The late film critic Roger Ebert once wrote:
Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say “never,” because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.
I have always seen this as a man from an older generation failing to grasp new forms of media, expression, and art. As great a film critic as Ebert was, he completely and utterly missed the point with this oft-quoted statement. There’s an endless list of games – large triple A and smaller, independent titles alike – that I would most definitely consider art and that will, in the future, end up in museums and art teachers’ classes.
I normally don’t really care what other people think, but I was reminded of this statement these past few weeks as I played through To The Moon, the critically acclaimed 2011 indie RPG from FreeBirdGames. The game tells the tale of two people aiding in granting a dying old man his last wish – to go to the moon. The game is relatively short – between 4 and 5 hours – but in that relatively short runtime, its creators manage to tell a moving, endearing, funny, emotional, and ultimately beautiful story that rivals – and, in my view, rises above – some of the best films and books ever created.
To The Moon is available on Steam, GOG, and even Origin, and I highly suggest you play it. If it doesn’t fit your budget or you only want the story, I uploaded my experience with To The Moon for all to see. Even if you have no interest in video games, I would still strongly suggest experiencing this uniquely beautiful work of art.
I loved to the moon, but never loved it for the “art aspect” of it, just because of its narrative (which a lot of people might consider art).
But one game i played (and absolutely) and consider a REAL piece of art is Kentucky Route Zero.
http://kentuckyroutezero.com/
Seriously it has the aesthetics of art and still manages to tell a story (albeit one that isn’t really coherent and is very subjective oriented!)
I urge anyone to try it. At least try the free demos to get a glimpse of what games and art could mean!
Edited 2015-01-15 18:40 UTC
I think you are missing the point. Is literature an art? Is prose art? Then this story is art too. Another issue is if you like it as much as other artistic expressions in the form of literature.
BTW, haven’t heard of the game before, must give it a try.
Try this…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loom_%28video_game%29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNUMV-Rb38
http://store.steampowered.com/app/32340/
I came here to mention Kentucky Route Zero myself, nice to see someone thinking along the same line.
Okay… While I did indeed loved To the Moon, and I do recommend it to anyone interested in it… with all honesty it wasn’t much of a game more then a story, that you could kind of sort of interact with, but you could not change its outcome in any meaningful way.
So was it art? Yes it was. Was it a video game? Well it was more interactive than an animated movie, but not much. So one could argue, that this is not really the best counterexample for R. E.’s statement. d:
Since when has that been the definition of a game? Most games that I’ve played with a storyline have not allowed the player to change the overall story.
I find this urge to define the current crop of very story/aesthetic driven indie games as “not games” very odd. I’ve read numerous people saying the same thing about Gone Home, which seemed to obviously be a game to me. Were the text adventure and point and click adventure games I played as a kid not games? Was Myst not a game? Is Call of Face Shooter Advanced Blood Splatter edition the only thing that counts as a game now? Inquiring minds want to know!
I haven’t played To The Moon yet, but I have it my Steam library, and will have to move it up the to-play list. Thanks for reminding me about it, Thom!
Hi,
To me, it’s not a black or white thing – it’s a scale with “0% interactive” at one end and “100% interactive” at the other end.
Movies are 0% interactive. To keep people entertained they have to rely on story telling.
For “100% interactive” games (Tetris, Minecraft) it’s the opposite – a story isn’t necessary at all. For these there often isn’t any plot, or the plot is just a flimsy excuse (e.g. 1 sentence that you can ignore completely, like “You’re a guy that got abandoned on a beach”).
Something like Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto, where it’s mostly interactive but there are multiple stories, is probably about 90% interactive.
What if you have a 60 minute long piece of video footage, followed by a single “yes or no” choice, followed by (one of 2) 10 minute long piece of video footage and the ending? In that case it’d be 0.0001% interactive.
At which point does something cease being a movie and start being a game? Is everything below “50% interactive” a movie?
My opinion is that we need a third classification: interactive movie. 0% interactive would be a movie; anything between 0% interactive and 50% interactive would be an interactive movie; and anything above 50% would be game.
– Brendan
The problem is not with the interaction but with the idea that the story isn’t changed by interaction. And in a lot of games, the story simply isn’t changed by interaction.
CruelAngel’s Thesis* that To The Moon can’t be considered a game if the story can’t be changed simply doesn’t hold for the majority of games.
My personal favourite adventure type games are The Longest Journey series and people very much considered them games at the time despite the story of both of the completely being unchanged by the interaction.
