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Obviously, many of you are familiar with Roger Ebert's assertion that videogames "can never be art." (found here) Instead of rebutting his statements or offering my own outlook on why games are art (there have already been plenty of arguments doing that), I would like to offer another perspective on his article:
By saying that our medium can never be art, Roger Ebert dropped a bomb on the game industry, and it may be the best thing that ever happened to us.
"BLASPHEMY!", you are no doubt screaming now (possibly "SHENANIGANS!") Are you holding your fist high in the air? Well put it down and hear me out for a second...
In a recent conversation with videogame video blogger/lecturer Daniel Floyd (whose INCREDIBLY thought provoking videos can be found here) I commented that in trying to put down the medium, Ebert has ironically begun one of the largest discussions of not only IF games are art, but also HOW they are art. I believe this comes at a very opportune time for an industry where gritty, brown, bloom lit first person shooters make up the majority of major releases in the same way platformers featuring rodents with "attitude" (trying to be the next Sonic) dominated the 90's.
While Mr. Ebert as made the argument that games are not art before, a large shift has since happened in academia regarding the critical discourse of games. Ebert made his original argument in 2004, when one could walk to the game design section of any book store and find mostly programming manuals and 3D modeling guides. Fast forward to today, where the best game design literature discusses games in terms of art, their potential for persuasive rhetoric, literature, and even in the way they shape our outlook on reality. What this means for the industry is that we are now much more prepared to intelligently affirm our place in artistic media than we were the first time Ebert made his feelings known.
However, much this discussion of games as an artistic and persuasive new medium has until now been in the realm of academia, bloggers, and independent studios, while the industry (of course with many notable exceptions) has been making and reporting on the styles of games that make money, as a money making industry is apt to do. The effect of Ebert's article is significant in that it has challenged us to look at our medium with in a much more intellectual light.
Many were outraged by Ebert's statements, but few thought of it as anything but a simple outrage. In order for the professionals in large companies to step outside the business of making entertainment and enter the intellectual discussion of games, the dam dividing the industry from academics who discuss games as art must be broken, forcing us to look hard at the games we are making and really consider the games that fall outside the "industry standard."
Okay so let's say we can get industry professionals, academics, journalists, and bloggers on board with the bold new discussion, but what about the masses of people that play our games? Many of them actually don't know the debate over games as art exists, much less that games can be artistic.
As Ebert said in his article, "Why aren't gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves?" The sad truth is, for many gamers he's mostly correct, they don't know that game designers are striving to find new ways to stretch their art, much less that some have "crossed the boundary of artistic expression" as Kellee Santiago has stated. Let's take Braid for example. When it came out, it was hailed as a piece of high gaming art, yet if I ask many of my students, they have neither played nor heard of it, same with Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, or any number of thought provoking games.
While some of these games have certainly made their share of money, many gamers are more interested in the typical console fare than the games that really break the mold, or simply are not capable of understanding what is so different or important about them. Braid, Ico, and the like are also the precious few game art experiences that have achieved popular attention. I challenge you to ask any gamer if they have ever played September 12th or Waco Resurrection and they will look at you like you have lobsters crawling out of your ears.
For the uninitiated, September 12th is a persuasive game from newsgaming.com that turns argument against American involvement in the Middle East into a procedural discussion. Players control a targeting reticule that launches missiles at terrorists. The terrorists, however, are placed among civilian characters. When the player launches a missile, they inevitably hit the civilians, causing the witnesses to become new terrorists. The game is, by design, unwinnable and as such makes a powerful argument.
Likewise, Waco Resurrection is a game by Eddo Stern, Peter Brinson, Brody Condon, Michael Wilson, Mark Allen, and Jessica Hutchins that allows players to explore the events of the 1993 Waco, Texas standoff by assuming the role (and physical appearance via a microphone enhanced mask) of David Koresh and has players engage in the clashing views of the parties involved. These examples, which have been discussed by game design theorists as works of topical art, show how games can be a more thought-provoking medium, but are largely ignored by the majority of the gaming public.
