What do you think of this man's opinion on video games never being real art?

[tankbug]

"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."

So? Is it the quality of the work that decides whether it's art or not? He's got a very conservative opinion on what art is. I think most things that are made to stir some emotions in you can be considered art, even though they are shit. Some people can marvel at a blue dot on the wall, some people can listen to music which is basically sounds like a bunch of orchestras tuning their instruments loudly at the same time. It's silly for Ebert to dismiss video games as art because he thinks the quality is bad.


"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."

From the article, this is the only thing that makes sense to me, and if I understand him correctly, this is the only argument he needs to dismiss games as art. In his definition a game per se cannot be art, because you have rules, objectives and you can win or lose. With that definition, I can agree that video games aren't art themselves, but they contain massive amounts of art, since they incorporate almost every other form of art.

Personally, I don't care whether they are called art or not. To me that term doesn't guarantee quality for my taste. But I do hope that people who contribute to making epic games will get recognition for their work. Video games still suffer from the stigma of being simple, brainwashing entertainment for kids and asocial nerds, mostly among our elite elders.

[Prime017]

Roger Ebert's opinions on anything are completely irrelevant. He knew absolutely nothing about how to enjoy different forms of entertainment. He tried to be so witty an insightful about the films he critiqued, that he completely missed the point of watching them in the first place. Watching and enjoying movies is a skill, and not everyone can do it. Those, then, who find themselves not being able to enjoy movies often become critics. Then all that's left for them to do is overanalyze every single film they watch.

Being a film critic is a bit like being a sex critic. Once you start paying attention to how you're feeling while you're doing it, and how you're doing it, and how the other person is doing it, you've already missed the point of doing it in the first place.

I'll agree that Ebert's opinions are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. He is one man. He holds no power over you or I. He had a soap box, but he cannot force any of his ideas onto another person as a matter of policy. However, I cannot agree with you on the nature of serious movie criticism and how Roger Ebert massively impacted that profession.

Why would people who cannot enjoy movies take a career as a critic of the medium? I read a lot of movie reviews and blogs and listened to lots of movie podcasts. Never have I ever gotten the impression that those people hate movies. In fact, I get the opposite impression. Most critics who make their living at that job LOVE movies more than you or I could imagine. The problem with the rift between critics and audiences is not, as you say, an over-analyzation on the part of the critic. It's often an under-analyzation on the part of the audience. Serious movie lovers and general audiences might share a theater and watch the same movies together, but they are often having entirely different experiences. The teenaged kid who's blood is pumping because of the giant robot fights and the sexy ladies might like a movie more than the 30 something couple who got a sitter for the first time in 3 months to go out on a date and are just happy to be out of the house watching something other than Dora the Explorer or the DVD of The Lion King someone gave their 4 year old for Christmas that they've already seen 18 times over the span of 2 weeks. All the while, the movie critic in the audience understands that JarJartron 3000 is a racist caricature and the camera holds a little too long at a funny angle of the buxom blonde who took an acting class call "being dramatic after your boob job 101" in such a way that if she was your sister, you'd probably get her away from the guy looking at her with those creepy rape eyes.

So the critic writes of a scathing review of the entire content of the movie. The couple on their date reads it and thinks the critic was too harsh because they had a great night out doing something they never get to do. The hyped up kid doesn't agree because there were Robots and you saw that one girls butt and that was all before the plucky dog side kick ripped off the JarJartron 3000's head. The issue is that only 1 of those 3 viewing experiences is actually a review of the movie. It didn't matter what movie the couple saw, they were going to have a good time because it was something different. It doesn't matter what the Teen saw as long as it hit all the right flashing lights and instinctual testosterone triggers.

And to your sex critic analogy, you may have a great time having sex. Caught up in a moment of passion and desire and expressing it physically with another human being. You may have the best orgasm of your life and afterwards you both collapse into a heap of sweat. And then your partner lies to you. He/she says that yeah, it was great. But you see something in their eyes and you know they're just being polite. To them, it was Meh. You see, their last partner was a tantric sex god they met on a beach in Brazil. They fucked for 10 hours and she came 24 times. So the best sex of your life was about a 3 on her scale. But she gives you some tips. She clues you into what she likes. You take those tips to heart and put them into practice. Soon enough, the sex is even better than you could have ever imagined. All because you took a few minutes to talk about the experience and think a little bit more about how to make each other feel better. That is of course, if you're interested in more than just the reproductive side which, biologically speaking, is the reason you're doing it in the first place.

But where has my mind gone. This is a thread about Roger Ebert's opinion on video games as a medium. First of all, I have to get it out there that I do not agree with him. Saying Video Games cannot be art is much too absolutist. Saying video games aren't art yet is a much more accurate statement. Video games and technology are moving too fast to say where they'll go in the future, but for now they are only scratching the surface of what it means to be capital 'A' Art. Games like Bioshock Infinite or The Stanley Parable or Portal 1 & 2 or any other of most of the games being named in this thread have some of the pieces in place, and in fact they contain some pieces of really great Art in them, but they sum of those parts has not yet coalesced into a final product that has elevated it's self above those individual components (in my opinion).

None of this is to say that we're never going to get there. In fact, we're closer than we've ever been. We as consumers need to keep pushing developers and publishers to make experiences that transcend the medium. I can't wait for the day that I can finish a video game and say to myself "That was not a game. That was something more."