Looking over it all I'm actually rather sad that people bothered to send him e-mail, or, egad, post about it in their blogs. I mean seriously, it's his opinion. What's the big deal?

It's a big deal because Roger Ebert's opinion matters more than yours or mine in influencing and changing the tides of public attitude towards dvideogames.  Videogames are struggling to break through the vicious cycle of being treated like throwaway toys and thus aspiring to be no more than throwaways.  Most people don't EXPECT art when they play a videogame, and that is part of the problem.  Lawmakers don't see human expression when they see videogames because most videogames don't express much.

More importantly, I'm sure aspiring artists shy away from games as a medium because they are not respected in the same way that other art forms are, and again, this is a shame.

Having Roger Ebert on the side of games certainly could not hurt the cause any.

You know what I find funny?

The very first criticism shown is one by a sixteen-year-old, which, by some odd coincidence, contains the exceptionally weak argument that "games are a multi-billion-dollar industry; therefore, games are art."

True, there ARE some reasonable arguments for games being art (someone even mentioned Full Throttle), and yet, for some strange reason, you have to scroll down to see them...

> The very first criticism shown is one by a sixteen-year-old, which, by some odd
> coincidence, contains the exceptionally weak argument that "games are a multi-
> billion-dollar industry; therefore, games are art."


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA, this guy is my new personal guru.

> True, there ARE some reasonable arguments for games being art (someone even
> mentioned Full Throttle), and yet, for some strange reason, you have to scroll down
> to see them...

Yeah, sure.
Some games are art.
Monkey Island, or Grim Fandango are art (I would say that Grim Fandango is art as long as the new Tim Burton movie is art. And Corpse Bride is art, indeed).
But about 99% of games are not.
They are just creative.
Tekken is not art. Quake ]I[ is not art, it's just a fine artisanery work.

Most people don't expect high art when they watch a movie or read a book, either. They just want to be entertained.

Does that make ALL movies and books art?

Roger Ebert's statements can be interpreted to mean "even the worst film or book qualifies as art more than the best possible videogame" but I don't quite think that's what he meant.

So, Roger Ebert.

He wrote the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", originally know as "Beyond the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens"...

...

Now, that's Art! :P

Just to be pedantic, I believe "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" and "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens" are two separate movies, although Ebert did write both screenplays.

And yes, I do realize how self-contradictory it is to be pedantic about Russ Meyer movies.

Well this is all well and good. But here's the thing: Roger Ebert is absolutely 100% correct.

Games are, artistically speaking, shit. They're great entertainment, but there's no substance to them, no depth, no symbolism, nothing that really constitutes anything other than literal fun. Literal fun is cool, but Ebert is absolutely on the money to put it in its proper perspective.

Games have a very very long way to go before they get anywhere near those qualities, if they ever do at all. We pay pine over it and think it shouldn't be so, but the fact is that the games of today are just about fun, nothing else.

I'm not so sure about that.

Even though I agree that games at this moment can't be considered art, I can assure that they are a potential platform for artistical development.
It still has issues to take care of, but above all it has to find its identity, it can't be a film making industry clone anymore.

For instance. I love Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, I find Commando fascinating. Watching one guy killing an entire island full of terrorists while saying catch phrases is something I enjoy a lot. BUT I am also fascinated by movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris (the original, not that... thing, with George Clooney), movies that left you thinking long after they are over, movies with significance, movies which are more than what you see in images.

Nowadays games are like Arnie Movies, what the game industry has to do is make its own 2001. We actually have "vanguardists games", games ahead their time which brings us the feeling that those games should try to achieve, and while writing this I can't think in another game rather than the fantastic "Beyond Good and Evil".
I always say that BG&E is not a game, is an art masterpiece. But what's so special about it? It still has the same gameplay as any other platform game. But there's more in it than gameplay, not only that is fantastically put together, from art department to the history, voice acting and else. The amazing thing about BG&E is that is adds significance to the game, it's more than textured polygons running at 60FPS. It has a meaning it has deepness (I'm not sure if that's the right word for it) to it.
Is this game art? As I said, I believe so. Does this make all games art? Not at all, I didn't call it "vanguardist game" for nothing. It's the proof of what games can become, and I'm sure they can become much more than even what BG&E means.

I believe that you find that I have an issue with finishing my ideas, I'm aware of it :P
To sum up, I believe that until games find their own identity and develop from it into its fully potential we can't even talk about games being art. When they reach that instance we might start seeing their true artistic nature.

I apologize for all the mistakes that might appear in my message. It's been a while since I wrote something in English.

Sure, most games are pretty superficial.  But have you looked at the crap Hollywood's been releasing?  If you can say "games aren't art" because they're superficial and low quality, well, "Ballistic: Ecks Versus Sever" is grounds to revoke  art status from film.

Most of the defenses of video games as art aren't very good.  But there were a few good ones.  In particular [Chris Remo's post http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/39732] makes a compelling defense by pointing out significant artistic qualities in Full Throttle and Pikmin.  Full Throttle "becomes a metaphor for the country's slow decline into corporate facelessness and the odd juxtaposition between the freedom allowed by a recreated American frontier with the essential powerlessness of the frontier's inhabitants." Yes, really. Pikmin manages to capture the emotions that the designer desired.

