My response to: Roger Ebert: Video Games Can Never Be Art
My respect for Roger Ebert is immense. As an insightful critic and eloquent observer of cultural philosophy he has almost no equal. But, he never got video games. At all. He went as far to say that he'd never seen a "video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it."
Those would be fighting words enough for any avid gamer but Ebert goes on to conclude that even in principle he believed no video game can ever be or ever will be considered art. I'll grant Ebert a pass on being a clueless curmudgeon about a medium he didn't understand but can't
Most of his argument is spent quibbling about the definition of art, an easy, if not fruitless, thing to try to do. If you say that "Art is deliberate arrangement of elements or performance that evokes feelings or thought from its audience", you'd be right. However, someone could then argue that throwing poop on a wall is deliberate and evokes feelings, so your definition would require that you call it art.
I'd agree with the above definition but revise it to say "Art is the deliberate arrangement of elements or performance intended to elevate, broaden or deepen the feelings or thoughts of the audience." A beautiful renaissance painting can do that by radiating the sublime light of heaven or the tranquil grace of a shepherdess in the fields. Likewise, postmodern art like Johnson Tsang's "Inner Child" series or Karma II is sometimes cute, terrifying or ugly but exposes psychological or geopolitical truths. Art doesn't have to be beautiful or sublime as long as it provokes insight and meaning.
So, really the question is: Can video games offer new windows of human insight or meaning?
The other part of his argument leans too much on a child's definition of "game", an idle recreation that involves arbitrary rules, has an end goal and results in winners and losers. He implies that any of these mechanics amount to trivial pursuits that disqualify a work as art. He goes on to point out examples held up as "video game art" that would be just as artistic without the gameplay but would only qualify as mediocre art, nonetheless. In other words (if he knew the lingo), "The best you got is cut scenes which pieced together might make a half-assed film."
This point revolves around the question: Can interaction, user actions and branching story lines be integral to this new, eleged art form? Or, is the "game" just a cheap scaffold on which to hang scraps of art?
If Ebert was alive today, I'd suggest he level these same criticisms against film itself as a way of understanding how video games can transcend this criticism.
First, let's look at interaction. Read any review of a powerful or exciting movie and you'll read accounts of audience reactions. Were there screams in a suspense film? Did people "grab ahold of their seats" in an action film? Did people cling onto their partner's arm, hide their eyes and jump in a horror film? Was there laughter? Were there any "dry eyes in the house" after a tragedy?
Not only do video games generate all of those reactions, they are able to go one step further and allow the audience's reactions to have consequences to the story. Is there any way that replacing passive reaction with interaction provides less insight into the character and circumstances of the story? Is it better to passively watch Ridley in Alien experience fear and learn steely resolve and feminine toughness or to face those fears yourself and learn how to control your emotions to overcome the ultimate predator yourself?
Movies, too, abound with inherent rules, preset goals and result in winners and losers. The only difference is that the audience experiences those "game mechanics" linearly, with one outcome. Gamers would say a movie is one long cut scene experienced "on a rail" with no chance to influence the outcome or get more deeply involved. However, Ebert would say that the writer/director's choices of what to show you and where the story leads distinguish it as art. This implies that giving the viewer any choice weakens the art. That's hogwash. Many of movies Ebert considers the most artful are rife with choices. In "Rear Window", Hitchcock plays with audience focus and attention (as he does in many of his other movies), showing you dialog or action in the foreground while something dangerous or diabolical is happening elsewhere. The camera framing and focus is saying "look here" while the audience learns to "look there" instead. If "telling you where to look" makes film an art, then I guess a 20 foot baroque painting is just a crude video game requiring that I "pan and zoom" my attention from this cherub's sight line to this rabbit under the chariot wheel to the rose in the warrior's sleeve symbolizing a valiant heart and just cause.
In the same way, while a "low art" film made for mere entertainment attempts to "tidy up all the loose ends" before the credits roll, a "high art" film might leave room for interpretation, allowing you to fill in the blanks and imagine the ultimate fate of its protagonists. Games, too, can allow that ambiguity but also allow exploring alternate paths at multiple times throughout the story. If each of these paths is a deliberate story-telling choice by the author of the game, how could such a game be any less insightful about the nature of fate or moral choices or character than a film that typically only offers one choice, "What do you think happened next?"
One of the most poignant scenes in video games (a Sophie's Choice, if you will) is in a puzzle game, Portal, where you acquire a "Companion Cube" with an endearing heart on its side to protect and accompany through some challenges. At the end of the level, you are informed that you must toss the cube in an incinerator in order to continue your escape from the torturous maze.
