I Finally Understand Ebert's Claim Against Videogames As Art
Stop me if you've heard this one before. So, a film critic says that videogames aren't art and the gaming community proceeds to rant and rave about it. For those that have followed Roger Ebert's writings about videogames this is all too familiar a scenario that played out once again when the critic posted his latest editorial: Video games can never be art.
The editorial was a response to a talk which ThatGameCompany's Kellee Santiago gave at TEDxUSC over a year ago in which she made the bold claim that videogames already are art. As someone who agrees wholeheartedly with Santiago's assertion, I often find myself on the ranting and raving side of the response spectrum against Ebert's views. But not this time. Not entirely at least. I finally understand where his views are coming from. I understand, but I still do not agree.
Further reading after the break.
The debate surrounding videogames as an art form often results in a discussion of what exactly is art. These discussions are mostly exercises in futility for anyone participating because of the subjective nature of art. But in his latest editorial, Ebert delved into a different definition that was not previously a part of the discussion: what is a videogame? As Ebert put it:
One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.
Finally, some clarity in Ebert's assertion against the artistic merit of videogames. Ebert is not saying that videogames are not art, he is saying that videogames as he understands them are not art. So the question then becomes: how does Ebert understand videogames? Some have suggested, incorrectly, that Ebert is too old to understand or appreciate videogames. Ebert yesterday offered his own suggestion, again incorrect, that he is "too well-read" to appreciate them. If anything, as revealed in the continued reading of Ebert's editorial, he simply has not "read" enough. At least, not enough in the artistic medium he is condemning. When making his assertion that videogames such as Braid and Flower are not art (I have not played Waco Resurrection, the other game Ebert references, and therefore cannot make a claim to defend its potential artistic merits), he at no point mentions interacting with them, instead only referencing the brief snippets of video provided by Santiago during her talk.
If I had never played a videogame and simply watched videos of them, it is likely that I, like Ebert, would not believe them to be high art. But that is why interaction is an essential element of videogames. To put this as an analogy in Ebert's own line of work, what he has done is the equivalent to reading the transcript to a movie trailer, and using that as the sole basis for judging the film. It is a portion of the experience, and that portion is taken away from the mode of artistic expression in which the work was meant to be experienced. Each mode of artistic expression has something unique to offer. In Ebert's own review of the film Rent he said it, "is missing a crucial element of its life-support system: a live audience. The stage production surrounded the audience with the characters and the production... On film, Rent is the sound of one hand clapping." Just as the experience changes when watching a theater production compared to a film, so does the experience change when playing a videogame compared to watching one.
There are four aspects of a videogame which Ebert lists as separating them from art: rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. And while I concede that videogames have all of these attributes, I do so while also acknowledging that other artistic forms share these same qualities. Can a novel be written without the rules of grammar, syntax, and spelling? If a reader did not feel intellectually or emotionally rewarded from a novel, would it ever be read? If an author did not have an objective in writing a novel, would it ever be written? And if there was no outcome, would a novel ever end? True, I draw examples from both the perspective of the author and the reader, but isn't that the nature of art: a collaborative experience between a creator, or creators, and an audience? I believe so.
However, the point that I find most revealing toward Ebert's understanding of videogames is his notion that there must be some way to "win" in a videogame. This point interests me in large part because most videogames that I think of as art do not have a "win" condition, per se. Can you "win" in Ico? What about Bioshock? Flower? Endless Ocean? Mass Effect? I cannot think of a single person who upon completing any of these games thinks to his or herself that they have "won." These are videogames that people complete or finish, much how one would complete the watching of a film or finish reading a novel, but that is not the same as winning. In order to be able to win, you must also be capable of losing. It implies a level of competition that in many videogames, quite frankly, doesn't exist. The enemies in Ico are meant to hinder the player's progress, yes, but they do so in an act to solidify the bond between Yorda and the titular character, and by extension the player. Far from competing against these enemies that arise, the best option is often to grab Yorda's hand - accentuated by a button press like an exclamation mark at the end of a sentence - and escape.
Of course, most videogames have some form of "Game Over" screen, which one would think to imply losing, but that is not really the end of the game. When I am ill prepared for a fight in Mass Effect and my Commander Shepard dies, it is a simple matter of reloading my last saved file and I can resume from where I left off. This is doubly true when the videogame in question has an autosave feature making it near impossible to lose all of the game's progress. It is equivalent to reading a book in bed before falling asleep. Those who have read in bed know the feeling. Perhaps you were fading in and out of consciousness for the last few pages the previous night and must backtrack to a point you recognize before continuing to read. Have you "lost" at reading the book because of the temporary setback? No, and neither have you lost the videogame by restarting from a previous save file. If you cannot lose then you cannot win either, and there are a great many videogames that follow this model. They are videogames in which, in Ebert's own words, you can only experience them.
