... and provide alll of that before the game is even released. The conversation is still pre-packed, but it's more obviously a conversation. The work doesn't need critics pointing out deeper meanings. In fact, doing so might be seen as spoiling potential replay value.

[Chimpy]

The definition of "Art" will always come down to what people who disagree with a given definition of what constitutes a Work of Art (and many who agree with said definition) call 'snobbery'.

The best definitions of what makes great works of Art all boil down to the emotional response of the viewer/listener. And for great works of Art, say the Mona Lisa or Beethoven's Fifth, the works elicit an emotive response from people across a wide array of social and historical backgrounds.

Video games are an artistic medium, sure. But because of the interactive nature of video games which require some familiarity with the medium to even get to the point of experiencing the emotive portions, it will have problems getting widespread artistic credibility simply because it is not something that the uninitiated can look at like a painting or film, or hear like music and instinctively "get" that "something" from.

[Ginaz]

I think one of the big reasons people who make and play video games are trying to classify them as art is to protect them from laws that can restrict them in any way.  Once something has been determined to be "art", then it becomes a lot harder for governments and regulatory bodies to censor or place restrictions on them.

[Merusk]

Agreed - great article.

At this point I believe video games aren't Art because the genre isn't old enough yet to have titles that have stuck around past their time of release.

I'm going to have to assume you mean "by the general populace" here, because there's a hell of a lot of games that are stuck firmly in the minds of gaming culture. Pac-Man, Mario Brothers, Zork, King's Quest, Ultima just to name but a handfull.

The largest problem is that the platforms are retired and newer gamers (and the general populace) don't play with old tech to appreciate them.  It's one hurdle that will never go away, I believe.  2-bit, 4-bit, games aren't played now in favor of Hi-Def and those will be discarded for 3-D, Holograms, interactive AI, or whatever else is in the future.

Traditional art, on the other hand, doesn't have this problem.  The senses haven't advanced since man started painting on walls, so there's no additional effort required to appreciate "the old stuff."

[Kail]

Video games are an artistic medium, sure. But because of the interactive nature of video games which require some familiarity with the medium to even get to the point of experiencing the emotive portions, it will have problems getting widespread artistic credibility simply because it is not something that the uninitiated can look at like a painting or film, or hear like music and instinctively "get" that "something" from.

That seems strange to me, given that I've heard basically the same criticism levelled against paintings and music.  Joe sixpack doesn't dig Mozart, doesn't cry upon seeing the Mona Lisa.  They don't have any emotional weight because he doesn't get what's so special about them.

Moreover, show him something like modern art, something abstract or otherwise non-mainstream, and he'll be even further out to sea.  Mozart is something refined and dignified, many car insurance commercials have told me so.  But three quarters of the stuff on this page I have no idea what it's supposed to mean or why people would care or what.  You need special training to see these paintings as anything other than "my kid could do that" scribbles and blobs.   It's the basis for the whole "I may not know art, but I know what I like" saying.  I would guess that FAR more people "get" Call of Duty than "get" the average work of modern art.

[Ingmar]

I thought the article was pretty terrible, really, because it keeps talking about games in a mechanical sense and completely ignores them as a narrative medium.

[UnSub]

Agreed - great article.

At this point I believe video games aren't Art because the genre isn't old enough yet to have titles that have stuck around past their time of release.

I'm going to have to assume you mean "by the general populace" here, because there's a hell of a lot of games that are stuck firmly in the minds of gaming culture. Pac-Man, Mario Brothers, Zork, King's Quest, Ultima just to name but a handfull.

The largest problem is that the platforms are retired and newer gamers (and the general populace) don't play with old tech to appreciate them.  It's one hurdle that will never go away, I believe.  2-bit, 4-bit, games aren't played now in favor of Hi-Def and those will be discarded for 3-D, Holograms, interactive AI, or whatever else is in the future.

Traditional art, on the other hand, doesn't have this problem.  The senses haven't advanced since man started painting on walls, so there's no additional effort required to appreciate "the old stuff."

This was my point - PacMan might be 30 years old, but the general populace aren't exactly playing the original game any more. If I were to Google I'm sure I'd find a small dedicated PacMan playing group (and I'm not going to Google, because I don't want to be disappointed in humanity yet again), but if the game is to be Art I'd have to assume that it was being played by the general populace. And they aren't - they are buying Black Ops, playing it for a week and returning it for store credit.

