Forbin

Roger Ebert rehashes old debate even indie hipsters are tired of

Recommended Posts

Dear Mr. Ebert,

A "video game" need not contain any material ludic element.

Sincerely, the internet.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Dear Mr. Ebert,

VIDEO GAMES!

Video Games or video games? I hope it's the former :eyebrow:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Next he's going to tell me that Choose Your Own Adventure Books aren't art. The Third Planet from Altair is deeper than Michael Crichton's Congo.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Don't books, poetry, music and movies also have rules? Am I not supposed to read/listen/see it from begin to end, and not jumping to various places? Also, don't movies and books have an outcome?

It's quite easy to dismiss a medium because it has certain features others don't. You could easily dismiss movies form being art when compared to books because it has sound and pictures.

Books, music and poetry, etc can be used that way, but there is no set 'rule' that say you have do so. And depending on the work, may be created so that not doing so is just as fulfilling. I wouldn't use music as an example of something you have to listen to from beginning to end, as you can skip between tracks of an album or sections of a song as you please.

These forms of entertainment do tend to have outcomes, but there are no victory conditions that require anything from the user, where as games have such conditions that must be met to eventually reach the outcome of the game. Not meeting those conditions for a movie won't change its outcome, the credits will still roll if you get up and walk out after 5 minutes. A game will end prematurely (generally death) and the outcome never arrives (other than 'game over', which doesn't conclude the story arc of the game).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I like Gilbert's response, because it's so straightforward. He's not looking for an ideal to display, the proverbial Citizen Kane. He's just putting it out there that pretty much any game could stand out as an artwork. He throws out Monkey Island, something that no pretentious art school kid would champion, but is personal to him and fits the bill just as well as anything else.

I'm not sure that people like Ebert realize just how much psychological research and manipulation is part of every game made these days. He may see nothing beyond the extremes of narrative and game mechanics, but will never understand that the designers are pulling strings indirectly encouraging players to experience their vision.

Laying out red herrings, creating the illusion of extra space while encouraging a player to move forward, stringing resupplies around to control the pacing of the experience. The authorial vision that he fails to see is part of practically every game released these days. So rather than putting up champions to try to appease this troll, let any game stand up to his ridiculous statements.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

These forms of entertainment do tend to have outcomes, but there are no victory conditions that require anything from the user, where as games have such conditions that must be met to eventually reach the outcome of the game. Not meeting those conditions for a movie won't change its outcome, the credits will still roll if you get up and walk out after 5 minutes. A game will end prematurely (generally death) and the outcome never arrives (other than 'game over', which doesn't conclude the story arc of the game).

All art has victory conditions. Just because you got to see the end credits doesn't mean you were able to digest the experience, whether anything the artist was trying to communicate actually stuck. I could never win Inland Empire.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
All art has victory conditions. Just because you got to see the end credits doesn't mean you were able to digest the experience, whether anything the artist was trying to communicate actually stuck. I could never win Inland Empire.

And the other way, who is to say that dying and ending the game prematurely invalidates the experience? Failure is a perfectly realistic and meaningful situation, and one that games can possibly convey better than any other medium.

Ebert can pretty much fuck off. Someone on Twitter pointed out his argument is like someone claiming books can never be art because they can't read.

Exactly. It is written in an artistic language that he does not understand, can't even see. Anything conveyed in the gameplay itself (we don't really have good enough terminology for all this yet, but things like freedom, restrictions, obstacles, verbs etc etc) is completely invisible to him. For the book metaphor, he would be reviewing it based on the illustrations alone.

But this argument has become personal to Ebert now. It is something which defines him and so he is never ever going to have his mind changed. He needs to convince other people that he is right in order to validate his worldview. Or maybe he just needs column inches to fill and knows from experience that this subject has good traction.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
All art has victory conditions. Just because you got to see the end credits doesn't mean you were able to digest the experience, whether anything the artist was trying to communicate actually stuck. I could never win Inland Empire.

