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Roger Ebert rehashes old debate even indie hipsters are tired of

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tl;dr

because I really don't care what he has to say about video games; and I think the notion of "art" is nonsense anyway.

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Well a few people, like myself, wrote to call him on it and it was apparently done out of ignorance. He's since removed the offending images and replaced them. He claims he liked Jericho's artwork. There you go.

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Good that he changed those images. On second thought, this is sort of amazing to me, because people with his sort of stature very rarely seem to admit that they are wrong in my experience.

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I'm happy he's changed his "Games can never be art" position, but I will say this: games aren't really art. I mean, I love shooting the Combine just as much as every other non-real world savior, but very, very few games have ever managed to engross me emotionally based on their gameplay alone.

I mean, I've been hooked before. Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Ico, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus. All great games that told good stories or provided great experiences. But a lot of the time that resonance comes from cutscenes. I haven't played a game yet that does away with every single moment of cutscene. No cutscene. Ever. Even Portal had two (the very opening and the very end), and it's as close as games have ever come to being 100% free.

I want something more like Ico, where Yorda's trust of Ico grows through the gameplay itself. Then, I think, games will get very interesting.

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I'm happy he's changed his "Games can never be art" position, but I will say this: games aren't really art. I mean, I love shooting the Combine just as much as every other non-real world savior, but very, very few games have ever managed to engross me emotionally based on their gameplay alone.

I mean, I've been hooked before. Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Ico, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus. All great games that told good stories or provided great experiences. But a lot of the time that resonance comes from cutscenes. I haven't played a game yet that does away with every single moment of cutscene. No cutscene. Ever. Even Portal had two (the very opening and the very end), and it's as close as games have ever come to being 100% free.

I want something more like Ico, where Yorda's trust of Ico grows through the gameplay itself. Then, I think, games will get very interesting.

Half-Life?

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Never really got a story out of Half-Life, besides seeing a random guy in a blue suit watching me all the time. I appreciate what they tried to do there, but I keep thinking about how I'd have done it differently. *shrug*

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It's the gameplay that lends power to the cutscenes, not the other way around. Cutscenes are an effective form of driving a linear narrative, and there's no reason to shy away from them completely as long as there is a strong backing in gameplay, which all of those games do have.

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Stop thinking that games have to be movies to be art. There are a lot of parallels, but that doesn't mean that's where their art is. You don't need to be reduced to tears to prove their worthiness. IMO games are more akin to music in their artistic quality. They're very open to interpretation, primarily meant to entertain, there is beauty and planning that goes into them that only a few people experience.

Personally I think games are art now, they've been art for a long long time, and the people looking for Citizen Kane should start recognizing the Beatles.

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I give the man NO credit whatsoever for partially fessing up to not knowing what he's talking about... The only reason it happened was people kept chewing his damn ears off metaphorically on the subject. Apologizing to a bunch of people whinging at you for an apology isn't really very impressive. (or sincere!)

I'm actually more disappointed in the gaming, press, and development community for putting so much EFFORT into countering his views. The arguments for games as art seem to scream insecurity from my perspective, like the industry/community isn't so sure itself about the artistic worth of it's products and covers it up by being really obnoxiously defensive about it.

I wish that the collective/average response was closer to- "Art's a really difficult concept to define, guy. I don't think you've played enough games to know, really. How can something that a group of artists labor at for years not qualify?"

[credit to Jerry Holkins for that last bit]

Long-winded articles like the one I read recently in Game Informer, and trotting out a bunch of specific examples just implies that his argument's valid enough to need serious defense. (I don't think it is, but I will say that there are plenty of things that most games could/should do better... mark of a young medium with room to grow that I can even say that. No one says movies need to work on becoming more interactive, heh.)

I hope the trade off for all the validation of the counter-argument is that present and future developers get further fired up into experimenting with what a game can be.

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I mean, I've been hooked before. Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Ico, Portal, Shadow of the Colossus. All great games that told good stories or provided great experiences. But a lot of the time that resonance comes from cutscenes. I haven't played a game yet that does away with every single moment of cutscene. No cutscene. Ever. Even Portal had two (the very opening and the very end), and it's as close as games have ever come to being 100% free.

