Roger Ebert: VIDYA GAEMS CAN'T BE ART!!1

[Wyrmlord]

Is pornography art, people?

Yes. You won't look highbrow mentioning it, though

I haven't read this thread, but is that what people are complaining about? Gamers not looking highbrow?

I am guessing then that it was Hory making most of the posts in this thread.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

Nomask, you're truly coming from another planet with your take on fiction. You say readers should judge characters for themselves, as if characters were real autonomous people and not the purposeful creation of an author. Has it ever occurred to you that if you like a character, it's because the author made the character say or do something that most people will like? Likewise for a character you dislike? And just because an author wants you to like a character doesn't mean the story is juvenile. You still have to ask yourself why the author would want you to like the character, and that may lead to ambiguous or complicated themes. Homer makes Hector a very sympathetic character, but you'd be the first person to ever say that Homer was a simplistic, dumbed down author.

Regardless, it would be a real hoot to see you in an intro to literary fiction or fiction writing course. You're saying stuff with regard to the reading of fiction that is just so fucking bizarre that airing it in a public forum would result in total hilarity. I think our "debate" is at an end here, because it's clear to me that we will find no common ground if you cling to such strange ideas of what constitutes literature.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I haven't read this thread, but is that what people are complaining about? Gamers not looking highbrow?

I am guessing then that it was Hory making most of the posts in this thread.

That's how the author of the article views art

Games are entertainment for the masses, so it can't be art. True art should make you feel

He even throws in a "games are games, just enjoy them" in a nice attempt to make it look like gamers are enraged baboons demanding that games be viewed as art.

 

[Wyrmlord]

gamers are enraged baboons demanding that games be viewed as art.

Aren't they?

"BioShock is an intellectual masterpiece which exposes the depth of human rebellion and its contradictory nature, therefore this game becomes something more than a collection of puzzles and item collection goals, and leaves the gamer left with a profound understanding of himself. His life even may never be the same again."

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

gamers are enraged baboons demanding that games be viewed as art.

Aren't they?

"BioShock is an intellectual masterpiece which exposes the depth of human rebellion and its contradictory nature, therefore this game becomes something more than a collection of puzzles and item collection goals, and leaves the gamer left with a profound understanding of himself. His life even may never be the same again."

It's always hilarious to watch the console types defend game x as an artistic masterpiece. Kinda sad, too. Here on the Codex, folks are smart enough to laugh at that shit. Instead, the games as art folks all seem to be arguing that there really isn't an artistic masterpiece of gaming, but there is the theoretical possibility of one being made. Unless there is some revolution in game design which is inconceivable now, I just don't see how it would happen.

I've been fortunate enough to have that profound experience that Adler talks about in the last paragraph of the passage I quoted a few times now, but never anything even approaching it with a video game. Having thought about what that is a bit, I believe that games, in so far as they are games, can't be art. Maybe someday the standards for games will improve, and I'll have such an experience, but i doubt it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Wyrmlord, stop changing avatars. I jump a little everytime I look at Rosa and her expression changed just a little. It's like those portraits that seem to follow you with their eyes as you walk across the room.

Aren't they?

"BioShock is an intellectual masterpiece which exposes the depth of human rebellion and its contradictory nature, therefore this game becomes something more than a collection of puzzles and item collection goals, and leaves the gamer left with a profound understanding of himself. His life even may never be the same again."

Well, that's just someone who took Bioshock too seriously - the article makes use of the usual "cool rational guy VS retarded fanboy"

GAMES ARE ART!!!!!

Chill out dude, just relax and enjoy them for what they are

When it's actually the usual "yes VS no" where neither side presents a good argument

games are art

nuh-huh

huh-huh

are not

are too

 

[Freelance Henchman]

This topic reminds me of the hilarious sendup of a disturbingly pretentious review of "Darwinia" from SomethingAwful:

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/fi ... gaming.php

This is the most pretentious review ever written about anything. Not even a Pitchfork Media review can cram in this baffling density of freshman-grade twaddle. You could write a gushing review of "Time Code" as a concrete poem shaped like a moebius strip and you would still be a galaxy away from Kieron's review of Darwinia. For Christ's sake, even the title of the game and the name of the reviewer are pretentious. Before we get into the review, let's have a look at Darwinia:

It's a terribly difficult game to explain. A game scientist could be able to distil at least a couple of dozen influences from it, from the large scale ones (like the touch of real-time strategy in the way you control and create your units) to the small ones (the way the centipede's attack patterns are a direct reference to the old-skool videogame of the same title). But noting all these separate bits would just confuse everyone... however a more streamlined approach just misses huge chunks of what make the game interesting.