This is where gaming media and educators can help. When teaching or discussing gaming, it becomes increasingly important to discuss not only the popular industry games and give our typical reviews and previews, but also to discuss them in terms of the new critical discourse of our industry.
Can reviews of the upcoming Halo: Reach discuss how the narrative in the game presents war? Does it paint it in a positive or negative light? How will the core mechanics of Mario Galaxy 2 express the joy of movement through interaction with a short mustachioed plumber? In my own game development classes, I have been challenging my students with the same questions. Not only that, but I expose them to games like September 12th, Waco Resurrection, and others that continue to push our industry forward.
Personally, I also find myself reconsidering many of the popular games I have played in my own spare time. Apart from the titles such as Metroid Prime, which ABC and IGN's Mike Thomsen has argued is our industry's Citizen Kane, I have even begun to look at over-the-top violent titles (the kind parents groups have been screaming about since we've all been young) as art indicative of contemporary society.
One example: why are there so many zombie games out now? Have you ever thought about that? While zombies have certainly been a part of the gaming landscape for decades (I'm looking at you Castlevania) they are even more pervasive in today's popular media. According to CNN's Doug Gross, zombies are a metaphorical device used in popular media to reflect society's biggest fears and insecurities. Today, our economic woes have been channeled into movies, books, and video games about mowing down legions of undead, much how we wish to avoid becoming wage-slave, at-work "zombies."
Likewise, I can also recall an offhand comment by actor Greg Proops in the game MadWorld for the Nintendo Wii that made me think hard about the current economic crisis and the state of our mental health as a society. MadWorld is a game by Platinum Games in which players take on the role of Jack, a rogue for hire that has found himself in a giant gladiatorial gameshow where everyone in a blocked off area of a city must fight to be the last one standing.
The game features Sin-City style graphics and over-the-top graphic violence to the point where people I know have felt remorse for having fun with the game. During one of the boss fights, Mr. Proops, doing voice work as one of the game's two color commentators, makes a comment to the effect of, "boy people sure become bloodthirsty monsters during these hard economic times." At that point I jumped a bit; not from the fact that I was having difficulty in the fight, but from the revelation of the statement the game had just made. The ultra-violent comic book world of the game suddenly became a real extension of our own, bringing to light how insane the world had become.
Myself being loosely employed at the time (I was doing in-house contract work for an architecture firm - effectively being an employee but not receiving a full salary or any benefits), I had to think about how I had found myself climbing over people in any way I could to get a job, only to be taken advantage of by the people who had finally offered me something that vaguely resembled employment. It was as though I myself had a sign post shoved in my ocular cavity, much light the countless digital thugs I was steamrolling through in the game.
This taking of contemporary cultural issues and expressing them through play and games is not new, it is actually fairly common throughout history. Many classic games that are considered high culture, such as Chess or Go, were created in societies where generals needed simulations of military strategies to practice with (Go was actually considered a martial art.) Likewise, African American slave children in the South would often counteract their harsh, oppressive environment by playing cooperative music and working games; competition would have only deepened the surrounding tension. While this knowledge has occasionally been of great importance to historians and sociologists, it has only recently become important information for those in the gaming industry as a way of highlighting the importance of games in human culture.
Obviously the discussions on games as art have just begun. There are many gamers who are still content to just play their games, and there always will be. That's okay. Games are supposed to be fun. There are, however, game designers and players who will continue to strive for more, and that is where our industry will really evolve. A good friend of mine once commented that, "There two types of people who play videogames: game players, who recreationally play things like Madden, Halo, or casual games; and gamers, who play multiple games on multiple systems, exploring the medium."
I countered by arguing that there can be a third type of videogame player: the enlightened gamer. This gamer is the one that participates in the medium but understands it on a deeper level, able to discuss it as one discusses literature and film, eager to read books that cite Metal Gear Solid as one would cite Hamlet. This is also the gamer that will be able to place games in their proper cultural context and discuss how they become indicative of the society that made them.
