Recently, Roger Ebert declared that video games "can never be art." Later in the article he retreats to saying it won't be in the current generation of gamers lifetimes that games will be considered art. These statements produced a good bit of "Argle bargle bargle ARE TOO ART!" in the gaming community - this isn't that kind of post. Ebert is an intelligent man, he's entitled to his opinion - I just think he's wrong.
Ebert's article was a response to this TED talk from Kellee Santiago, who says that games already are art. While I agree broadly with her, I find a lot to quibble with as well. I'm going to look at both opinions and give you my take on the subject - and it is worth exactly what you paid to read it.
Let's look at Ebert's arguments first - stripping away the excess verbiage, he has a very definite idea of what constitutes art:
- Usually the creation of a single artist.
- Games are primarily about the "win" condition - IE points scored, levels completed, etc.
- People naturally "know" what great art is.
- No game can be compared with the great art works in other fields.
To be fair, perhaps I've missed something but these seem to me to be the main points. Ebert also notes that what a given person (versus a culture) considers art varies.
A Man Alone . . .
This statement was made in the context that video games are evolving from a primitive state to more sophisticated art. The example being, early cave paintings versus the old masters. Ebert points out that even in collaborative work, there is usually a single artist that gets the ball rolling. He believes that video game development, typically being a group effort, disqualifies it.
I'll even admit that I sympathize with his opinion, that I want to share it. I dislike "organized" art, such as schools of painting or sculpture. But I feel his opinion is irrelevant at best. If you go back to early gaming, even where the final product was developed by a team (the early Build engine games, for example) - there was still a lead developer who had a vision for what the finished product would look like. We could say the same thing with a more modern game like Brutal Legend, which was started by Tim Schaffer's vision and added to by other artists. It really isn't any different in that respect from a tribal dance or a group of cave paintings.
I really don't think his statement here is in any way important. Even if video games development didn't have a lead, even if it was wholly a collaborative effort from #include to the end statement - it doesn't really say much about the finished product.
4 teh Win!11!
Some games have "win" conditions. Halo, Civilization 4, Zork, Pong, Atari Combat - all these games have win conditions. It doesn't necessarily follow that they are not art. Just being "different" from paintings, music, dance, motion pictures, etc is not enough - you have to specifically state why having a win condition disqualifies games as art.
Ebert recognizes that some games don't have a win condition:
Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.This is wrong on a couple of levels. Most adventure games have neither points, nor hard and fast rules - they are primarily about the story that the designers want to tell, but they are not the same thing as a novel, audio book or visual presentation of a story. There is still a subtle win condition - completing the game, but it isn't the same as Space Invaders or Left4Dead. At the same time, I don't see how you can say that a game without a win condition isn't a game.
For instance, it is impossible to win World of Warcraft or Farmville. I'm only going to speak to the former here - I really don't understand what would possess someone to play Farmville. In the case of WoW, there isn't really a win condition set by the game - the player decides what constitutes winning. Due to the changing nature of games like these, even that is not a constant.
Some players just want to get their character to the level cap; others need every character they have on a server to reach that cap. Some don't want to level at all - they reach a certain arbitrary point (say, level 19) and decide to just do player versus player combat at that point. For other players it is having the very best gear available at any given point. The last is probably the most common goal, but as those goal posts are always in motion, there is no final end game until Blizzard stops developing the game. I'll provide a clearer example from my own experience.
I started a druid on the Khadgar server several years back named Devothumb, I still play him today. In the original WoW, leveling a druid was very difficult. This was because druids were a healing class, and by necessity didn't have a lot of damage dealing abilities. So to begin with, getting my druid to level 60, the level cap at that time was my goal. WoW had a storyline back then, but it often felt fragmented, often as not, I thought about my story of Devothumb the Druid and created ideas about what sort of person he was. Later, when I reached the cap, I started raiding.
Raids in WoW are really big dungeons that require a lot of people working together to complete. Back then it was 40 players, and you could try once a week. As I said, Druids were initially healers, but moreso the reason you brought them to raid was to help another healing character class - priests. I chafed under that requirement, I wanted to do something different and eventually reached that goal - I raided in Blackwing Lair as a Moonkin (damage dealing) druid after the 1.8 patch made it barely viable. After the Burning Crusade expansion was released the rules changed again, and so did my goals. Today, I'm back to healing when I have time which isn't as often as I'd prefer. My goal is simply to be a good healer and help people finish lower end content, five man dungeons. I'm pretty happy so far.
