Video Games Can Never Be Art -Roger Ebert

[Citizen]

Sure they can't, movies too

 

[exhuman]

Video games (and we actually could use the term "entertainment software" to sound more prestigious and to avoid the connotations that games=digital toys) evolved out of machinations/"technological marvels" not unlike the evolution of film cameras and the subsequent proliferation of movies/feature films. But what were the early days of cinema? Is L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (Lumière Brothers shooting a train for 50 seconds) a true work of art? Surely, it's technically interesting but I wouldn't call it "art". But we all know what happened afterwards and have been enjoying great films ever since (and like, up until 2008).

I believe it's the same with video games. We are just stuck in the "train station" for too long. There's no reason why video games can't be 100% real art. Gameplay = interactivity. All good art is interactive. Imagine sitting at your couch and watching a movie without "interacting": just keeping your eyes open and passively taking in the images. Of course that's not what you do: you think, you interpret and you enjoy the form. I believe that video games became an industry too quickly, probably jealous of Hollywood and their paychecks. This way they forgot to make good art, they forgot to experiment and evolve their art form.

If video games are going to be art, the creators have to define their artistic space and not borrow it from already established forms (like movies). Either way, we are missing good game critics who can actually tell the difference between a faux-artistic interactive movie/novel and proper art. Childish action/fighting games will of course continue to be created just like action movies that have nothing new to say. And of course there have been games that are really close to proper art if not real art (eg PS:T).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

If a well written book is art, would a video game where you read the book be art?

 

[turkishronin]

Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky is banal/shit/boring

 

[what am i doing]

Regardless of whether games are art or not it seems oddly hypocritical for a film critic to say that another medium isn't art - because films sure as hell aren't.

 

[AArmanFV]

Prosper taught me that videogames can be art.

Now seriously, that guy sounds like your classic pedantic critic, with shitty arguments that barely qualify as opinions. Just like him now, I can imagine some butthurt artist centuries ago questioning the cinema and photography as an art. The same word of art, at least for me, means just "artificial", something made by individual human hands and minds, and in most of cases give some kind of emotion (positive or negative), admiration.

For me the making of a videogame "could be" considered an art, just like gastronomy in making a good meal. It has a lot of crafting involved and personal things attached from the author, has some cientific basis combined with the abstract meaning of beauty and perfection, when is done right of course. Now is like movies, corporative money making business without any kind of real ambition for perfection. But that's just a personal opinion of a guy like me that don't understand art.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Roger Ebert wrote a positive review of Cosmology of Kyoto for Wired Magazine in 1994:

"Cosmology of Kyoto" for Mac US$98 Azuma Lander International: +1 (415) 928 7914, fax +1 (415) 362 6879.

"The Cosmology of Kyoto" CD-ROM comes with a bare minimum of instructions, informing me in a few words how to move within the images. No goal is established and no points are scored; the game never informs me what the object is, although it discreetly tracks the levels of karma and cash I have attained and keeps an inventory of my possessions. The disc comes packaged with a large fold-out map showing the streets and principal buildings of Kyoto - circa 900, when, as Heiankyo, it was the capital of Japan. I begin to wander the streets.

The richness is almost overwhelming; there is the sense that the resources of this game are limitless and that no two players would have the same experience. I have been exploring the ancient city in spare moments for two weeks now, and doubt that I have even begun to scratch the surface. This is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of information, adventure, humor, and imagination - the gruesome side-by-side with the divine.

In this medieval Kyoto, people exist alongside ghosts, demons, and goblins. On my travels I have met - and interacted with - a dog eating entrails, long-winded old farts, tradespeople (who offered me medicines, dried fish, cloth, rice cakes, amulets, and a chance to lose money on a cock fight), a monk leading a prayer meeting, kids playing ball in the streets (one is beheaded by a passerby), a friendly guide dog, a maiden with an obscenely phallic tongue, and a gambler who taught me a dice game.

The graphics are hauntingly effective, using a wide-screen landscape format. The individual characters are drawn with vivid facial characteristics, a cross between the cartoons of medieval Japanese art and the exaggerations of modern Japanimation. The speaking voices are filled with personality, often taunting, teasing, or sexy. There is the sense, illusory but seductive, that one could wander this world indefinitely. This is a wonderful game.

Considering his praise of the game's visuals, audio, and immersion, it would seem to contradict his later assertion that videogames can't be art.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

If a well written book is art, would a video game where you read the book be art?

Is "The Longing" art? Because that's part of that game. Is Beckett's Books? Because you put back together famous works of literature there.