Hell, you can’t even change the story of Halo. Most FPS would be considered interactive action movies by that criteria.
Hi,
I’m not agreeing with or disagreeing with CruelAngel. I haven’t looked at To The Moon and have no idea how interactive it is/isn’t (or whether it’d fall into my “interactive movie” category or not).
Note that a story is not (e.g.) “A hobbit goes on a long journey and throws a ring in some lava” – that’s just a synopsis. A story is much longer and contains many tiny details. Something can be very interactive if many of those tiny details can be changed, even if the synopsis remains the same.
For Halo, many small details of the story are effected by the player’s actions – e.g. “Hero stabs enemy soldier #123 with a knife, enemy soldier #123 retaliates by attempting to shoot hero with his pistol, hero dodges and lands a fatal blow with his fist” vs. “Hero quietly creeps through jungle, notices enemy soldier #123 in the distance, and kills enemy soldier #123 with a head-shot from a sniper’s rifle from a distance of 1.2 km away“.
– Brendan
Again, no one is doubting that it’s interactive.
The argument is that a story that doesn’t change much in response to interactivity is not a game.
Yes, small details of the story are changed by the interaction. But the story itself has not changed. The story is not the synopsis, but neither is it the other extreme where the story is every little thing that happens.
Unless how soldier #123 is killed actually affects later game choices, then by definition it did not matter to the story other than the fact that it was killed. And most game stories simply aren’t affected by AI character deaths, especially not how they were killed.
Hi,
That’s like saying “A hobbit goes on a long journey and throws a ring in some lava, and all the stuff that happens on the way is irrelevant to the story“, and assuming that J. R. R. Tolkien must’ve decided to fill 3 entire volumes with this story simply because he was being paid by the word.
– Brendan
No it’s not. Like I said, the synopsis is not the story, but neither is the story every single detail. You may like to read what I wrote again, since you seem to have missed a large chunk of it.
… showing that even a game built with a generic RPG Maker engine can be something worth enjoying, demonstrating the importance of strong character development in science fiction, and proving that music is and always will be more important than graphics in story driven works.
If people think that the mere presence of audience interaction precludes something from being art (and make no mistake that was ultimately Ebert’s point) then neither can improvisational theater, live comedy, or a host of plays that involve (at some level) audience participation. It’s stupid on its face, but considering all the crap games out there, and that Ebert was not a gamer, he might just have had a distorted view of what video games really are.
It’s been scientifically proven that music sets the mood.
Which is really important for enjoying, well anything really. It enhances it.
Why do you think popular DJs like David Guetta or TiĆĀ«sto are as popular as they are ? II mean they are ‘just’ playing records you know. š Obviously it’s not just that, they create a mood and transitions between moods.
Yeah, in my opinion interaction with the audience is just another dimension which can be used to create art. Several modern art works in museums specifically focus on user interaction to prove a point or trigger a feeling. Video games are no different.
Also, it’s not because something isn’t “art”, that it’s suddenly inferior. Personally I think the whole what-is-art-and-what-is-not discussion is a way to feel good about oneself, and more cynically, to feel better than others. It’s even more stupid when it’s about classifying a whole category rather than specific works. Everyone has a different opinion about what he feels is art. Sometimes we’ll agree, sometimes we won’t. Who cares, just enjoy it!
So you also missed the pointed of Ebert’s comment, especially if you read the second half of what you quoted.
The games run on the systems we have today. Will they continue to run on systems in 25/50/75/100/150/200/500/1000 years time?
Not likely.
Will the stories told by the games survive that long? Again, not likely.
Will the artwork in the games survive that long? Again, not likely.
Why is this?
Because digital lock the data into representations and formats known by the hardware and software of today. How many programs from a PDP-11 would run on computers today?
How many computers can run the original Pong game?
We already see what Ebert was talking about. It’s not that the game itself might not qualify in those respects as art today, but they won’t be available for anyone to review in most any form even 25 years from now because the hardware and software won’t likely be able read, view, or render it.
Yes, some file formats may not be as big an issue, but then how many file formats we use today also were used 50 years ago? How many of them can we expect to be around in another 50 years?
Answer those questions, and you’ll understand Ebert’s comment.
All of them?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMH
Virtually ever computer even remotely popular is emulatable today, and in many cases, the source code is available all over the web.
I don’t think you are on the mark here.