Alright H.P. Warcraft, we'll be on the lookout for the "indescribable horror from the threshold beyond the double click." The gist of most of the rest of the review is that Darwinia is a quirky RTS game. My favorite part of the actual reviewing portion is when he makes excuses for its shitty AI path-finding and acts like it is a way-awesome feature of the game.

I never played the game, but I laugh every time I read the review of the review.

 

[Big Nose George]

6 pages full of moran. How unexpected.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Regardless, it would be a real hoot to see you in an intro to literary fiction or fiction writing course.

Oh, I've been to a few university level courses. Some useful terms, mostly dull people with dull ideas. I'm pretty much in agreement with M John Harrison's take on literary matters, as far as I have been able to understand it. He is sixty-four years old, and his knowledge of literary theory and experience of literature (having critically read a shit load of it) goes well beyond anything that goes on in universities. FYI.

 

[denizsi]

Grim Fandango, for one, is as close as a game gets to be a piece of art, if not downright one, which is an extreme rarity, I think.

 

[Lockkaliber]

A lot of people consider art to be the work of a craftsman, inspired by an idea. In that sense, I guess video games can be art.

 

[Vibalist]

I consider art to be a stupid and meaningless term that means nothing because it encompasses everything.

 

[Loki]

I'll agree that videogames are becoming more and more infused with artistic elements. More money and talent is going into music, graphics, and writing. But the game itself is no different than sports. The game itself can't be art, but it can be "sexed up" with Art. Videogames are clearly a medium where artwork is expressed, but the game itself.... that's different.

Perhaps. But there are plenty of art forms which include elements that are purely intellectual, and contain little individual expression in and of themselves (for instance, counterpoint in music).

But such music and related art forms are passively experienced, there is nothing to be manipulated, no end goal to work for, no rules, no instance of engaging in competition. And thus, it can be called Art.

Remember how I defined Art - Art simply cannot have the elements I listed above, because if they did, then games like Chess, Sports or Prozac could be considered Art.

I suppose that, while games are essentially inartistic in nature, they are still a form of creative expression, just not an individual one,

Sure, just like Basketball, Chess, and Medicine are forms of creative expression.

and as such they can receive the same level of praise and admiration bestowed upon other forms of technical expression.

It's really up to the gamers and vgame industry to celebrate their own medium. People who really like film are going to discuss film greatness, do critiques, and organize film award events, and people who really like books will orient themselves around books, sports guys will praise sports guys, and scientists will celebrate scientists.

An industry is only as big as the people who comprise it.

You might say - "people who really love movies also really praise books too! Why don't they praise videogames?!"

Simple. They don't play videogames. As I said, the praise an industry gets is really just an echo of the intelligence and enthusiasm of the industry's community.

Erbert's argument is essentially flawed in that, even though games may be inartistic in principle, they can still achieve greatness from a purely mechanical or intellectual point of view.

Well yes, but I doubt Ebert would say that developing/programming a game is easy, and isn't an impressive mechanical or intellectual feat. He's just saying that a game is a game, it's not Art as he defined it, although he never did seem to settle on a clear definition, so he was being a bit foolish, but it was not nearly as embarrassing as that retarded chick he referenced doing the TED talk.

Its not a question of whether games could be art, but whether they could be considered great examples of human creativity, great enough to stand the test of time.

Video games are incredibly ingenious and infectious. The programming is difficult to pull off, and the Art direction appeals to something deeply primitive in a developing child's psyche, exploiting psychological vulnerabilities, leading to an adult mind percolated with nostalgia.

 

[Trash]

Those marvelous painting from the 1600's which we call art nowadays were nothing else but fancy portraits back in the day. Art is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Who gives a shit?

 

[Vibalist]

Who gives a shit?

:mystery:

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

I'll agree that videogames are becoming more and more infused with artistic elements. More money and talent is going into music, graphics, and writing. But the game itself is no different than sports. The game itself can't be art, but it can be "sexed up" with Art. Videogames are clearly a medium where artwork is expressed, but the game itself.... that's different.

Perhaps. But there are plenty of art forms which include elements that are purely intellectual, and contain little individual expression in and of themselves (for instance, counterpoint in music).

But such music and related art forms are passively experienced, there is nothing to be manipulated, no end goal to work for, no rules, no instance of engaging in competition. And thus, it can be called Art.

Remember how I defined Art - Art simply cannot have the elements I listed above, because if they did, then games like Chess, Sports or Prozac could be considered Art.

I can see how your shtick is a cool response to Lyric Suite's point, on some level. But, at the same time, how can you be that daft? Do you really want to say that music is not art? Remember, before the time of computers, there was no music without a PERFORMANCE of music. Think about that really hard for a while. There is no theater without PERFORMANCES of theater. Think about that too. Hard. Stop throwing those cliches around and stop to think for a while.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Roger, to pick the Transformers 2 equivalent of video games and say video games can't be art is like to say movies can't be art never having seen a non-hollywood formula movie.