I just meant that most other forms of entertainment/art will continue without any user input. A game will essentially stop if user input stops. I couldn't at first and only now barely grasp Inland Empire fwiw.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I just meant that most other forms of entertainment/art will continue without any user input. A game will essentially stop if user input stops. I couldn't at first and only now barely grasp Inland Empire fwiw.

Far Cry 2 can keep you engaged when you're not playing in much the same way a Lynch film keeps you engaged when you're not watching. Pardon me if I'm missing your point

Also: Gabbo is coming!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
The examples in the original video were not very indicative of how games can be meaningful to people, especially that David Koresh game.

I'm not even sure why that game was used. It seems about as artistic and fun as the SHOOT JFK game everyone was upset about a few years ago.

Also Mega Troll bonus post:

Ebert would say video games were art if he were forced to play Heavy Rain chained to a chair all the way through. Lack of full interactivity and ability to lose the narrative sound like something he would love.

Only catch is, he probably wouldn't love it or understand what he were doing unless David Cage were locked in the same room espousing his bullshit and talking up his game every step of the way. You wouldn't have to lock Cage in there to get him to comply though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I just meant that most other forms of entertainment/art will continue without any user input. A game will essentially stop if user input stops. I couldn't at first and only now barely grasp Inland Empire fwiw.

OK, no that's wrong. A lot of art will continue to exist despite no interaction, though one could argue it is not art if it isn't art unless being observed. Any definition of art is bullshit, art is art, art is everything, art is nothing, art is what the observer, user, whatever perceives it to be. The point being saying something isn't art can only be from your point of view, no-one else's.

Urgh I fucking hate art.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you put art in a box, does it both exist and not exist at the same time?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've decided the best approach for people this this would be to have them play Close Range:

http://www.theonion.com/video/hot-new-video-game-consists-solely-of-shooting-peo,14325/

At first, they will have their opinions validated as they are eager to accept anything that reinforces their stereotype. Then they'll be forced to argue that the game didn't have anything to say, and has no artistic merits.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Also, hasn't Ebert ever heard of relativism?

Don't most Americans abhor relativism? They consider it liberal hippy communist bullshit or something. That's the impression I always got anyway.

(Nature abhors a vacuum. From nature's point of view, vacuums totally suck):getmecoat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ebert reviews "Cosmology of Kyoto"

Is this the same Ebert? I honestly have no idea. Derek Yu posted it on his Twitter-thing. Just thought I'd drop the link in here since I didn't see it posted in my quick skim. X:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Is that him caught with his pants down? The only thing that I can think of that might say it's him is the compliments he gives about how interesting Japanese culture is since he has said a few similar things in reviews of anime he likes. But of course, this could still be anyone.

I briefly played Cosmology of Kyoto in middle school and was even sort of scared. I should probably give it a better shot one day since I know many people rate it well. I hear it's also extremely rare and expensive.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah apparently that's him. But his review (of an early 90s CD-ROM era multimedia "game") doesn't really do much to rid him of the label of newb.

He has been known to play a game in the 90s. But he's out of touch, and blatantly ignoring anything that goes against his opinion.

As has been said a bunch of times before, how he could honestly claim a feature film is a solitary effort is insane. If anything games have originated from a place of more singular authorial vision and trended towards film studio culture. How could someone consider a pixar film art, but say there's too many cooks involved in a video game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think that Ebert's recent tweet shows that we shouldn't even waste our time trying to state any case for games. This pretty much shows what he thinks of games.