Edited 2015-01-15 19:07 UTC
Exactly, archive.org made it even easier, just visit a webpage and play Price of Persia in DOSBOX in the browser:
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Prince_of_Persia_1990
I found out about it, because OSNews had a post about it:
http://www.osnews.com/story/28166/Each_new_boot_a_miracle
Now I don’t know if webbrowsers will remain, but it’s the most likely because it’s cross platform.
Edited 2015-01-15 19:30 UTC
Two issues – (i) simulations/emulations are not perfect, especially those based on reverse engineering, and (ii) many computers were not “popular”.
There is already a lot of digital work that is unavailable any longer since even if the system was emulated the media it is stored on (mercury drums, tapes, cards, etc) are no longer readable. So those that were not transferred to a newer medium at the right times are no longer transferable.
But what you (and most everyone) seems to be missing concerning my point, is that the digital realm has an unnaturally early destruction point which artificially limits how long the artform can be experience.
what you are saying applies to all recorded art, more than that, live music is always the interpretation by the artist, even the writer plays it differently time to time.
Art is not something you cannot interact with.
Does that mean the games will stop being art, though? Does a book stop being art if it’s transformed into an e-book? Does a book stop being art if no one can read the language?
Me, I do not have any good definition for what is art, but if books can still be considered art even when they change forms or even when they can’t be read, then I do not see any reason for why games can’t be, too.
Well, to use your example, a book that can’t be read can still be viewed, felt, and experienced in a way. You can see the art even if you can’t understand it.
On the other hand, if for whatever reason you can no longer run and play a game (be that from obsolete hardware, copyright restrictions, or any other reason) then you cannot experience it at all. This, I think, is the key difference between a book in a forgotten language and a computer program.
Now, I’m not saying that games and software are not works of art, far from it and I think anyone who knows the least about the processes involved would agree that games and other software are an extremely complex form of art. However, it runs the risk of being a less enduring form of artwork and, once it can no longer be run, is likely to fade into obscurity as opposed to more permanent renditions. Artwork that is exclusively digital is inevitably less permanent than that which is portrayed in a physical medium.
The same can be said about paintings and literature. Most are private. Those that aren’t are mostly locked up in obscure places. Some are burnt and damaged, others are stolen or simply thrown away. Heh, a lot of art constructions are disassembled after a while. It’s only a tiny fraction that survives over time.
As for old video games, I know there are computer museums that keep that stuff around.
There’s also the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/classicpcgames
But yes, I do agree that DRM poses a threat.
Edited 2015-01-15 19:26 UTC
If we take your claim to its ultimate consequence then film is also not a form of art, which I doubt is something Ebert would have agreed with.
So you may be missing the point just like everybody else.
This is the thing; art is just a subjective concept that more often than not escapes objective definition. What you consider art, others will consider nonsense, and vice versa. Ebert, like everybody else, was a product of the time and place that defined his context. As such, many people make the mistake of assuming that context is the only context. When photography first came out, plenty of painters dismissed it as not being art. When movies first appeared, plenty of photographers claimed moving pictures to not being art. And on and on. I’m sure in the future when something new comes along that supersedes gaming, plenty of old gamers will claim how that new thing, unlike gaming, is not art. And the cycle of missing the point that is human history will continue churning…
The argument is nonsense. Did the original Star Wars trilogy cease being art because Lucas has tried to destroy it? If Hollywood successfully creates a DRM future of perpetual copyright, where older content simply is not allowed to be played, does it cease being art? Is an improvisational performance that is not recorded art?
Was Star Wars even “art” to begin with?
Pigments fade and varnish yellows. That means paintings do not last and we can not consider them art.
They may fade and yellow, but they can still be viewed and experienced until they are destroyed.
The issue with digital media is that the lifetime technologically limited by the existence of other things to be able to continue viewing and experiencing it. So the “destruction” comes unnaturally early compared to other art mediums.
Which is precisely the same for video games.
Where do we draw the line for what’s “early” or “quick”? Does it have to last for 100 years before it can be considered art? 5 days?
Considering that we have things such as emulation that’s not at all unlikely.
This also disqualifies music since it is not uncommon for artists to only release on digital media and with the increased use of digital movie projectors and digital cameras I guess movies are out too. Oh, and books are out due to ebooks.
Well, this also disqualifies most of what is considered “art” really.
Using emulation; all of them.
How many movie theaters can show the original “From earth to the moon”? Not many, if any at all.
Of course video games can be art, it’s nonsense to say otherwise.
As much as I respect Ebert as pretty much the only movie critic worth paying attention to, in this case he was completely wrong.
