Video Games Can Never Be Art -Roger Ebert

[Gregz]

"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?

 

[Melcar]

What is art? Lots of decline shit is considered "art" now, so I don't see why a certain video game with certain characteristics can't also be considered art.

 

[Alex]

Define art.

 

[Ezekiel]

Who cares? Why are gamers so obsessed with this question?

 

[cretin]

Ebert was a hack, and while his premise isn't wrong (videogames are not art, and remain largely a childish and very dumb medium consumed by children of all ages), his arguments are shit, just like his entire career as a critic. Its neither here nor there, but it is ironic that perhaps singlehandedly, this faggot was responsible for the destruction of film and literary criticism as an art form, and turning it into something any fucking halfwit with a bs can do, and here is he is pontificating about what meets the standards of art. Lol.

Anyway, gamers might find this more compelling if it this perspective was coming from people who have actually grew up with video games, or been involved in the game industry. There are some of those voices, i just cant think of them off the top of my head.

 

[laclongquan]

THAT is the sucker who had to back down from his own loudmouth highbrow statement. It was a huge pleasure of mine to witness him wiggle and squirm his way out of proving his statement with some reasonable gaming.

Mind you I didnt (and still dont) know that he's so famous. But the number of replies on that article, and the splash damage, was so huge you couldnt avoid noticing back in the days.

" Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art."
-Roger Ebert

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

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

Fuck his principle. And I do think video games can be art

I dont care that he's a somebody in somewhere else. To make a statement about games, you should have played at least 5 games and more than 100 hours. A tiny requirement, really. It's like you only need to play 30 minutes a day for half an year.

Think about it: it's like you only need to watch 5 TV series, 20 episode each, to be able to make blanket statement about movie. Anyone try that requirement in movie criticism will be squashed.

 

[Danikas]

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

 

[Sweeper]

He's right you know.
Games will never, ever create something like pic related. Not in a million fucking years.

Spoiler

It's cause of interactivity. Art was always the work of one, or several artists, that people could observe, listen to or read, but not interact with.
And I know you dumb fags are gonna go "Who cares" and "Why does it matter".
Simply put, good art has the capability to elicit an emotional and even a spiritual response. Games are just dumb entertainment at the end of the day, and are inherently inferior to art.

 

[vortex]

 

[Danikas]

Simply put, good art has the capability to elicit an emotional and even a spiritual response.

Is this not an emotional response?

 

[Sweeper]

Not the kind of emotional response I had in mind.

 

[Mastermind]

Ebert was a hack, and while his premise isn't wrong (videogames are not art, and remain largely a childish and very dumb medium consumed by children of all ages), his arguments are shit, just like his entire career as a critic. Its neither here nor there, but it is ironic that perhaps singlehandedly, this faggot was responsible for the destruction of film and literary criticism as an art form, and turning it into something any fucking halfwit with a bs can do, and here is he is pontificating about what meets the standards of art. Lol.

Anyway, gamers might find this more compelling if it this perspective was coming from people who have actually grew up with video games, or been involved in the game industry. There are some of those voices, i just cant think of them off the top of my head.

strong username to post correlation

 

[Melcar]

Not the kind of emotional response I had in mind.

Don't be daft. "Art" can also elicit feelings of anger.

 

[Mastermind]

It's cause of interactivity. Art was always the work of one, or several artists, that people could observe, listen to or read, but not interact with.

Nah

And I know you dumb fags are gonna go "Who cares" and "Why does it matter".
Simply put, good art has the capability to elicit an emotional and even a spiritual response.

So do good video games.

Games are just dumb entertainment at the end of the day, and are inherently inferior to art.

Art is and always has been entertainment that people like to feel smug about and bash others over the head with about different but ultimately arbitrary tastes. I'd say the codex demonstrates video games are art beyond any reasonable doubt.

 

[Sweeper]

Don't be daft. "Art" can also elicit feelings of anger.

It can, but firstly the German kid was an act, and secondly when you're pissed off at a vidya you're not pissed off cause the game had some message, you're pissed off cause you suck at it.

Nah
So do good video games.
Art is and always has been entertainment that people like to feel smug about and bash others over the head with about different but ultimately arbitrary tastes. I'd say the codex demonstrates video games are art beyond any reasonable doubt.

Wrong.

 

[Arryosha]

The linked article in the original post contains Ebert's actual argument for the claim in the quote--that games are not and never will be art. There, he only seems to offer a defense of the claim that games are not good art.

 

[CryptRat]

his arguments are shit

I think this interativity argument is at very least interesting.

It's cause of interactivity. Art was always the work of one, or several artists, that people could observe, listen to or read, but not interact with.

Nah

What do you mean? Playing a game is really special.

Art is and always has been entertainment that people like to feel smug about and bash others over the head with about different but ultimately arbitrary tastes. I'd say the codex demonstrates video games are art beyond any reasonable doubt.