I'm only bumping this thread after I listened to Ron Gilbert's interview posted this week where he concedes that Ebert is most likely still spot on.

I tentatively had a similar position in my head but didn't post about it here as as I assumed most gamers wouldn't. I'm relieved Kroms has pretty much the same position as me, IE:

Games have the potential to be a great artform, but unfortunately they're still not there yet. I reckon they will asymptotically get closer to it, but there's something to the notion that interactivity itself introduces a 'toy-like' way of approaching a work that makes really substantial artistic expression a lot harder.

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If you think there's potential you disagree with Ebert. Ebert stated it was impossible.

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You're reaching the same conclusion through different reasoning.

YOU: Games are not fulfilling their full potential » Games are stupid and not art.

EBERT: What the fuck is this shit? » Games are stupid and not art.

Plus Ebert chooses to be unnecessarily obnoxious with his prognostications from the grouchy old man perch, adding that they can NEVER be art because he doesn't seem to realize that people who make games actually have to create a world and the confines and the vocabulary for the player.

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I want this to die so badly. Not only die, but like never exist in the first place.

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I want this to die so badly. Not only die, but like never exist in the first place.

Let's go back to the future! Or past, and then return to the present which would then be the future because we'd be in the past. So we would be going back to the past, present and future. Sweet.

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I'm only bumping this thread after I listened to Ron Gilbert's interview posted this week where he concedes that Ebert is most likely still spot on.

I tentatively had a similar position in my head but didn't post about it here as as I assumed most gamers wouldn't. I'm relieved Kroms has pretty much the same position as me, IE:

Games have the potential to be a great artform, but unfortunately they're still not there yet. I reckon they will asymptotically get closer to it, but there's something to the notion that interactivity itself introduces a 'toy-like' way of approaching a work that makes really substantial artistic expression a lot harder.

Apologies for getting sucked in again...

This "interactivity gets in the way of great art" argument is hogwash. I don't think anyone can credibly argue that Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, whatever didn't create great art, but composing a piece of music is only part of the equation; any of the great classical compositions can result in something horrid if performed by a poor violinist, pianist etc. Generally speaking, we can consider the artistic merits of a composition separately from the creative choices and technical ability exhibited by someone who plays that composition. And what do you do with games? You play 'em.

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It really isn't, though. Music has an indescribable quality that seems to be universal to all of us. Although play has always been a part of us, of culture, it's not remotely similar.

We don't need to draw parallels. Games can stand on their own. Arguing about whether they are art or not, sounds to me like desperate screams for legitimacy.

edit: I made an edit

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Arguing about it sounds to me like desperate screams for legitimacy.

This is true to some extent, but legitimacy or lack thereof can have a tangible effect on who ends up making games. Kids in high school, for instance, who decide to make indie games versus the ones who are bound for Juliard (or wherever) might be the same kids and guess which is going to get more support from parents/guidance councilors etc. due to "legitimacy".

That has got to have some effect on the kinds of games we'll see in the future.

To the extent that you care about that, you should care about legitimacy.

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It really isn't, though. Music has an indescribable quality that seems to be universal to all of us. Although play has always been a part of us, of culture, it's not remotely similar.
Music is definitely not universal. Since the early 20th century it's been a constant shuffle of clashing genre's and generations. I'll preemptively edit myself, and not go down this rabbit hole, but the diversity of the art form, and what is beautiful rather than "noise" is always up for debate.

I was saying it's the best, in contrast to movies, in which most people seem to make it, but it's not a natural fit. If you drop all the baggage of thinking about how games are like movies, and the way they are more successful as art is by becoming more like movies, and look at their musical qualities a lot of the arguments from people like Ebert just go away.

Music is interpretive and interactive. There's an overarching design to it's sound, but the execution is crucial. People don't go to listen to famous classical musicians because they are able to hit the musical notes with robotic precision.