Edited 2015-01-16 02:42 UTC
Isn’t that what makes it really art? That you need to experience it? You can read about the gameplay, but you need to experience it to truly appreciate.
Any good computer game is art. Not just in graphics and music, but in storytelling or roleplaying or whatever other aspects. This critic better should keep his mouth shut if he doesn’t want to sound like a complete fool.
Edited 2015-01-15 20:10 UTC
If you believe Leo Tolstoy (you should), art is more than just esthetics.
But games communicates emotion, which may be enough, for some definitions of art.
Who cares. Gaming is fun and pleasing.
Games convey way more than aesthetics. I really can’t understand why would film critic consider games to be less art than films? If anything games can coney way more, since unlike films with static storyline games can branch stories, simulate consequences of choice for the player and so on. I.e. they have way deeper art potential.
My only guess is – he has no clue what he is talking about, i.e. he didn’t play any games himself.
Edited 2015-01-15 20:20 UTC
Not because he’s right (he isn’t), but because I don’t think many games are art, certainly very few AAA games. They have artistic aspects, of course, like imagery, music and a narrative, but I think that to qualify as art, the game mechanics themselves (i.e. the game as game) must convey a form of ostranenie, it must make you see things in a new way. Very few games or Hollywood movies do, they just uphold genre conventions and entertain. But I’d say that Braid, with its manipulation of time, does. Perhaps also Portal.
Games like the GTA series are filled with artistic content, but it’s there as radio and cut scenes, and architecture, not as gaming as such. But it’s not like it doesn’t have potential. If an epic RPG like the Elder Scrolls games were to have a narrative that wasn’t laden with clichĆĀ©, and characters that had something to them at all, then I think the genre has some artistic potential.
Most paintings aren’t art, yet painting itself is considered an art. The issue is not whether certain games can be considered art, but whether games CAN be considered as art.
Yes, but hypotheticals aren’t all that interesting in themselves. And now that there are a few zillion computer games on the market, we have some available data: games aren’t art[1].
—
[1] Except maybe Braid.
Then neither is music. 99% of all music is shit. Ask anyone.
Pop music (and pop culture at large) is for the most part nothing but management of clichĆĀ©s. But even if the 99% figure were true, you’d still have a sufficient number of exceptions.
That’s just not a good way of defining what art is whichever way you look at it.
Somewhat true. Pulp Fiction may be art simply because it manages clichĆĀ©s so well. It puts them on display, makes them strange. But like in music, it’s a rare occurence. It’s mostly about copying.
Sure, good ones which are true works of art are a minority, but are games unique in that? As always, there can be true masterpieces and some mass market junk. You can find it anywhere, from books and music to films and games. So I don’t see why games should be singled out here.
The real issue at hand is, who is the arbiter of what art is? Can you take your trash at the end of the week and throw it in a museum installation and call it art?
Is it the museum itself that declares it to be art, by putting it inside and accepting it?
Is it the artist that declares it to be art, by asking the museum to display it?
Or is it not art, regardless of what either the artist or museam say, due to some platonic ideal of what art is?
I tend to agree with Roger which would be the third answer to my scenario, video games are not a form that easily lends itself to becoming art. He wasn’t acting as a gatekeeper, but as a critic, a messenger of a higher truth.
/crazy post end
Further reading:
My little rant was kind of on the right path for a liberal arts guy that hasn’t had formal art education in the past 15 years, but this is a much better discussion of the topic:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/art-definition/
Shadow of the Beast – 3 .. seriously. 9 levels of parallax scrolling and they managed to mix in 30+fps animations at the same time.
Turrican 2 on C64. Bow to the presence that is Mandred Trenz.
And yes.. I still have a pdp-11 running ‘just in case’.
A technical accomplishment isn’t the same as art.
That is completely subjective.
To me these technical accomplishments are art as well:
* The beautiful design of architects and engineers.
* Incredible design of modern microprocessors.
* The artistic ways developers in the 70s and 80s used to put a full blown game in 16k of RAM.
* The design of some programming languages.
* The way some people solve problems using template meta-programming in c++.
* The way low frequency oscillators and wave generators (a.k.a. analogue synthesizers) were used to create beautiful music
* The graphics in LIMBO.
* The win32 API.
* The C++ standard library
* Java Swing
etc. etc.
No, it’s not. While you’re free to make up your own interpretation of words, you’re still just using them wrong. Language is communal, and thus very far from being completely subjective. You’re just insisting on using language in your own wankerish way.