I would go even further though. I would say that even in games where there is a clear win condition that it can still be art. Lumines is a favorite example of mine. Perhaps it is in part because I am not "well-read" in music that Lumines can impact me so strongly. Unlike Ebert I am willing to accept that there are artistic areas where my knowledge is not sufficient to hold authority. But in Lumines it is not necessary to understand the intricacies of the musical language, it is only necessary to feel them. It translates music, a language wholly foreign to me, into the more familiar language of a falling-blocks puzzle. By exercising knowledge of gameplay I am able to manipulate the music and become simultaneously the creator and the audience. Rez is a game that functions in much the same way by translating the musical language into a rail-shooter. It is no coincidence that both games share the same creator, one of the greatest artists of the medium, Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
But why does it matter? This is a question Ebert also raises in his editorial, and it bears consideration. What difference does it make whether videogames are considered art or not? To this question I would simply answer, why do we consider anything art? Why bother to make that distinction about anything, whether it be a painting or a film or literature, dance, poetry, music, photography, or any other artistic form?
Because it moves us.
Because when experiencing a work of art it touches something deep inside of us that, if only for a moment, makes our small partition of the universe a little more coherent. And we want to share. We want to discuss and debate and dispute, to gather in academic circles and compare interpretations of art. At risk of sounding hyperbolic, though I fear that is likely a line I have long since crossed, it is those shared personal experiences that are the basis of culture and society. It draws communities together or can tear them apart. Art is a powerful force that can change one's perspective, views, and outlook on life. Art is all of these things and more. And myself, as well as millions of people across the world, get that feeling from videogames. As far as my own experience is concerned, if Ebert is correct that videogames aren't, and never can be, art, then nothing ever was.
A Humble Request: I may try to revisit this topic from time to time, though hopefully in the future focusing less on contradicting film critics and instead taking the medium on its own terms. This is possibly my favorite topic to discuss so I have plenty of ideas already percolating in my head for future articles, but I would love to also hear about your own experiences and opinions regarding either specific games or genres or anything else in the medium. A link to email me can be found on the left side of the page if you want to share (or navifairy@gaygamer.net). I look forward to hearing from you.
NaviFairy
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 20 April 2010
· Comments (16)
Other stuff like this: art, editorial, roger ebert, videogames
Very interesting article. I like it when someone dives deeper into a topic. Thank you!
That is a ridiculous reason for saying videogames aren't art.
I really don't see what the act of 'winning' a game has to do with wether or not it is art.
And what defines winning anyway? Completing it? Under that defenition any story can't be art either?
Or is it feeling a sense of accomplishment? So what, you have to be depressed about something for it to be art?
¬_¬
Bravo, well thought and a great read.
When it comes to art, I enjoy Scott McCloud's broad definition: Art is everything extra that humans do, everything that doesn't constitute and effort to preserve the self or propagate. He defines it rather well in Understanding Comics, and under it, video games as well as most types of games and competitions would totally be considered art.
In the stricter sense of art, however, it's a bit trickier to make video games fit, I'll admit. NaviFairy is probably right that Ebert hasn't played any of the games mentioned in the article, but do we know for sure? I'd feel a lot more comfortable judging his opinion on this if I knew for sure. Regardless, there is truth in the statement that Ebert does not seem to understand that many gamers "experience" games rather than just beat them, as NaviFairy points out. And that shows that he doesn't get the medium on the level that we all would,
I hate to be crass about the situation as it stands now, but I think it's just a matter of time before video games achieve more mainstream acceptance as art and an acceptable medium to express oneself. The naysayers --- many of whom old and likely to remember when their associated pop culture pastimes weren't well respected --- just need to move out of the picture first.
The real problem, I think, is that Ebert doesn't understand the difference between a game and gameplay.
The game as he is criticizing it is the actual play of the game - that is, it is the mode of experience by which the user interfaces with the game. This can never be art in the same way a straightforward game of checkers can never be art - the action of consumption is not a creative action.
But the game as an object exists independent of play. It is the difference between the chess board and a game of chess. Ebert has conceded that a well-crafted chessboard can be a work of art, but also said he didn't see the relevance of this to the question, which betrays his shallow understanding of what a game actually is.