How do we help videogame players become these types of gamers? Through education, better discussion of games in popular media outlets, exposure to the blogs and news sites where the intellectual discussions occur, and yes, making more intellectually stimulating games that transcend the medium to become works of art.
So let me be the first to give Roger Ebert "Two Thumbs Up" for his critique of us as an industry and giving us the drive to develop our art and prove him wrong.
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Needless to say Shigeru decided to persue the game, and it came out as Doshin the Giant for the doomed N64 disk drive system.
I am gonna assume that Enrique Saul Gonzalez is a basement dweller given the lack of tact and manners displayed. I could go on, but we're on a professional website. Anyway, anyone who wants a take on the back forth nature of some(not all) romantic relationships I would recommend "The Game" or a search of ambivalent love on google. As regarding the class, I assume it's something of a Japanese anomaly. Something along the lines of refresher classes given to corporate employees, or internal Nintendo classes aimed at teaching their junior professionals insider tradecraft. I don't know Japanese business culture, so I can only guess at how this transpired. Also the Wikipedia entry on the game paints a more conventional game then the article suggested.
Here is an interview with the designer of Doshin the Giant which talks about the same things I mentioned.
http://ign64.ign.com/articles/070/070838p1.html
@Gonzalez: I really hope you're not an idiot, just adamant, and lazy about doing research.
you just proved, that YOU are an idiot. You told a unlikely story without citing source, like if it was true, Saul only asked for the source, you instead made a long post to explain that you have no source and he should look for it himself on google... And then insulted him.
I love video games and I think they are getting close to art in some senses, but I still think it'll never be considered art, in the same sense music or sculpture is. I guess art is one of those things that is in the eye of the beholder, so to debate whether games are art or not, ultimately goes nowhere...
If a post seams unlikely, would it behoove you to google said topic? No really, we live in 2010, you're on the internet I'm not asking for too much effort on your part, before posting accusations.
Tetris is an interactive kinetic sculpture. Ditch the score and the music and it could easily go in an art museum. I've seen far dumber things in art collections.
Incidentally, the discussion is already pretty old. Here's a link to my lecture, "Will Computer Games Ever Be a Legitimate Art Form?" from GDC 2001:
http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/Will_Computer_Games___/will_computer_g
ames___.htm
In my opinion the question shouldn't be if video games are art, thats too general a question to answer. The question is when will video games achieve the same level of prestige that is bestowed on Film, Painting, Music and other forms of aesthetic and didactic expression. I think this will come during the eight or ninth game console generation. The first real barrier to mainstream acceptance is the uncanny valley. Thats the real barrier to emotional engagement in video games, It's hard to take any video game's attempt at prestige seriously when the characters look like stop motion dolls. The problem here is graphic and skeletal animation fidelity, not visionary game developers lacking in artistic ability.
Of course gamecraft itself has to mature, a lot of theory has to be writen by the Susan Sontags of the game world, before the cultural intelligentsia starts taking notice. So in my humble opinion it's just a matter of time and maturation before this happens.
Thank you for your thoughtful response to the article. I will have to check out your lecture! Believe me, I have no doubt the discussion is an old one, I am just saying that it feels as though it's really really picked up since that Ebert article came out. With a someone like Ebert, who carries such a media presence, throwing the discussion into the popular spotlight, it seems like everyone involved in gaming suddenly has a stake in the debate. Plus with more intellectual gaming media available to the general public now than in the early part of the last decade, more people can join in in a meaningful way.
However, I'd question a couple of the comments in the article. First is the query about zombies: there may be the odd example of gaming zombies being used for social satire/commentary, but I'd say that the reasons they've been so heavily used are simple:
1) Simple AI coding: no-one expects zombies to be intelligent
2) "believably" tough: it gives players something to chew on and it also gives developers something to justify their shiny new physics engine
3) Morality: killing zombies is generally not open to the same controversies as killing humans (give or take games like Resident Evil 5). It also makes it easier for markets such as Germany, where censorship laws are very tough
4) Popularity: zombies are the in-thing, to the point where I think it's actually becoming a post-modern joke to make zombie games.