I'm not too old to "get" video games, but I may be too well-read.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Don't most Americans abhor relativism? They consider it liberal hippy communist bullshit or something. That's the impression I always got anyway

I don't really know. It's not something that comes up often in my interactions with fellow Americans. Anyway, Ebert's a thinking man so I don't know if you can lump him in with a hivemind like that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This shows two things. One is that Ebert is no longer part of our times. He has started to lag behind, his view of the world constricted to 20th century thinking, so to speak. Games can't be 'art'? It'll take longer than a lifetime for the medium to develop into an 'art phase'? This is the purest, unsubstantiated trashtalk, based on nothing whatsoever except the flimsiest comparison to how other media developed centuries ago. It also shows how little Ebert knows about how things develop nowadays, how much of an impact the internet has made on the world, how fast things shift in and out of our culture. He's unmasked as a dinosaur.

Secondly, it once again shows how utterly useless the term 'art' is to describe anything, because it's so personal, so impossible to capture in any clear definition. I recently wrote a rant on this and I'll post it here behind spoilers if you're interested.

I have a beef with art. More specifically, the term ‘art’. My entire life I never quite understood what art meant. For the longest time, I thought that was because I just didn’t ‘get’ it. Now I finally understand. It’s a hoax.

Here’s what it is: the term is meaningless. Utterly, absolutely devoid of meaning. ‘The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.’ Says dictionary.com, the go-to website of spectacular vernacular. If this seems a reasonably accurate, specific description, well, it isn’t. The first part (beautiful, appealing) is outdated. Museums are often stacked with things that are deliberately ugly, kitschy or provocative. Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is pretty to one is ghastly to another. The second part is the killer. Who decides what the significance of a painting or statue is? Isn’t that completely up to the individual person as well? That precious Dragonball Z fanart on Emo-chan’s DeviantArt page might mean quite a bit to her and say a lot about her subculture to boot. Meaning is easily pasted onto things. There you go, there’s absolutely no reason not to call every scribble, burp or fart anyone has ever made ‘art’.

So why do some things end up in museums but others don’t? Well, there are basically two reasons why people would consider some things art and some not. Firstly, we would consider something art simply because it is old or beautiful. We’re brought up to believe the Mona Lisa is art, and so it is art. Secondly, it’s all to do with the level of pretentiousness of the artist or his crowd. Since we’ve established in the above paragraph that everything is art, including the following misspelling of the word ‘fanphare’, it must be utter whim that decides that THIS found toilet seat is art, but THAT destroyed rubber tire is negligible. There’s no discernable difference between the two, save that one was picked up by a human and put on display. Ergo, ‘art’ is only in the intention of the artist, it would seem. The actual value or expression of the work has little to do with it.

Put in another way: ‘art’ is meaningless. There is no inherent value that deciphers things as ‘art’, it’s only the pretentiousness of man that makes it so. And I have no desire to cater any longer to that horrible whim. That salon bubble of fawning art acolytes pretending there’s so much to the things they put on their wall. I’m not saying creations can’t have meaning or quality, I am saying the term ‘art’ is vapid and says nothing about that, whereas it is used often haughtily to lend things a false sense of grandeur. Of course there is a difference between the Mona Lisa and Goku Kisses Vegeta. But since the term ‘art’ has been shown not have intrinsic value, aren’t there better ways to point that out?

Why not use ‘pretty’, ‘daring’, ‘ingenious’, or any other adjective that does in fact have meaning? Using ‘art’, ‘artist’ or ‘artistic’ only serves to confuse the discussion. ‘Art’ is abused daily by almost everyone for their own nefarious purposes. To make their creations seem more valuable, to lend an air of prestige, simply be downright pretentious or to hide ones qualities behind nebulous locution. And since we all seem to collectively buy into the delusion that ‘art’ actually means anything, this is a powerful tactic. I say: no more of these shenanigans.

From now on, let’s call it what it is. Paintings, statues, comics. Let’s do away with that nasty little term ‘art’, so rooted in our culture, yet so very, damagingly meaningless.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
This shows two things. One is that Ebert is no longer part of our times. He has started to lag behind, his view of the world constricted to 20th century thinking, so to speak. Games can't be 'art'? It'll take longer than a lifetime for the medium to develop into an 'art phase'? This is the purest, unsubstantiated trashtalk, based on nothing whatsoever except the flimsiest comparison to how other media developed centuries ago. It also shows how little Ebert knows about how things develop nowadays, how much of an impact the internet has made on the world, how fast things shift in and out of our culture. He's unmasked as a dinosaur.