That's not really true.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's cause of interactivity. Art was always the work of one, or several artists, that people could observe, listen to or read, but not interact with.
And I know you dumb fags are gonna go "Who cares" and "Why does it matter".
Simply put, good art has the capability to elicit an emotional and even a spiritual response. Games are just dumb entertainment at the end of the day, and are inherently inferior to art.

Actually it's interactivity that turns games into a very unique artform unlike any that came before. You can tell good stories that elicit emotional and spiritual responses while also allowing the player to make decisions on the main character's behalf. Why wouldn't it work? Why is the very idea of that impossible to turn into art?

 

[Sweeper]

Why is the very idea of that impossible to turn into art?

Because I've played a shit ton of games, and not a single one has ever managed to even come close to reading Dostoyevsky or watching Bergman and Tarkovsky.
Loads of fun? Sure. Some interesting writing and ideas? Here and there, but it's just not on the same level.
Getting any kind of emotional response towards them? Very, very, very rarely.

 

[Whipped Cream]

Pictures tell statiic stories. Books tell linear stories through text.
Silent films combine sequences of pictures and text to tell linear stories.
Talking films added another dimension to the representation by adding sound.
Similarly, video games added new dimensions to the representation by adding interactivity and non-linearity.

Not only are video games art, but they are the superior art form of all because all other art forms are a subset of them. Every story that can be told through film can be done told in a video game, but video games can tell stories in ways that films can't.

I think there are two reason why many older people like Robert Egbert don't appreciate video games as a storytelling medium. 1. They don't play them themselves and don't know what they are missing, and 2. They don't realize how far video games as a storytelling medium has come since Pacman, Doom and Space Invaders. If you looked at the state of video game writing in 1990 it would be quite reasonable to say that video games stories are bad compared to Tolstoy and The Godfather. But thiis stopped being true in the late 90s as the video game medium matured.

 

[Sweeper]

Pictures tell statiic stories. Books tell linear stories through text.
Silent films combine sequences of pictures and text to tell linear stories.
Talking films added another dimension to the representation by adding sound.
Similarly, video games added new dimensions to the representation by adding interactivity and non-linearity.

Not only are video games art, but they are the superior art form of all because all other art forms are a subset of them. Every story that can be told through film can be done told in a video game, but video games can tell stories in ways that films can't.

I think there are two reason why many older people like Robert Egbert don't appreciate video games as a storytelling medium. 1. They don't play them themselves and don't know what they are missing, and 2. They don't realize how far video games as a storytelling medium has come since Pacman, Doom and Space Invaders. If you looked at the state of video game writing in 1990 it would be quite reasonable to say that video games stories are bad compared to Tolstoy and The Godfather. But thiis stopped being true in the late 90s as the video game medium matured.

The social democrat who helped out poor asylum seekers blesses us with his retarded opinions.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Meh, its worth pointing out that even Ebert is known to have broken his own opinion on games, he liked Cosmology of Kyoto at one point. Did he consider it art? Dunno.
Realistically, someone shouting out some game or another is art aren't the best judge of art. Such things are self-evident. Doesn't help that most of the choices are glorified movies/books or very popular titles. You don't see movie reviewers defending the artistic status of movies by throwing out some crap early talkie or Terminator 2.
But I will say that when people figure out how to do video games as art, beyond stuff like Cosmology of Kyoto or Alice: An Interactive Museum (which are basically just interactive art pieces) it'll be more Alpha Protocol or Deus Ex then To the Moon or any other random crap. Yeah, I know those two fall into the popular bit, but my point stands. Seeings the story from multiple angles, that is what will make video games art.

 

[wahrk]

Who cares? Why are gamers so obsessed with this question?

People want to legitimize their childish hobby as something Important. I partially blame self-important game “journalists” for fawning over pseudo-intellectual walking simulators because they desperately want to be seen as art critics rather than failed english majors.

The defining characteristic of video games is the gameplay/interactivity element, and I can’t think of many games that I would consider to have “artistic gameplay”. I’m not even sure what that would be. It probably wouldn’t be fun, which is the whole point of games.

 

[tritosine2k]

Actually it's interactivity that turns games into a very unique artform unlike any that came before. You can tell good stories that elicit emotional and spiritual responses while also allowing the player to make decisions on the main character's behalf. Why wouldn't it work? Why is the very idea of that impossible to turn into art?

Because they take concept art as keyframe, and between two keyframes you have "stuff" that bears no /little resemblance. And these keyframes also reduce in scope between installments, even fading out completely and now it's just "stuff".

 

[catfood]

Art of War
The Culinary Arts
The Art of the Deal
Pick-up Artist


There are so many types of "arts" out there nowadays which people consider to be as such that you might as well include video games as well. Sure, I don't have a problem with it. However this does not make it part of some select club, as most of the proponents of the "gaymz r art" movement imagine it to be.