Secondly: the Madworld "offhand comment" was almost certainly just that: a bit of light satire in the vein of the rest of the game. It is possible to read too much into things which appear to have personal relevance - for instance, something I tend to do when waiting at the dentist is to grab a magazine and pick a random horoscope. It's (un)amazing how easy it is to find a link between my life and virtually every single point for every single star sign!
Still, the fact that even a game like Madworld caused someone to stop and think/feel about something other than the task in hand is a good sign that whatever people say, there's at least an element of Art infused into the game...
Now, it is sociology so it is a soft science, meaning it's still up for debate.
Now the other point regarding "Mad World" There is a concept in film called Mise en scène; it means that everything in the frame: the scenery, the layout of objects and actors in the frame are arranged in such a way to provide meaning. It's really about the concept of art meets maximization of utility. use everything to tell your story. So when you author something for film, you're supposed to arrange every element to tell your story. Now the fun part of watching an intelligent movie is that you get to read into it. The creator points to a general direction for you to explore and you find your own meaning. Thats the real fun of watching movies, making those connections in your head, as opposed to being told what the message is. A prize earned is worth much more than a prize given.
Now you're still analyzing within certain limits, Godfather is about capitalism and how it functions, and it's about Mafia life, and everything that falls within those themes. It's not about anything outside it's scope. So something like "Madworld" making social commentary isn't just someone reading tealeaves, those ideas are really there. Its just a matter of being pushed and led to making those discoveries.
PS
I can't find the documentary now, will post the entry as soon as I find it.
(I'd also argue that the popularity of zombies has also been partially driven by the movies - specifically, films such as Shawn of the Dead and Pirates of the Carribean: mainstream, high-revenue entertainment)
After all, the other popular gaming/internet memes are pirates, ninjas and robots. Is the internet meme of Talk Like a Pirate day a reflection of deeper social events, or just a bit of silliness inspired by Pirates of the Carribean? Do people like Ninjas because they reflect individuality and honour, or is it just fun to climb buildings and chop heads off with a large sword? Are robots always used to examine man's morality and religion, or is it just entertaining to transform and throw enemies through buildings?
Regarding the concept of Mise en Scene: it can be argued that games (where all of the art, audio and gameplay is explicitly defined by the developer) can adhere to this concept far more strongly than movies do. However, this doesn't mean they always do - you can find patterns and meaning in virtually anything, whether it's something like Stonehenge, the face of a religious icon on a piece of toast or a piece of pop-culture media. The question is whether the meaning was deliberately placed there or whether it's simply an interpretation of the viewer. In this case, I'd personally say that the Madworld "revelation" was an interpretation of something which was intended as light satire. Though I'd be happy to be proven wrong :)
@Christopher: there may be some truth to the fact that "item X is popular because of social event Y", but with the rise of the "global" civilisation, it's not quite as clear cut as it used to be. To move away from zombies: there's been literally thousands of colour-swapping games released since the world economic collapse; does this mean people are looking for more order in their life, or is it a simple game mechanism that's previously been proven to be highly profitable for popcap? If a game is designed by a Briton, implemented on an American game engine, utilises Chinese art assets and makes use of African folklore and Japanese character designs, can you say that it's a cultural artefact? And if so, whose?
The concept of a game being made by a person in one country with another country's technology and art styles or assets...if we are to consider possible cultural indicators in games...means that the game could be indicative of our modern globalized internet culture. To be honest you may or may not buy that but hey food for thought right?
Anyway, I definitely see your point. Sometimes things ARE indeed put into a game for purely technical reasons. Engineers design one way and artists another. That can take me into a whole other favorite topic of mine, the methodology of designing from either mechanics or an artistic or narrative theme (mechanics vs. motif)...but that's a topic for later haha.