I'm as big a fan of movies as anyone. My library probably has at least 2 or 3 thousand movies, more than half of them foreign and with the full spectrum of bad enough to be good and good enough to be moving.

As critical and ecclectic as I am of movies, I'm likewise a fan of video games that are art.

I can off the top of my head pick three video games that are definitely art--unless someone wants to say movies can't be art either.

1. The Path (by Tale of Tales). http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/

There's no fighting in this game. There's no plot. There are several sisters of varying age, and you navigate them through the woods to grandmother's house. Each has several encounters and their own variation of a wolf.

People who think the 2001 remake of the planet of the apes is art would not like The Path video game, but people who like good poetry or werner herzog and slow paced movies almost certainly would.

2. Fallout 3. I won't bother linking it because this one was role playing game of the year not long ago, but this is the first movie I played that forced me to admit it was an interactive movie of high quality writing and acting.

For instance, there's a "scene" (though truly interactive) where I fought myself through Washington D.C. to a Ghoul City and came upon a bartender and asked her story of her. Ghouls were people who were human before the war but didn't die from the radiation and now, two hundred years later, are still alive.

Audrey Wasilewski played a ghoul who was a young kid when the war started, and she told a story that kept me revitted by her tale and how passionately she told it. Rarely in any movie have I heard a story told so well. Maybe the old man in apocalypto, or maybe the guy who played Bhisma in Peter Brook's Mahabharata, but here was Audrey in the role of a ghoul telling a story that could have been a survivor of Hiroshima two hundred years later talking about what happened. And that's just one example from that game. There were many other great actors in it.

3. Grand Theft Auto IV. This is the holy cow of interactive movies. The story, the acting and the open endedness amazes me even two years after having played it. Heck I just logged off playing an add-on module to it a few minutes ago. This "game" is probably better than more than 90% of the movies I consider watchable.

I don't really think whether someone thinks games are art has to do with being the eye of the beholder. I think it has to do with exposure and education. It's easy to grow up watching TV that's all Dukes of Hazard and Three's Company and think there's no TV that's art. But after someone sees Deadwood there's no going back to thinking TV cannot be art.

And games are the same. Are they getting better all the time? Sure, the same way special effects in movies get better all the time. But the best games are made amazing not by computer power. They're made amazing by the story telling and the human acting.

Video games are the movies of the future. Sometimes they're the movies of today.

 

[Vibalist]

2. Fallout 3. I won't bother linking it because this one was role playing game of the year not long ago, but this is the first movie I played that forced me to admit it was an interactive movie of high quality writing and acting.

For instance, there's a "scene" (though truly interactive) where I fought myself through Washington D.C. to a Ghoul City and came upon a bartender and asked her story of her. Ghouls were people who were human before the war but didn't die from the radiation and now, two hundred years later, are still alive.

Audrey Wasilewski played a ghoul who was a young kid when the war started, and she told a story that kept me revitted by her tale and how passionately she told it. Rarely in any movie have I heard a story told so well. Maybe the old man in apocalypto, or maybe the guy who played Bhisma in Peter Brook's Mahabharata, but here was Audrey in the role of a ghoul telling a story that could have been a survivor of Hiroshima two hundred years later talking about what happened. And that's just one example from that game. There were many other great actors in it.

Jesus Christ. Why is it that every dofus who replies to Roger essentially have a point and then use the most retarded examples to get said point across?

WHAT ABOUT FALLOUT 1 AND 2 YOU FUCKING MORONS

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Seriously. By and large, gamers spend their time playing games instead of reading great literature. Without an example of something truly profound and beautiful, they have nothing to which they can compare their games, and are unable to discover how lacking games are when it comes to thematic meaning and true, awe-inspiring beauty. I frequently wish I was on the other side of the generation gap with gaming, so that I'd spend more of my time reading and studying. Still games can be a hell of a lot of fun, but works of art which shape and change how you view the world, leading you to become a more humane, and human, person? Not so much.

Fallout has affected me in such way. For example, it taught me that there are better ways of solving problems than beating people up.

 

[praetor]

Who gives a shit?

i can give you one if you paypal me the postage money

and lol@SMA for "gaemz r not art cuz I never experienced in a gaem what I experienced reading a book"

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

You have to be a pretty banal person to learn anything from a book. On the other hand, we have games, from which one may learn Darwinian truths.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

I learned that wolves often carry gold coins from Oblivion.

 

[Paula Tormeson IV]

Matters of life and death, but mostly just death.

 

[Robot]

I hate it when the underread complain about people not reading enough. Stop doing it.