Secondly, it once again shows how utterly useless the term 'art' is to describe anything, because it's so personal, so impossible to capture in any clear definition. I recently wrote a rant on this and I'll post it here behind spoilers if you're interested.

I have a beef with art. More specifically, the term ‘art’. My entire life I never quite understood what art meant. For the longest time, I thought that was because I just didn’t ‘get’ it. Now I finally understand. It’s a hoax.

Here’s what it is: the term is meaningless. Utterly, absolutely devoid of meaning. ‘The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.’ Says dictionary.com, the go-to website of spectacular vernacular. If this seems a reasonably accurate, specific description, well, it isn’t. The first part (beautiful, appealing) is outdated. Museums are often stacked with things that are deliberately ugly, kitschy or provocative. Besides, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is pretty to one is ghastly to another. The second part is the killer. Who decides what the significance of a painting or statue is? Isn’t that completely up to the individual person as well? That precious Dragonball Z fanart on Emo-chan’s DeviantArt page might mean quite a bit to her and say a lot about her subculture to boot. Meaning is easily pasted onto things. There you go, there’s absolutely no reason not to call every scribble, burp or fart anyone has ever made ‘art’.

So why do some things end up in museums but others don’t? Well, there are basically two reasons why people would consider some things art and some not. Firstly, we would consider something art simply because it is old or beautiful. We’re brought up to believe the Mona Lisa is art, and so it is art. Secondly, it’s all to do with the level of pretentiousness of the artist or his crowd. Since we’ve established in the above paragraph that everything is art, including the following misspelling of the word ‘fanphare’, it must be utter whim that decides that THIS found toilet seat is art, but THAT destroyed rubber tire is negligible. There’s no discernable difference between the two, save that one was picked up by a human and put on display. Ergo, ‘art’ is only in the intention of the artist, it would seem. The actual value or expression of the work has little to do with it.

Put in another way: ‘art’ is meaningless. There is no inherent value that deciphers things as ‘art’, it’s only the pretentiousness of man that makes it so. And I have no desire to cater any longer to that horrible whim. That salon bubble of fawning art acolytes pretending there’s so much to the things they put on their wall. I’m not saying creations can’t have meaning or quality, I am saying the term ‘art’ is vapid and says nothing about that, whereas it is used often haughtily to lend things a false sense of grandeur. Of course there is a difference between the Mona Lisa and Goku Kisses Vegeta. But since the term ‘art’ has been shown not have intrinsic value, aren’t there better ways to point that out?

Why not use ‘pretty’, ‘daring’, ‘ingenious’, or any other adjective that does in fact have meaning? Using ‘art’, ‘artist’ or ‘artistic’ only serves to confuse the discussion. ‘Art’ is abused daily by almost everyone for their own nefarious purposes. To make their creations seem more valuable, to lend an air of prestige, simply be downright pretentious or to hide ones qualities behind nebulous locution. And since we all seem to collectively buy into the delusion that ‘art’ actually means anything, this is a powerful tactic. I say: no more of these shenanigans.

From now on, let’s call it what it is. Paintings, statues, comics. Let’s do away with that nasty little term ‘art’, so rooted in our culture, yet so very, damagingly meaningless.

YES.

It just struck me that a play is not art in the same way a game isn't. With a play you have a set of rules to follow, the script, which can be bent by the director and actors. You have a goal, to entertain and perhaps convey a message. Maybe a single performance could be considered art, though the concept of staging it isn't. So maybe the concept of games cannot be considered art, yet isolated play-throughs however can.

QED mother fucker.

Edited by Patters

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now