Like I said in the article games are fun, and are designed to be fun. Obviously some games are designed to ONLY be fun, and that's great. On the flip side, I also don't think there is anything inherently wrong or otherwise inaccurate about considering games from a cultural or artistic point of view, regardless of whether it was implicitly on a staff member's mind at that specific time. Samus Aran being a woman was put in as a simple fun surprise, but look at what a positive female heroine she is among some of the hyper-sexualized (sometimes very inappropriately) female video game characters. The first man who made a spear wasn't considering what that spear would tell future societies about the way he lived, but that doesn't mean that that spear doesn't have attributes that describe some small bit of his lifestyle. Pirates and Ninjas are definitely fun, as are zombies...I myself was at a pirate themed bar in my town a few nights ago and had fun with the purely corny theme. However, sometimes these things can be ingredients in a much richer cultural stew.
For example (I'm really sorry for beating the dead zombie...they're kind of an obsession of mine...) George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead has been discussed as dealing with American involvement in Vietnam, the disillusionment of the nuclear family, racism, and Cold War Politics. Likewise, sure Godzilla movies are fun, but originally Godzilla was a cautionary film where the monster was a metaphor for the danger of nuclear weapons. Go check out the original Japanese version of Gojira, it has some truly heart wrenching imagery. Considering that the movie was released mere months after an incident with a fishing boat, Lucky Dragon 5, was caught in the danger zone of an H-bomb test blast. The first scene of the movie is a direct reference to the event. Also, 1950's and 60's B movies and their obsession with alien invaders from another planet has been directly linked with Cold War Paranoia. Alternatively, look at some sci-fi movies now; now we are the invaders seeking to suck a foreign planet of its resources after ruining our own Earth (no, Avatar's not the only one.)
Really we could debate this all month. :-P
Overall, it uncovers how games provide meaningful experience, but that doesn't do much for argument or discussion about games as art. (And I do believe they are art.) We can assert our place intellectually and academically and that's fine. I appreciate that it will broaden the social view of and respect for video games. But really, isn't that the crux of the entire argument here? To paraphrase: "If we all analyze games for meaning and educate more people about the deeper meaning in some video games, then someday most people will agree with us that video games have intellectual human value." But doesn't that assume that intellectual human value is equivalent to aesthetic value? (Which may be true... or may not. It's up for debate and extremely subjective. Square one.)
But we still run into the same problem. How do we understand games as an aesthetic system with aesthetic properties? This is very different from understanding games as intellectual communication or an expression of ideas. Otherwise, how is your above view of an artistic video game any different from a well written essay in the form of a video game? To argue against myself: if George Bernard Shaw were alive today, he would love your ideas and would certainly want to make games based on your philosophy. GBS was pretty awesome.
The thing is, I think it's more important right now for game developers and critics to intelligently discuss the formal aesthetic properties of video games as an aesthetic experience. We need a formalist approach to understanding games as a comprehensive aesthetic product/experience that comes from an aesthetic process with techniques and specific identifiable resulting qualities. I think it's important to do this before we get caught up in other intellectual discussion about what is good art or provides a great experience. (@Jamie Mann hovers on this in his more technical turn above.) Otherwise, we all end up talking on and on in circles about how much we like this or that or why we think this is good and that isn't. Which is criticism. How is that different from what Ebert has asserted with his notions of include/exclude, except that he doesn't agree with us?
Please don't take this the wrong way, because I am excited about this discussion in general. But ultimately, with respect to games as art I believe we have to do more foundational work than simply convincing the opposition that we're right.
I was recently forwarded this article: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2010/04/video-games-and-the-philosophy-of-art/
In it, writer Grant Tavinor discusses a "cluster" definition of art as described by philosopher Berys Gaut. He then goes on to present the game Bioshock, explaining it in terms of Gaut's definition. What it can come down to is the semantics of how an individual person describes art. Roger Ebert obviously believes that art must be the work of one person and cannot involve the participation of the audience, yet what does he say of architecture? Does it not have aesthetic or experiential qualities that an audience can participate in? Does my ability to experience the "lux nova" of a Gothic church or understand the hearth as the center of a family space in a Frank Lloyd Wright house make these important works unworthy of being called art?