You're making the exact same mistake Ebert is: You're only looking at a subset of games, the big money makers, and erroneously concluding that all games must be shallow.  A video game reviewer with a broad base of knowledge about video games could look at the blockbuster movies and come to the same conclusion: movies are shallow and artistically wanting.

Even games as The Dig ? Not every game is only about fun. Look at many RPG with great stories, the cutscenes... They are not necessary art. But they can be.
Most game are played just for fun. CS, pro evolution soccer, Warcraft III...
Some other have a world on themselves. Grandia II is a great RPG with some thinkings about religion, with an entire world created. These come out from imagination of the developpers.

When I read this mail :
"
My favorite film is Kurosawa's "Ran," and no -- no video game has come anywhere close. Why not? There is the industry: the game industry is adverse to exploration and experimentation
[...]
Then there are the challenges of the medium: games cannot be didactic, because they offer choice and interactivity. Many games have a "story," but this is either a story set in stone, and nothing you actually do changes it (thus rendering player participation mostly pointless)"

I see some contradiction. If there is some story set in stone, then it permits art (like said Ron about authorial control, it's so obvious)

When I see this philosophy PhD doctor

" What art does that VGs do not, and probably never will, is edify and ennoble (even in the form of subversion). Moreover, and as a result, art endures. We are reading Cervantes and Goethe, performing Shakespeare and Moliere, and listening to Mozart and Beethoven hundreds of years after their works were created, with no end in sight. We aren't playing NES games 20 years after their creation. Indeed, they weren't being played 5 years after their creation. My garage is full of old videogame systems that will never be turned on again simply because new and better systems have come along. By contrast, when you buy a Chagall painting, you don't throw away your Van Gogh."

I don't agree. Some stories can stay great, and NES games are not a good example as developpers were very limited by technical constraints. It's like being limited with 15 seconds movies like the beginning of theater movies.

Games of today are not just about fun, there are some really interesting ones. REZ, Ico are some form of art expressed for the first one by the player, for the other by the developper.

Um, big deal? Mainstream games aren't art, they're entertainment. Maybe we'll get a few 'interactive showpieces' in some museum some place but the games you're buying to play in your living room or wherever aren't art.

There are really two ways to look at "art." One is basically that NOTHING is fundamentally art. Movies are not art because they're movies. Books are not art because they're books. Paintings are not art. Music is not art. Games are not art. They are a MEDIUM. What you do or make with that medium CAN be art, but just because it might be made with one of those mediums does not make it art. Taking this into consideration, Roger Ebert may be right that games aren't art, but they're also no less an art form than anything else.

The other is basically EVERYTHING is art. By definition, anything that's made to tell a story or invoke some sort of response from an audience, be it read, listened too, watched or played, is art. And wether or not it's for commercial purposes has nothing to do with it.

The difference between these two ways of defining art is that the first one is subjective. One person's junk is another person's art, so to speak. Roger Ebert has given plenty of films thumbs up that I thought were boring and didn't invoke any sort of emotional response in me, and he's given thumbs down to plenty of films that made me think about the human condition and all that jazz. The "thumbs up" film he'd probably consider an artistic endeavor, and the  "thumbs down" film he'd probably find lacks any artistic merit.

Also, one of Roger Ebert's criteria is authorial control and that games can not reach a level of art because so much control is left in the hands of the player. That's a crock. Movies have MORE authorial control than books, but he's not saying a movie is a higher form of art than a book. After an author writes a book, he or she has no control over the images a reader sees in his head, the look of the characters, the costumes, the sounds, their voices, the time it takes to read. Those are all things the reader has control over, aside from descriptions that a reader can interpret in many different ways anyhow. And what about paintings? How much authorial control does Da Vinci have over the story everyone tries to interpret from the Mona Lisa? And even more modern art? Many times the whole point of some abstract, surreal, and post-modern art is not to tell a specific story to the viewer, but for the viewer to come up with a story of their own.

"Authorial control" is not a defining characteristic of "art."

Ebert's view of games is like someone thinking all movies are is the "New Releases" section at Blockbuster. I don't see much art when I look at some of those movies, but I won't just come to the conclusion that movies are not an art form.

Where Ebert's wrong is that there don't have to be any good video games for it to be an art form. If every movie that comes out all year sucks, does that mean movies are no longer an art form?

> There are really two ways to look at "art." One is basically that NOTHING is
> fundamentally art. Movies are not art because they're movies. Books are not art
> because they're books. Paintings are not art. Music is not art. Games are not art.
> They are a MEDIUM. What you do or make with that medium CAN be art, but just
> because it might be made with one of those mediums does not make it art.

A b s o l u t e l y   r i g h t  :-)

Two ways to look at art? Thanks for the tip!

So what's art then?

The heart of the matter doesn't seem to be the artistic possibilities of games as an artform, more the status of videogames in society.  Acknowledging videogames as a possible artform instead of mere toys would lead to a drop in the societal status for people who know nothing about them, so of course they're reluctant towards any such tendencies.