Mario is in a different place because Nintendo refresh him for every console generation, but for a game to be Art the game needs to stand, not the character. Plus as games have hit the mainstream the knowledge of those games aren't exactly passed on either - Ultima is better known now for UO than any of the preceding games, Zork would be near-unheard of by most and King's Quest alledgedly didn't even make it into the 1001 Games You Must Play Before You Die book, which was allegedly vetted by 'experts' (according to one Amazon review of that title, no Sierra Quest games made that list).

In a lot of ways video games are closer to sports - what is happening right now is a lot more important than last season. Sure, there will be a few classic games people talk about, but even those look outdated and only key points are highlighted. Culturally significant films, or paintings, are viewed in their entirity, so that "Citizen Kane" is still watched today for not only its techniques but also its viewpoints / narrative.

By contrast, most video games are outdated 3 years post release.

[Amarr HM]

There are lots of pieces of art that were art in their time that people don't look up, or interact with. So that whole line of reasoning is completely erroneous (bullshit) I'm afraid.

The traditional meaning of 'art' is something that is created by an artisian of some form (an art form), games have this covered, http://artofgamedesign.com. Then you have the term 'art' in the modern sense, which basically boils down to something that evokes an emotional response from the viewer, with the help of aesthetics. Games have both covered so they are art, end of story. High brow art they are not, but does it matter how artsy they are in order for us to prove their merit as pieces of art? Is a street painter not creating art despite the fact he willl probably never host an exhibition in the Tate gallery? Some games provoke such an emotional response that players get completely immersed in what they are seeing, that's art.

If you are seeking a game that is an artistic piece in it's own merit, look no further than Fallout it's pretty much a pop art piece.

[Samwise]

It'd be rather surprising for a video game to be as good a movie as a movie is.

Yeah, I think the folks saying that video games aren't good art because their stories never rise above a certain level are missing the boat.  Novels and movies are both storytelling mediums, but compared to novels, movies tend to suck at really long stories or at representing anything other than a limited third person viewpoint, while novels have to work a lot harder to convey visual and aural impressions than movies do.  And there are other mediums like paintings and music that don't usually tell stories at all (or when they do the stories are very simple), but we don't consider them lesser art forms for that.

A video game doesn't need to tell a story in order to be artistic, although I would argue that games as a storytelling medium can accomplish things that movies can't, by involving and interacting with the player in ways that a movie never could.  Sure the story might be simple, but feeling like you were there and it was you that did those things is something that other storytelling mediums are hard pressed to match.

[apocrypha]

Isn't there another barrier in that games aren't universally accessible? Even leaving aside the platform/hardware issue, all but the simplest of video games require some familiarity with the skills of gaming. An interactive video game, no matter how profound the experience of playing it was, isn't instantly playable by anyone - would your grandmother be able to play Planescape: Torment for instance? Ever?

I'm not saying that I think that's a prerequisite for something to be considered art, but I do feel that the smaller the potential audience for something the less the chance it has to become part of the collective consciousness.

Mind you, I suppose you could argue that you have to learn how to see a lot of modern art, but I also feel that people who argue that are elitist arseholes....

[Kail]

Mind you, I suppose you could argue that you have to learn how to see a lot of modern art, but I also feel that people who argue that are elitist arseholes....

Are you implying that everyone understands modern art on some instinctive level and people who claim they don't get it are lying, or that there's nothing there to understand?  And how is either of those positions elitist?

[Merusk]

You don't have to be taught how to see it, but teaching how to appreciate it needs to happen for a lot of people.  If you've got kids old enough to visit an art museum, you learn this firsthand as they ask questions about why that funny white square sculpture is called "The ocean" and why it's art at all.

[Samwise]

Isn't there another barrier in that games aren't universally accessible? Even leaving aside the platform/hardware issue, all but the simplest of video games require some familiarity with the skills of gaming. An interactive video game, no matter how profound the experience of playing it was, isn't instantly playable by anyone - would your grandmother be able to play Planescape: Torment for instance? Ever?