See? "Art" is an entirely subjective term. I do agree that while it can get murky, we should continue to discuss our games through critical discourse as whatever they can or should be; software, cultural artifacts, art, aesthetically pleasing interactive environments, procedural essays on life, and yes even as games. To me the beauty of this hobby has always been how 10 people can all have the same game, yet each will have their own experience of it (EMERGENCE!) and will have their own harrowing tale of how they defeated (or were defeated by) this monster or that trap. I really feel that both games and art are open to what people see as their own definition of the experience, and that experience is something they can choose to carry with them or not. I had a student recently tell me how he sells each of his games back after he beats them. I then thought about my giant Rubbermaid box in my closet with all my old Nintendo systems and the cartridges for each. Each game in that box (and the Game Boy games in another, and the current gen games on my shelf) holds a memory of some in-game or out-of-game event and some point in my life at which I played them, like John Cusack's "autobiographical" record collection in "High Fidelity."
@Jamie Mann:I think I wasn't as clear as I should have been. The idea is maximization of utility meets the need to get the story across. So you have all signs pointing to a specific thematic direction, and you take your own journey in analyzing it. Thats one of the mores when it comes to creating intelligent art. Here is an example
http://www.spike.com/episode/16829
Please watch the short before continuing, as it illustrated my idea of art.
This is a short by Peter Chung titles Aeon Flux: Gravity. Now after watching it it's obivously a meditaion about our lot in life. That life is basically one long decent into oblivion and that we decide to make it more bearable by focusing on mysteries that interest us and provide a distraction untill our life ends, without us knowing the answers we seek.
Now if you read any number of interviews by Peter Chung he will be adamant about not telling his take on the material. His personal mores(and those of most sophisticated artists) Dictate that when you tell the fans what the creator's work is about, it looses it's magic. And the fact that it's no longer yours, it's theirs.
Now you are right that anyone can read anything in anything, and that why you follow thematic guidelines introduced in said artistic work to get anywhere worthwhile. But at the same time the creator of Mad World would never tell you what his intention was, no matter how clear his thematic direction is. So yea you're on your own when it comes to interpretation, but thats the point.
But I guess one has to be comfortable with ambiguity in order to enjoy it. :-)
And if you do, try Blue Velvet, now thats true art in every sense of the word.
Now regardign zombies in video games, sure there are a lot of reasons that they get featured so much, most of what you described is obivously true from a practical point of view. My take is that In television and movies things get greenlit because the producer thinks that the audience has an appetite for said subject. Look how torture porn(saw, hostel, etc) took off after the war in iraq turned bad. People developed an appetite for horror after being bombarder by all the bad news in iraq. Now I don't think all trends are traced to some cultural event, but that events "infulence" culture. Now video games companies have their own consideration for choosing which subject to choose for their product. Zombies are a favorite of the developers because they are easy to manage and have social relevance at this point. Meaning that people will respond to the material stronger, meaning better sales, which is the main point in the end.
As for pirates and ninjas, well yea, you're talking about a nerd subculture that isn't mainstream. It's basically a subgroup that enjoys playing around with their childhood heroes, Same way I love wearing a TMNT t-shirt because I find it to be fun. The roots in this case is silly nostalgic fucking around with early developed cultural associations that meant a lot to you. At best it's a reflection on how childhood memories can have an influence on grownup culture. The only way modern society has an effect on it, is by being encredibly stressfull to the point of wanting to escape to a simpler less stressfull times. And of course because it's just fun.
@Jammie Mann regarding christophers take. In the end the person who commisioned those assets for a specific market hoping that market responds. So culturally those assets belong to the market the game got released in(because thats where they are making the social impact).And globalization is muddying that up a bit. As for engines. well thats not really socially releveant unless it dictates how the characters are supposed to behave and look. And then only in that regard.
Now seeing how the debate has shifted to how video games can be art, here's my take
Every piece of art is a victim of its curcamstance. Either good or bad. First it can be social commentary, second it can only be as good as the current artcraft allows it to be. Look at art before the vanishing point was discovered(mostly medieval art) It's laughable now, but there are still great points of interest in them.