A great deal of music is made primarily for enjoyment, and has huge commercial influences. It drives culture, and is sometimes embarrassing, but is able to excel because of the places people are not afraid to go to.

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You know what is art? Art is art is art, and if you call art art, you might as well be calling a spade a spade, or calling a spade an art. or perhaps an artistic spade inside an artistic urn.

Stop looking at me like that.

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Music is definitely not universal. Since the early 20th century it's been a constant shuffle of clashing genre's and generations. I'll preemptively edit myself, and not go down this rabbit hole, but the diversity of the art form, and what is beautiful rather than "noise" is always up for debate.

You are arguing something completely different to the point I was making. Music has been a part of every human culture, which is why it is a universal. If you notice, play is on there as well.

Trying to argue that movies are art by drawing parallels to music would be equally as useless.

To the extent that you care about that, you should care about legitimacy.

That's a rather odd hypothetical. Not sure what to say to that, besides that I don't agree with that premise.

You know what is art? Art is art is art, and if you call art art, you might as well be calling a spade a spade, or calling a spade an art. or perhaps an artistic spade inside an artistic urn.

Stop looking at me like that.

But, Snoogs, is it ert?

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Brian Moriarty apologizes for Ebert

There's something about GDC that ensures this debate will be a more reliable annual franchise than Call of Duty.

I find that he really starts getting off topic in the bottom half, but in general I think his point can be summed up as:

Game's aren't art, because:

1) Games have been around for centuries. There's nothing special about video games. (except they are)

2) Games are pop-art or "kitsch". And while that's a fair assessment of the industry, I fail to see why movies are able to escape the realities of corporate investment and politics to create art, but games are doomed. In the end it's just another meaningless sub-classification that shouldn't exempt something from being "art".

3) This 19th century philosopher/professional dick would patronize you if you asked him if games were art.

There's a lot of hair splitting and labeling going on, that's really not that interesting. Who cares what one person declares meaningful or beautiful. But I think I've come to an understanding where some of the disdain for mechanics and choice comes from the Ebert camp:

Some people admire the elegance of math equations, too, but nobody confuses mathematics with great art. They're different categories of human activity.

This small paragraph sums up some left-brain right-brain bullshit that only people who were bad at high-school math believe. The idea that there are two diverging paths of human excellence. Either you're talented with mechanics and figures, or you're an artist with a critical eye and insight.

left-brain-vs-right-brain-25745-1298568348-10.jpg

Bullshit. Anybody who's made it through a few semesters of university in a math or science degree can tell you that it requires critical thinking, insight and creativity. Even the most basic formulas taught in high school math classes were once inspired leaps of logic. To say there's nothing artful about mathematics shows ignorance of mathematics. Math is about questions, problems, solutions and unknowns.

If you don't know anything about history, religion or artistic periods, you don't really appreciate the depth of a lot of classic art. But if you don't know the history of Chaos Theory, the mandelbrot set is just a pretty picture.

To me code is art. Even without a graphical component, or user interface, the code behind almost every game out there is artistic to me. There are extremely clever people finding ingenious solutions to unique problems, and some of it is just awe inspiring. And while that may be covered by the art + art + art = not art debate, I still think that coding is the driving force in any software project. If you don't understand programming and the technical challenges behind a game, you're missing out on a huge piece of the picture.

One other argument that Ebert and others have repeated, is that while people may offer up token indie games as artistically credible, they are not able to give an example of a game that could rival the classics in any other medium. And it's easy to shy away from that, and claim we've only had a few decades to get the technology to a point that it's possible. But screw it, I think there are a ton of examples. So here's my champion: World of Warcraft.

It's a game that is literally interpreted a million different ways by millions of different people. It's formed friendships, inspired murder, saved and broken marriages. It's brilliant social engineering, and elegant technological design. It may be difficult to come up with an example of a game that directly competes with Shakespere, Bach or Monet, but can you honestly tell me any movie, book or painting that compares directly to WoW?

I'm sorry for bumping this again :/

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