A video game is a media product (like a book or film), a constructed thing like a chessboard. The gameplay is the user experience of the media. The game may have a message - the gameplay is a function of the user's decision to internalize or fail to internalize that message. The game contains a story - the gameplay is the user act of reading that story. Much as with a book, the user may choose to skip or ignore parts, or go back and reread, but the end goal is to see the story through to the end.
Are games a complex form of literature? No. They usually deal with simple subject matter. Are all games art? Again no. Tetris is fun, but it contains no story or message - it is, like a plain checkers board, an unadorned construct to enable play.
Ebert is, and has for a while now, applying the fallacious Jacobellis v. Ohio "I know it when I see it" argument to games as art, and sitting on a massive mountain of film history, dismisses games because they do not read in the same manner as films. A careful reader of his "Games will never be art" article will notice that the best argument he can muster is a pathetic (in the literal and figurative sense) argument that "these games are unpleasant to me and therefore not art."
The most telling example from Ebert's article that shows his failure to grasp this new medium is that he believes the ability to "take back a move" breaks a game like Braid. He does not realize that the game's rules themselves are a method of conveying the story - SimCity, for example, will reward players that construct eco-friendly solutions while punishing players who pursue industry at high environmental cost. This lesson is never made explicitly clear, but it is one that the player learns by battling against the hidden rules of the game until they discover Will Wright's vision of the ideal city. The story is coded within the rules.
I would say that, as art, games are at least on par with popular novels and films at the moment - not "high" art, but art in that they are a creative endeavor that evokes the sharing of some common human experience.
amen!
I wrote this on Ebert's article, but the fact that nobody is going to see it in the mountain is demoralizing, and I decided to copy it here.
Nobody is reading these comments. I'm going to leave one anyways.
I am a gamer. I am a huge Ebert fan. I am a voracious critic. I am an artist, myself, a writer.
I think that Santiago is wrong, and I think that Ebert is wrong, too.
They're both standing on opposite ends of a football field, resolutely convinced that their point of view is right. Ebert, because gaming doesn't fit his narrow definition of what artwork should be, and because he refuse to actually experience the medium before dismissing it. Santiago, because games are very important to her and make up a huge part of her life, and she refuses to admit that she's dedicated so much to something that is, FOR NOW, still scrabbling to rise above the realm of mindless entertainment.
I find that the closer a game moves towards truly complex and beautiful writing, the more it tries to hold back. It's afraid to make that commitment, to jump that line. The more it moves to becoming something more than a game, the more it tries to cling to its trappings, insist that it's still fun, pleasing, and shallowly cathartic more than it's anything else. I elaborate:
One of the games I've most loved in recent years has been Dragon Age: Origins, a game that tries to make morality into something subjective and focus on interpersonal relationships above a "win" or "loss" scenario. I loved this game. I found the writing clever, the dialouge punchy, the acting splendid, and the mood brilliant. It moved me to tears more than once, made me smile, laugh, get frustrated, get ANGRY, and feel both triumph and despair, often through the storytelling, and not the combat scenarios. But I also was FRUSTRATED by this game. I kept wanting there to be more scenes, for there to be more DEPTH, for the writers just to dig a little deeper into the characters' psyches. Surely with all this time spent on hour upon hour of dungeon crawling, a bit could have been spent throwing in a few more scenes at the end to really buoy the intense emotional choices. Surely if you really want to make the player examine their morality and make hard choices, you didn't need to throw in the easy-to-swallow compromise option into EVERY dilemna. Surely there could have been a huge more dialouge trees in camp to REALLY get into the characters, especially the non-romance option ones. As the end came and the story snowballed, I found myself increasingly more disconnected with the characters. I began to feel like they were just lifeless bits of furniture standing around, waiting for the next dialouge option to be unlocked by some arbitrary binary function. What does Alistair really FEEL about the Landsmeet and what it means to him? How is Morrigan COPING with the magnitude of what she's about to do? When it came down to it, I had to fill in my own blanks. The game was more concerned with leading me around to do missions, complete objectives, and seek that gratifying positve feedback that video games are STILL programmed around. I loved Dragon Age: Origins so much it was on my mind for weeks after I finished. I've had deep conversations about the psychology of the characters, the pacing of the writing, and the mood of the environments and plot points. I'd list it among my favourite games of all time. I think that Dragon Age: Origins had aspirations towards and hints of art in it. But I think it fell far short of its goal.