Now we get into Hume, his idea was that religeon and art are the same in their function. First they provide cultural artifacts of their time and place, and depending how deep they are, also show the societal reflections and worries of the time.
Art you can say is the profound emotional history of the time period they were produced. Once video games achieve a level of craft of taking every element of video games and making it sing in unision with your vision, to provide a profound experience that will have a long lasting social relevance, then it's art. Until then it's just interesting culture for future anthropologists to digest.
Ah the old "what is art" discussion... I was engaged in many of those during my 7 years in art school. Still can't say I've personally come to anything definitive, but it is a fun subject.
Do video games only become art when academia has the language and skills to define and defend it's status? I always liked Tolstoy's observations on aesthetics... who is our contemporary Tolstoy writing about video games?
1. Watch any Pauly Shore movie.
2. Play Ico
And then argue with me about which of the two is art...
You are completely missing the point of Ebert's argument. This is the same mistake Kellee Santiago and almost every other "video games are already art!" proponents are making:
The argument has nothing to do with quality. It has everything to do with form.
Just because Pauly Shore movies are "bad" (in your opinion) examples of a particular art form does not negate the entire art form of filmmaking. Painting is a form of art. The fact that bad paintings exist (or even that paintings exist which have no artistic merit whatsoever) does not negate the entire art form of painting.
Furthermore, the fact that you don't enjoy a particular form of art does not then elevate everything you do find enjoyable or entertaining to the status of art.
It has nothing to do with quality. It has everything to do with form.
An open-ended, user-controlled, user choice-guided, narratively-open, infinite point-of-viewed, temporally-dynamic experience is not a form of art any more than my daily life and the choices I make in it is a form of art.
A close-ended, non-user controlled, artist guided, narratively-closed, single point-of-viewed, temporally-static experience is a form of art. It's called a film.
When you started applying how games can be considered as social artifacts that reflects the society we live in, I must argue that virtually anything people create today can be considered just that. It's nothing unique to games.
But I think we're missing the point here.
Agreeing with Max Bowman, I think the real question is not if game is art, but if it can achieve [i]enough artistic value[/i] to be accepted as a valuable asset to our society, and to humanity at large. I think Ebert was also asking this when he initially brought it up--he compares it to other works that he considers to have more "value." Even when he declares that games can never be art, he doesn't say game != art, but rather, people will never create a game with enough artistic value.
I know that people are actually arguing that games can achieve this status when they say that game is art. And I do agree with them, however, I do not agree with the reasons: Shadow of Colossus or Ico or a few other pop video games.
Today's games share one and only goal: to reach point B. The winning condition is to see the end of a story. Gameplay is used to make that travel from point A to B interesting, to immerse players into those elaborate, virtual worlds. At the point B, some event occurs, then again, a new point B is revealed. Player starts trotting down the path again. If delivering story is the focus, then game is not the best medium to use. Shadow of Colossus or Ico is all good, but the thing is, it still falls short--very short--of taking full advantage of what is unique to games.
Instead, I think Brenda Brathwaite got it right. Goals and rules (not mere game mechanics) are the swords and spears of games. They're what's unique about the games, and should be utilized to create unique experiences. Her games, Train and Middle Passage, does just that. The experiences you get while playing those games, are quite unlike anything else. Playing Middle Passage is nothing like watching Amistad, for example.
I think devs really should start thinking about not small machanics to make pulling that trigger feel good, but rather a bigger picture of the meaning of each and every rules and goals. All the techniques at how to utilize these in creative ways will, in my opinion, form games own language and ultimately grant games more artistic values that we are hungry for.
Also, to refer back to Jonathon Myers' blog post; if Aristotle points out that art is the imitation of life, than wouldn't an interactive environment in which players are challenged to make decisions even MORE of an art form than other passive media? I would even take it a step further to say that by exploring aspects of life through games, people can gain an even better understanding of their own lives. According to Donald Norman, playing games and doing other fun activities while engaging in so-called "serious" activities such as work or design can open the mind to more suggestion and "out of the box" ideas. I once conducted an experiment where I had groups of architectural design students design a building by having them play a game that facilitated their design. It was published on gamecareerguide and the link can be found here: http://www.gamecareerguide.com/features/751/thesis_game_design_and_.php .