For example: if there are eight arts excluding comics, then accepting comics as a valid artform would yield a drop of 1/9 =  11% in artistical informedness for everyone ignorant of graphic novels.  And we can't have that, can we?

(Which is possibly also what Frasca is saying in http://ludology.org/article.php?story=20051205072749119 )

Won't you say anything about Simon the Sorcerer 4?

Yes! Dead & Buried then brought back to life by the Grumpy Gamer itself!!

- "Another Ron Gilbert masterpiece"

- "Definitely worth your time"

- "Will he ever stop entertaining us with clever words?"

Are games art? Hahaha, what a joke.

It seems like an inconsequential question to debate, even.  If art is defined as a static medium, then games are not art. If art can be the creation of a compilation of minds that inspires and even addicts (;D), then sure they can. If World of Warcraft isn't art, than my life is pointless anyway!!

Computer games are not art. Are just fun for stupid spotty teenage nerds.
They could be art, since computers have no less expression possibilities than a movie or a theatre play. But game designers love to design crappy shit good only to entertain stupid spotty teenage nerds screaming and shouting red-faced in front of their monitors instead of searching for a girlfriend.

Monkey island anyway is not a computer game.
Monkey island is art.
I'm saying this with sincere convinction.

And who doesn't agree is nothing but a stupid spotty teenage asshole, sure.

Ron Said- "Then say something interesting and stop acting like your 14.  I only delete your posts when you're just flaming someone.  Other people manage to have heated conversations with each other, but still say something that is on-topic.   Do the same and you're more than welcome here."

Look, some of the people who post here need to be burnt, and I have the tools to do it.

And P.S- There is nothing more interesting then roasting noobs

"That's the lamest thing since JFK."

agreed
flaming ruins the whole concept of intellegent dicsussion,
and threats just should not be tolerated.

Look okay, JFK was shot while standing up in a convertable. That is so much lamer than polio or watever FDR had.

I keep thinking about those great old Looney Tunes. Nobody working on them in the 1940's or 50's really thought they were making art. They made a living and figured they were making fun, disposable, forgettable entertainment. Only the perspective of time really crowned them as "art."

It almost seems premature to make that call on games.

It's funny that you should mention Looney Tunes -  I've been thinking about this lately as on Boomerang when they show Coyote and Road Runner they mix the Chuck Jones episodes with the DePatie/Freleng ones. The latter are just so formulaic and predictable and I now really appreciate the subtlety and artistry of Chuck Jones' animation.

Chuck Jones in his prime really knew how to build a gag, although I sometimes think Clampett gets less attention than he deserves for his brilliant Foghorn shorts.

Bringing this slightly back on topic, the best Looney Tunes really built their success on the personalities of those characters... something games often fail to do. I think games will never be hailed as great art until they start creating characters people actually give a damn about. I concede there are a few, but most are just derivative mannequins with poor animation and lousy dialogue.

But, what's the thing that makes a, let's call it "medium" like the Game Making, to be considered art?
Even though that's another topic of discussion, I believe it to be general consensus.
So, if people think movies are art, artists and (can’t came up with the word I’m thinking, but you get the idea) sees it as a recognizable art "medium" it becomes art.
Vanguards have never been thought as art, until long after they've become a common thing.
Same happens with games. It's not until they are a recognizable art "medium" we won't be able to call it art.

PS: Still hoping you understand what I’m writing.

Yeah, that's definitely true...Games are about the last medium on anyone's minds when they think of art, though there are some truly artful games. Unfortunately, the mainstream can't get past the seemlessly boundless amounts of Sports sequels to realise this.


Though that said, Pro Evolution Soccer is a work of art in itself, nothing captures the Beautiful Game better.

What's so flipping great about "art" anyway? I'd rather play Pong than listen to Opera anyday. Really, when people start talking about what is and isn't "art" it's always just a few moments before they crawl up their own assholes never to be seen again.

Oh, and has anyone mentioned "Façade" yet?

I think the main problem around this whole discussion is that nobody really has a clue about what art is.

Nobody knows what's art. And people who say they do are never capable of passing to other people their knowledge, which leads me to the suspicion that they don't know either what art is; they just have a strong opinion about it and annoying amounts of self-confidence.

Anyway, if you don't know what art is, the whole thing becomes sort of pointless.

Personally, I couldn't care less. A 'WARNING: THIS IS NOT ART!' sticker in a game box won't stop me from buying or playing it. A 'WARNING: THIS IS ART!' sticker won't stop me either.

Art is really what you make of it. It's all down to perception.

I am glad you are tiring of the subject.

I have just one more thing to say to Mr. Ebert:

"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"

Who cares if games are art or not... as long as they are fun to play.

n Happy Holidays everyone :)

Games are a shallow waste of time, except of course puzzle games, because I play puzzle games.  Most movies are a shallow waste of time.  In fact, most of life is a shallow waste of time, except of course puzzle games.

What we really need to do is to change the name of movie reviews to movie hubris.  These things have become arrogant tirades that have little or nothing to do with the actual movie and are mostly a look into the seriously misguided personality of the reviewer.

Yes, are these really reviews cries for help.

When the heck am I going to be able to buy my x-box 360!