It is, go look it up in a dictionary.
I’ll even link it for you: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/art
[1] is a match as beauty is subjective. You may want to click on the word ‘beauty’ and read description [1.1] there.
[4] is also definitely a match
Perhaps it’s better if you stop making stuff up.
[1] is not a match, as none of your examples are “producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power”, and [4] is a different usage of the word entirely: very few types of skilled work (art) make works of art [1], which is what we’re discussing here.
So yes, you’re wrong, which you kindly demonstrated yourself.
I’m not sure about you but I do appreciate a nicely crafted programming language or game. And I appreciate it primarily for its beauty. Why else would I appreciate it? For its usefulness? Because it’s a tool? Do you appreciate a screwdriver too?
Let’s assume you do, then your logic is a bit shaky as well. Example:
Object A: scores 10/10 in usefulness, 9/10 in beauty.
Object B: scores 0/10 in usefulness, 8/10 in beauty.
I find object A definitely more beautiful than B but because A is appreciated more for its usefulness than for its beauty, it’s not a work of art, yet B is?
This whole argument proves my point: it’s all subjective, and nobody is distorting a definition because the definition is incredibly vague to begin with.
Nah, you’re just trying to bullshit your way through life. You know you’re wrong, and just keep harping on the same old, tired shit.
To make it perfectly clear: I neither believe in your argument, nor in your effort to make an argument.
Edited 2015-01-17 01:38 UTC
The lack of beauty in Java Swing is not subjective. Nor is it up for debate. Its ugly as hell, when viewed from any perspective.
A lot of people tells me the same thing about the win32 api, but, as far as I know; no other library has been backwards compatible at API and ABI level for so many years.
About Java Swing, the way they implemented the MVC architectural pattern is incredibly beautiful (making the model pluggable and highly configurable), the pluggable look’n’feel stuff, the layouts engine, the AWT event model and so on.
Ok, its poor performance compared with native frameworks, some “not-too-native” feeling and its verbosity are their weak points, but the machinery working behind the scenes is actually “artistic”
Edited 2015-01-16 16:47 UTC
I don’t think we will agree, but that’s not to say that I agree to disagree.
š
Ohhh.. careful there. You’re stomping all over the whole demoscene!
Actually.. how about the demoscene competitions where “Games” Are a category?
Hopefully the thought and debate on this one muddies the waters even more! Heh!
Demos can be art but it’s not because of technical accomplishments.
and..uh…the demo scene still exist?
When I was a teenager I was heavily into arguments what considered to be art, but I had to learn that I do not care anymore. If we look at pieces of art like 3’44” or My Bed, we can understand that we should look past on simple definitions.
In the end I would take Pac-man any day over of the paintings Picasso, it evokes more feeling and I can appreciate it more, and I argue that if computer games will exist in a 1000 years, Pac-man will be still appreciated.
Yeah, I know I am just a single men, but who cares what say others? Should people listen to Bieber because he is popular or Mozart because we are told to? Should we value certain art forms over others?
Though we like to think in hierarchical orders or we can think about relativism, in its purist form both are bad things. We shouldn’t put classical music over folk songs, or vice versa, and we should understand that people can appreciate the looks of a jetfighter or the way it flies as much as opus no423, they both evoke feelings the same way. Games fall in the same category. They are art, heck, if they weren’t people wouldn’t be interested in 30 year old games.
Of course, it is not just computer games. How could one argue that Monopoly is not art? Or Risk?
After all the hype, last year I did something I rarely do: I played the video game “To the Moon”. And in my opinion there is absolutely no chance it comes even remotely close to being comparable to the literary or cinematic classics. It’s like you’re comparing the children’s game “hopscotch” to the Olympic long jump because they both have something to do with leaping in the air while other people watch you. Sure they do, but that’s not the point.
Braid.
But since it’s about video games and I just stumbled across this.
Remember Thom when you cried about how the app store model is killing the app market and you talked about how people were complaining about the monument valley update costing money? Well here you go from the horse’s mouth.
http://blog.monumentvalleygame.com/blog/2015/1/15/monument-valley-i…
They made 5.8 million from the game, 81% of it from iOS sales. Poor guys.
Just curious, but what are these best films and books?
Wing Commander is Art, and Roger Ebert has no idea what he is talking about.
Nobody really gives a sh!t what some douchebag critic thinks of video games. As someone once said, movie critics are usually failed movie directors, so what the f*ck do THEY know?!?