The game itself was a procedural argument against the methods they had been employing in their own design studios. The results were actually successful; the students reported not only having more creative ideas for their buildings, they also reported that the game made them question the ways in which they treated one another during design sessions and change them for the better. By putting someone in a a fun situation that imitates life, it is possible to make gamers even MORE open to artistic meaning than they would be with passive media such as film.
@Peter Park: I would argue against the goal of games simply being "to reach point B." Maybe in a game such as "Final Fantasy XIII" or some FPS's where the game is a long winding tunnel, but there are many more games where the journey can provide a wonderful aesthetic experience or allow for deep reflection. I, despite your arguments to the contrary, would cite Shadow of the Colossus as one (am I actually doing evil by killing the colossi?), as I would many of the Super Mario games (the aesthetic of a beautiful cartoon world/galaxy and the joy of movement.) I can understand your frustration and belief that the "A to B" system is where the meat of many games are, but I think you're underestimating the point of many of those mechanics in the middle. Braid is a good example of a game where you must take an avatar from a starting point to reach a goal (a puzzle piece), but I would say that the mechanics of reversing time and other time-manipulation tricks are what make the game a rich experience. Ultimately, when the player does reach the "ultimate B", the end of the game where the true nature of his relationship with the princess is revealed, the game's time manipulation mechanics are revealed to be a part of a much broader and richer theme. Do all games use their mechanics in an artistically meaningful way? Of course not. But that doesn't mean that there are no pieces of art to be found in pop games.
The gameplay between point A to B can be masterfully done, as it has in Super Mario Galaxy (to come to light, I've yet to play this game. But I have no doubt that it is fun... I do plan on playing this some time in future). However, my argument is that game as a medium can be used to do so much more than making pushing A button fun, just as a book can do much more than be a display of scribing skill.
For Braid, while it was indeed an exciting revelation at the end, I think the movie Memento was infinitely better implementation of backward progression of story and that "oh-shit" moment to put an exclamation point at the end. Even for Shadow of Colossus, I strongly believe that it could be a better experience were some master studios like Studio IG to create Original Video Animation of it.
My point is that there are other mediums to do a singular, uni-directional narrative experience better than an interactive medium can do. To really realize the full potential of game, I believe we should focus on the system itself than just game mechanics or telling stories.
Hey Pauly, don’t take this personal man. I didn’t mean to single you out, there’s tons of crappy movies out there…, yours are just the first examples that came to me!
Listen! I don’t know what kind of art school you attended to have such a closed definition of art, but whatever they charged you, you got robbed!
Most art experts and historians agree that part of what constitutes a work of art is the ability of the work of art to stimulate the viewer’s thoughts and emotions, and note that by “viewer” they mean anybody consuming the work of art, whatever its form is!
Some games do that, despite not being “close-ended, non-user controlled, blah, blah, blah…”. And a lot of movies (or paintings, sculptures, etc…) don’t!
My point is that just being a “blah blah blah…, single point-of-viewed, temporally-static experience” (to use your somewhat retrograde definition) does not make ANY film a work of art, no more than me spitting on a canvas and framing it does! (or does it?)
I’m not going to get into dead-end arguments about the definition of art with you because it would be pointless, since as of today there’s still no consensus among experts despite centuries or arguing and analysis. So, that so-called definition of yours is, honestly, gigantic poop!
Art is far more complex than any explanation you or I could give! To me, honestly, it’s something you feel more than something you can explain.
Some films are definitely art, I’ll agree to that! And I’m not even saying that all games are, not even close. But at least I have the open-mindedness to consider the possibility that some can be, as opposed to you who seem to consider every turd that comes up on a screen a masterpiece!
So take that, Pauly Shore! You are busted!!