I Don't Know What Art Is, But I Know What I Like . . .
I take issue with the idea that people naturally know what great art is. Cezanne's early works were critically panned and physically attacked by some patrons. Few would argue that he was a great artist. I think it's telling that often as not we only award someone with the mantle of "great artist" after they are safely dead.
Both Santiago and Ebert talk about what is and isn't art. I hate to be vague, but when they say this I think they are using it as a stand in for "these are things I don't like." I don't think that's a valid way to approach the issue. By that rationale, Alas, Babylon a critically acclaimed novel isn't art. I don't care for it and think it was one of the worst novels I've every read.
Santiago specifically mentions The Simple Life as an example of where television went wrong, where it did something that wasn't art. I've never seen the show, but it doesn't look like something that would interest me. Frankly, most television and movies don't light my fire - but I won't write either medium off as "not art." I suspect there might even be good arguments for the show she mentioned as an artistic work. Who is right? It's a matter of personal preference.
Yeah, but It's Not Shakespeare . . .
Apples also are not oranges. But if nobody had compared gaming to television, movies, drama or novels, let me be the first. I think the game Sanitarium is as good as anything done by Hitchcock. I think one thing that hurt Santiago's argument here is that she focused on commercially successful independent developers. I think it's okay to show work that hasn't been rewarded by the market place, great art often isn't. That was certainly the case with Sanitarium, it was the only work produced by that development house, and it was a failure commercially. I think it is okay to show off the work of large studios and "AAA" games. They can be art too, even if they are successful in the market place.
But Do We Really Have To?
The argument that I have the most sympathy with in Ebert's essay is this. I'm not sure it is a good idea to have games considered as art. I think the art world and the Games-As-Art movement can often be so stodgy that they are a parody of themselves. At the end of the day, a game should be fun. If it fails in that, than I can say hopefully without contradiction that it might not be art.
Ebert wonders why it is important to "gamers" to have their medium declared art. I think there are a couple of reasons for this; recognition for the creative work that developers do is one of them. But the games as art movement is trumpeted louder by players than developers, so I think that is culturally speaking an afterthought. I think the reason that players want this is that we've been marginalized by the mainstream culture for a long time. The stereotype of a "gamer" is an overweight, socially maladroit male who lives in their parent's home longer than is socially acceptable. As with any stereotype sometimes it is true, but more often - especially today as game become more accepted culturally, it is not.
Additionally, it is a bulwark against the worst excesses of the mainstream media. Fox News reported that the game Mass Effect featured "full frontal nudity" and was "marketed to children." This was in no way true, this sterling bit of reporting was sourced as "I heard it from a friend." The same network claimed that Modern Warfare 2 is about "being a terrorist." Other mainstream outlets have treated the media with the same scorn and disregard. The majority of stories about video games (and all stories about video games with mature subject matter) are negative; absolutely without exception.
I think that because video games are a different medium, they are consumed differently than other forms. I think art is sometimes created (or is at least driven by) the player, not the developer. House of the Dead 2 & 3 for the Nintendo Wii, at least as it is played by my friends is a good example of this. It is a rail shooter - you move through a linear story, shooting zombies for score. The localization of this game is very poor resulting in a high quantity of "Engrish," and playing it is almost like an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Whereas a novel or a movie is mostly a one-to-one experience between the author and the consumer.
Fin
I think that both parties have it wrong. I feel that Roger Ebert does not have the necessary qualifications to determine whether video games are art. He is not, so far as I know, well versed in the medium.
In some ways though, Kellee Santiago's arguments make me even more uncomfortable. I agree with her that games are already art, but I'm less sure that you can point to game one (say, Braid) and say this is good art and point to game b (Grand Theft Auto) and say it isn't. At least not until well after the fact. The idea of using a study to promote a particular viewpoint on games as art feels to reminiscent of Socialist Realism or the Surrealist school that rejected Dali because his paintings sold.
I think we have to let these sleeping dogs lie, and after we are long cold in the ground, the people who come after us get to decide which games, novels, plays and movies are good art. I think creators should be free to make what they like, and while this will sometimes produce wonderful games, it will also occasionally produce something ugly or daft. We have to move forward being okay with that.