 

[rado907]

Moot argument, if movies are art, so are games. GTAV, Mass Effect 2 & Witcher 3 (to name three) are better than most movies anyway.

 

[RNGsus]

If a well written book is art, would a video game where you read the book be art?

Well written books aren't art anymore than a stop sign is art because stop is spelled correctly.

 

[Jarpie]

"Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form."
-Roger Ebert

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/video-games-can-never-be-art

Do you guys think he's wrong? If so, why?

I have better question...

WHO THE FUCK CARES IF IT'S ART OR NOT?!

 

[NJClaw]

"Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form."
-Roger Ebert

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/video-games-can-never-be-art

Do you guys think he's wrong? If so, why?

I have better question...

WHO THE FUCK CARES IF IT'S ART OR NOT?!

If it's art, they have to teach about it in public schools and being a "videogames teacher" would be pretty fun. I don't know if most Codexers would be a good fit for the job, however.

 

[Jarpie]

"Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form."
-Roger Ebert

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/video-games-can-never-be-art

Do you guys think he's wrong? If so, why?

I have better question...

WHO THE FUCK CARES IF IT'S ART OR NOT?!

If it's art, they have to teach about it in public schools and being a "videogames teacher" would be pretty fun. I don't know if most Codexers would be a good fit for the job, however.

KKKodexer would be perfect teacher for it, "Don't play fucking popamole, I want 20 page essay why Planescape: Torment is the greatest game of all time for the next lecture!".

 

[markec]

 

[warpig]

Level design is an artform. Interactive storytelling is an artform (like hiding some critical information in a secret area of the level, able to be missed).

Thief is a work of art.

This and the audio visual side of games. Though I don't care whether games are "considered art" or not. For me it would be better if games were considered a somewhat niche hobby and normies left games alone :3

 

[frajaq]

Dont know if they're art but its important know that to this day that Roger Ebert article is still in the mind of thousands of game developers, a mental scar that will last forever it seems

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

what is art?
baby dont hurt me
dont hurt me
no more

 

[Sigourn]

To me, art = craftsmanship, skill.

That's it. That's my definition of art. Good craftsmanship will always elicit a positive response from me, i.e. make me appreciate it. That's all I care about. To me, a very well done game is art, but it has to be unparalleled. Fallout and Thief are art, for instance. Same with Deus Ex.

 

[Sigourn]

Who the fuck cares? This is art to some retards.

See, this I disagree with. This is "art" in the modern understanding of the concept, as what this guy did was essentially say "you can put a fucking urinal in a museum and you idiots will claim it's art". And he was ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. See the guy who duct taped a banana into a wall. This dude was a visionary.

 

[JarlFrank]

I mean yeah, scamming is an art too.

 

[Machocruz]

To me, art = craftsmanship, skill.

Not just to you. This is one of the oldest, if not the oldest definition of the term.

 

[RNGsus]

This is "art" in most traditional understandings of the concept

No.

 

[luj1]

If a well written book is art, would a video game where you read the book be art?

A video game with good writing is art. Escape from the Pit is a lot like Jules Verne

 

[DJOGamer PT]

This is like the 5th fucking thread in the space of a year we had about this topic.
Are oldfags starting to get insecure about the time they've spent playing vidya and now want some sort of validation?
Look, modern art is shit and modern artists + art critics are a bunch of arrogant and pretentious fags. So who fucking cares what these retards think.
Secondly any medium can produce high art, the problem is in the artists not the medium.
And videogames can never be considered a good work of art if the devs don't come with terms with the fact that videogames aren't movies, but their own thing.
Because videogames are a very unique medium they can produce experiences nothing else can.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

As far as games not being as well written as literature or as well directed as cinema (or now TV), of course not, why would they be? Those fields are more prestigious and therefore attract top shelf people with those skillsets.

I would also add to this the fact that writting for videogames is hundreds of times more hardous than other mediums.
Because books/movies/shows/comics are essentially just a window to that work's reality. All the audience can do is spectate the various characters and events through the limitations of that window. Meanwhile in a videogame the audience is actually apart of that reality.
So the the writer not only has to deal with audience being able to mess with his characters and story events in inumerous ways possible, he also has the enormous task of painstakingly crafting every aspect of that world.
All this work to make sure even the tiniest pieces make up a complete and consistent painting.

So really, why would most writers spend months just to get a single location and a handfull of characters right, when in that time they could finish a book or even a TV script and get much more recognition and success than they would making that new AA rpg.