Proof that it's the medium, here, and not the message? I read a book set in the same universe for the game and written by the lead writer. I found it considerably more immersive and emotionally satisfying, and also, that it was more willing to lead me into dark paths and feel stronger emotions. I stayed connected to the storyline and characters at all times, rather than zoning in and out depending on whether we were in -COMBAT- or -INTERACTION- mode. The book wasn't what I'd call high art, either, but it succeeded far more than the game did on that level.
In a way, video games, as we know them today, are often art, in the way that a big budget, entirely soulless hollywood film is art. Bungled art. Chicken scratches shined to a polish. So, I submit: are games art? No, at the moment, I don't believe they are. CAN games BE art? Yes, I think they can -- but developpers always pull up when they start going there. They're AFRAID of turning an entertaining medium into an artistic one. They'll throw in dashes of art to draw the player in emotionally, but refuse to commit.
They have the potential for more, but they won't stretch for it. They're adverse to stretching to it ... for now.
Art and entertainment are mutually exclusive. That isn't to say that art can't be entertaining -- art often is. But the GOAL of art is to drive a person to emotional heights and depths by the power of the artist's expression, and the goal of entertainment is something much more banal: to make the player have fun.
*throws comment onto heaping pile, is never acknowledged by anyone*
The clearest example of a video game as art that comes to mind (based on the games I've played) is the machinima of Anachronox.
http://www.archive.org/details/JakeHughesAnachronoxTheMovie
There are minor snippets of gameplay in the 'movie', but I can't imagine that Mr. Ebert could discount its artistic merits, even if he would therefore disconnect it from being a videogame... rather he'd likely call it a digitally animated movie, but that's kind of the point of many video games... isn't it?
Personally, I'm waiting for "Tetris: the movie".
Although I also think that my comment is just adding to the massive pile:
What a ridiculous statement to make. I agree with others that have said Ebert doesn't know enough about games to make the comment. Has he even played an entire video game?
He obviously missed all the video games that made me cry, or laugh in elation, emotions that great art can evoke.
Movie critics should stick to movies.
Article of the year award goes to NaviFairy!
This was the most interesting piece I've ever read on this site, though thats not to say everything else isn't good, it is. But this particular article far exceeded everything else.
...but then again, I do love a good intelectual discussion =p
I actually have nothing else to say really. You summed up pretty much every point I'd want to make on the topic =/
Thank you everyone for the amazing response. Who knew that a bunch of gay nerds would be so passionate about the arts? :P
I may try to revisit this topic from time to time, though hopefully in the future focusing less on contradicting film critics and instead taking the medium on its own terms. This is possibly my favorite topic to discuss, so I have plenty of ideas already percolating in my head for future articles, but I would love to also hear about your own experiences and opinions regarding either specific games or genres or anything else in the medium. My email's on the left side of the page if you want to share (or navifairy @ gaygamer . net minus the spaces). I look forward to hearing from you.
I think Petri Pruho's 4'33" is a great example of a video game that has no points, rules or objectives (though there is one of two outcomes). The basic premise is that you start the game and watch a bar slowly creep across your screen from left to right. It takes 4'33" for the bar to go all the way across. If it makes it to the end you are rewarded with a giant check symbol. The catch is, in the background the game checks to see if anyone else in the world is also running the game, if they are, it crashes.
So you know that for 4'33" you are the only one in the entire world who was doing what you were doing. - 4 minutes and 33 seconds of uniqueness. If you lose, you know there is someone out there, somewhere, having the same experience as you. For 4'33" you can't help but to consider things like how you are just one in 6 billion, or what kinds of things, from the amazing to the mundane, that those 6 billion other people are doing. It's capable, if you let it, of being just as evocative as a great story.
Download Link: 4'33"
It's also interesting if you look at it from the perspective of gaming academics also, who are broadly devided into two camps, the narratologists, who critique and analyse games using narrative, in its various forms (e.g architectural narrative in prince of persia, say) and the ludologists, who are really fecked off with the narratologists for trying to turn games into films/books/any other old text and ignoring the concept of 'play' inherent to gaming.
zimmerman, Espen Aarseth and Henry Jenkins have all done some interesting stuff around this I think, and it seems these very much focus around the art debates; either as an extension of the term, a resistance, or a reclamation.
(I apologize in advance for the long wall text, I get too passionate sometimes. But I would truly appreciate if anyone reads it and adds in some feedback.)
I don't agree with either of them, not Kelly Santiago nor Roger Ebert.
Never cared for this subject, I once heard "Videogames are art" but never asked or read anything else, but I did think about it.
I think videogames are some sort of "Interactive Art", I don't think they would be called just Art, but it needs another word next to it, for it to make real sence.
