In the loud and unfortunately nonsensical (in many cases) reaction to Roger Ebert’s proclamation that video games are not and will likely never be art, it is easy to miss that Ebert is not decrying the medium or proclaiming it to be without merit. He’s simply saying that games aren’t art. And, speaking as a gamer and a former game critic, that’s perhaps a liberating thought. I still think that Ebert is wrong and that here he seems as out of touch as he does when he tries to pontificate about Transformers 2 or GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra (and when I say that, I’m not trying to argue that these films have value, just that Ebert’s take on tentpole summer blockbusters has been a bit too incongruously ‘old man’).
Ebert asks why it is so important that games be art, and wonders if it’s a need for validation. “In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, ‘I’m studying a great form of art?’” It’s this sentence – which subtly paints the gaming hobby as something worth being attacked and its defenders as insecure children, a characterization that rings dissonant when you look at a demographic breakdown of gamers and find that they are largely productive adults. I’ve not had to seriously defend my ‘gamerness’ to anybody in years. Most people I know have at least one game console that they use regularly. Most of the ones who don’t play Farmville with an obsessive fervor.
Unfortunately, video games do come under attack with an unfortunate frequency, not from our spouses and friends, but from politicians and lobby groups that contend that games are ‘murder simulators’ that have a causal effect on violent behavior and have no redeeming value. These groups seek to place restrictions on the gaming industry that the masses would not suffer if they were levied against film or literature that contains similar content today. Or jazz or rock and roll music. Or comic books. Or…you get the picture.
If video games are not art and do not have artistic merit, then they’re just games. Just like lawn darts (which were banned in the US by the Consumer Products Safety Commission and “should be destroyed” because of the potential danger they posed).
The three games that Ebert cites in his analysis come from a presentation from indie game designer Kellee Santiago that he is blogging in response to. Waco Resurrection is a controversy-laden game that came out of the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition and attempts to map the Branch Davidian compound tragedy to a familiar run-and-gun shooter aesthetic. Braid is a critically-acclaimed indie darling that has received much praise for its innovative take on platformer gameplay, and Flower, Santiago’s own game, is a charming tech demo but, as it’s impossible to lose, is not technically a game according to Ebert’s rubric.
Reading Ebert’s post, one major bone of contention that he excavates is that games can be won or lost and that alone sets them apart from an artistic endeavor. It highlights one major difference between a game and a film or novel or hour of television: the viewer is passive in the latter and active in the former. But how much of a game is button-pressing? Are there other ways in which players interact with games? Well, Ebert also seems to argue that the creative elements of a game are “the representation of a story, a novel, a play, a dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.”
The notion that a medium is invalidated because it’s possible to lose is kind of flawed. I would argue that Santiago’s presentation overlooks several games whose immersive qualities are directly enhanced or manipulated by the nature of the gameplay itself, games that Ebert should consider before writing off the medium. Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock and a select few other titles manage to make the act of playing the game as significant to the emotional experience as consuming the music and the cutscenes and the visual design. Super Columbine Massacre RPG, Danny Ledonne’s controversial role-playing game, is another that makes the list, as disturbing as its subject matter may be.
Ebert missteps again in comparing the 1902 film “A Voyage to the Moon” to video games on a 1:1 basis. Santiago’s purpose in drawing a comparison between the first generations of game design and the first generation of film is to say that one is just like the other, but to illuminate that it took over a century to go from George Melies’ short to Avatar. Video games are only a few decades removed from Space Invaders and we already have Mass Effect 2 and Silent Hill 2 and Eternal Darkness.
That the gaming hobby and the industry around it has evolved since Pong is undeniable. The goal of most games is not to amass the high score or to survive with the least lives lost or to get 100% completion for its own sake. That mentality is outdated, much like Ebert’s conception of the gamer.
I’ve probably blogged about this before, but I was once given an assignment by a comparative literature professor that tasked me with reading and analyzing samples of awful, awful poetry. When the class next met, he asked “Is this poetry?” referring to what we’d read, and the debate amongst the students was fierce, as we wrestled with definitions of poetry and definitions of art until our 18 year old brains were spent. Ultimately, we decided that calling bad poetry art wasn’t the same as calling it good – there is bad poetry and good poetry, awful art and transcendent art. Bad games and good games. Games that express ideas. Games that evoke emotions in a way that’s deeper than a checkers match or a round of lawn darts.
Ultimately, the barrier here is that Ebert has not played these games. He says that they don’t “deserve his time,” which is the sort of elitist nonsense I’d probably feel more comfortable saying if I were Roger Ebert. I can see why he wouldn’t. His experience with gamers is likely only negative, borne from the backlash of his negative comments about game developers and games as art. The 1000+ comments that his most recent post has received so far are full of idiocy and suggestions of games that Ebert should play, as though Ocarina of Time would change his mind.
Ebert wonders why gamers can’t just enjoy their games without needing to justify their timesink as art. It is because the hobby, in its adolescence as it is, needs justification against the vocal minority of people who don’t get it, people whose arguments might be bolstered by Ebert’s rhetoric. “It’s not for me” isn’t the same as “it’s not art.”
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
As much as I love Roger Ebert’s writing and respect his opinions, I fail to see why he has become the arbiter of whether games are art or not. Whenever his critical credentials are question after he pans the latest Adam sandler opus, Ebert will often point out both his education along with his years in the business, however, when he admits that he has not played the games he is criticizing, and says that he has no intention to, why are we even listening to his opinions on the topic? As well reasoned and written that they are, aren’t they just the words of a blind man telling us what an elephant looks like?
The thing that really kills me about Ebert is that he’s clearly tech savvy and still has flashes of rebel in him from time to time, but has alternately become completely stodgy about anything outside his comfort zone.