If you think that's a high barrier to entry, just imagine how accessible medieval literature was if you were an illiterate peasant.

[Ingmar]

would your grandmother be able to play Planescape: Torment for instance? Ever?

Probably around the same time she'd be able to read, say, Cervantes in the original language.

[Amarr HM]

Mind you, I suppose you could argue that you have to learn how to see a lot of modern art, but I also feel that people who argue that are elitist arseholes....

Just like those arseholes who tell you there's a knack to sussing out cryptic crosswords after doing them for a long time ... how dare they try and mould our perceptions.

[K9]

This is a perfect opportunity to repost An Apology for Roger Ebert by Brian Moriarty. 

Good read, thanks

[Mrbloodworth]

Isn't there another barrier in that games aren't universally accessible? Even leaving aside the platform/hardware issue, all but the simplest of video games require some familiarity with the skills of gaming. An interactive video game, no matter how profound the experience of playing it was, isn't instantly playable by anyone - would your grandmother be able to play Planescape: Torment for instance? Ever?

I'm not saying that I think that's a prerequisite for something to be considered art, but I do feel that the smaller the potential audience for something the less the chance it has to become part of the collective consciousness.

Mind you, I suppose you could argue that you have to learn how to see a lot of modern art, but I also feel that people who argue that are elitist arseholes....

I'm not sure what learning how to interact with something has to do with art, there are lots of interactive art pieces.

[K9]

The barrier to entry is much lower for games than modern art. We can never be sure that most modern art isn't just wank either.

[Yegolev]

There are a lot of things which want to be art, but are not.  This includes many media.

[bhodi]

I thought modern art WAS wank. Either it's making fun of the art "scene" or you need to have detailed knowledge of it to understand.. influences and what it means. It's all self-referencing and referencing other pieces and what not.

[Yegolev]

Which is why I consider, in my barely educated option, Warhol to be the greatest modern artist.

[Venkman]

So the part of that (great) post that stuck out for me was Ebert's reply: "Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control"

Art defined this way precludes games from ever being considered art. But it also precludes just about anything else from being considered art either.

To some, the only group capable of even seeing Art are those people specifically trained for it. That being the case, what results is an insular society of artists and critics talking an ever more alien language that narrows the scope of art explored because it then becomes about artists generating art for that that specific community and the resources it provides. This closed loop of creation and appreciation keeps outsiders out, but also creates opportunitioes for people to create new art for new critics which naturally upsets the establishment that mastered their closed loop.

So basically, games are not art because critics of established medium say they're not. That's bullshit.

I've heard it said that games need to be art so there can be a language of critique around them. Maybe. I'll leave that to smarter people. But to define games as art, you'd nee to come to some universally acceptable definition of game. And I don't see even that yet.

[Chimpy]

I thought modern art WAS wank.

It pretty much is pure wankery.

Why modern art gets a "pass" is that it is an off-shoot of existing mediums which have, in the overall sense, already had works that fit the description of "Great works of Art" that I mentioned in my previous post.

Until video games have their "Citizen Kane" moment, you won't find large portions of society seeing games as anything other than another entertainment medium.

It is also important to note that film is a derivative art form and is similar in a way to "modern art" in that it pretty much gets a pass as being artistic simply because it is derived from live theatre which is an art form present in some fashion in all cultures going back to the pre-historic era.

[Soln]

So basically, games are not art because critics of established medium say they're not. That's bullshit.

exactly.  It's all about $.  Which is partly why I was hoping the collective WE would not be worrying about games as "Art".  They are and they will be classified along side other narratives easily enough one day.  But for now I would hope we could be more innovative and not worry about classifying and comparing certain games along side other cultural innovations or reflections.  Why? Because it just ends up dulling the novelty and innovation of games to existing (and often stale) comparisons.

And it's good to remember 100 years ago film as "Art" certainly did not exist. This situation is all about certain personalities putting themselves up first as arbiters of taste in order to steer the medium the way they want.  

And on that note from today, http://www.lostgarden.com/2011/05/blunt-critique-of-game-criticism.html

[Merusk]

Oh, we're using "Modern" to mean "current" rather than addressing the movement. I see.  You're looking for "contemporary art."

Carry on then.

[K9]

Performance art confuses me [NSFW]