As far as I know, every piece of art is enjoyed by just, well, enjoying it. Listening, reading, watching. Videogames cannot be just listened, read and/or watched, they require an action from the spectator or otherwise they won't keep going. They're the kind of "build your own story" books, where they ask you at certain points "If you wanna open the door to go page 28. If you wanna leave it closed go to page 38".
Videogames are, in my opinion a combination of multiple art fields in order to go beyond; the closest thing to videogames in art are movies. Videogames mainly use visual aestethics to appeal the audience, but it doesn't stop just there; they require a soundtrack to create an ambience and not just a short 30-80 seconds song, they require songs that can be played over and over and not ever get the spectator bored, but in fact, even more absorbed into the ambience. And then it needs a story, a script, a lot of writing, to combine the visuals and the sounds all into one, to make the audience get even more into it.
And right there we got the movie. Videogames go beyond that, then they require a system, sometimes a very complex one, a system to control all that is happening before you eyes, a system that besides giving you control, it has to feel "natural" when you hold the game-pad.
Losing or wining on a videogame isn't really a big part of it. Yes yes, I know what you're thinking, let me finish. Videogames are built for the player to win, for the player to become some sort of Olympian God, as in, beat every single obstable and half the time, save the entire world or the universe itself; or just a cute girl, and never die in the process. Videogames are made for the player to win and beat every situation, so they can enjoy all the story the game has to offer, and all of the extras such as new character, moves, places to visit, songs to hear, etc.
And there is where they separate themselves from Sports, one player videogames aren't an actual competition against another human beings and although you can in fact lose, they are made for the player to win, unlike Sports, where there HAS to be a loser; in videogames, losing is in fact a part of the entire experience, there is one game that even created scenes for every game-over screen: Resident Evil 4, there are so many ways to die and get a game-over screen. You need to keep dying in every possible way in order to get the full expierience, think of it as the alternative endings that come with the special edition DVD. Losing is a vital part of certain videogames.
Perhaps games do have points, rules and/or objectives, but half the time, I feel that in order to "truly enjoy" certain art pieces, I have to understand more rules, follow more points and have more objectives than ten videogames together. "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions." That applies more to videogames than a lot of art forms I know.
(Multiplayer games are a complete different story, but I'm not going there, not on this post at least, in here I'm cofusing on one player videogames which seems to be the main focus of discusion.)
Would I call videogames "art", I'm not sure. But what I'm sure of is that videogames require a huge amount of art, inspiration and hard work in order to do well and engage the spectator.
Videogames in my opinion go well beyond art. Don't eat me alive in here, I'm not saying videogames are better than art, or that they have left a bigger impact in life than art. But I know videogames allow the spectators to not just stare at that gorgeous painting, or listen to exquisite music, they allow the spectators to be part of it, a videogame without the intervention of an spectator, a gamer, is nothing, it needs the actual interaction of someone in order to keep going and be seen completely, not just "click play".
I wish a song or a painting challenged me in order to draw me into them even more than they already do.
Emotions are deeply intertwined with videogames, and if you wish so to know, you could play one battle of Ninja Gaiden 2 in order to feel your heart rate going faster from the exciment of how hard the battle is. Perhaps play Final Fantasy X and after experiencing it completely, getting your heart crushed and melted as the game gets to the end. You could laugh your ass off while you play God Hand. And the list goes on and on.
Art sometimes seems to "require" knowledge or intelligence in order for people to feel or think something. Videogames do not, hold the controller and start getting a ride of emotions, which emotions depend if you're playing a survival-horror or a fantasy RPG.
I'm definitely not an expert on art, but I myself are a huge fan of it, being a Graphic Designer and wishing to be able to one day call myself a Photographer and an Illustrator; I know a bit of art from here or there, at least from my years in college.
Videogames might not be considered art, not even by myself, but for what is worth, the Mona Lisa got nothing on Bayonetta.
I think Navifairy hit the nail on the head. While from Eberts point of view I can totally see his point. His entire argument falls apart the moment we take away the "win" word out of it.
So, do you "win" a movie for making it to the end? No. The character is still the character and will have to go through the story as the developers have created it and reached one of several predetermined endings, none of which can be considered "winning", it's simply reaching the end of the story.
Interactivity doesn't take away the story or art direction that the game has. It's simply an element of it.
I could actually compare the challenge it takes to beating a game to a person trying to understand a painting. At first he might not get it, but as his becomes more savvy in decoding artistic expressions he eventually sees what the artist meant for him to see, or one of many possible views that the artwork might express.