So I wrote this short little thing on Games as Art (Late to the Party)

[Magus]

I'm probably about a month late on this, but I was thinking about this in the shower this morning (do not ask me why, I can't even figure out why). If this would do better in a different forum from the games forum, mods, please move it where you think appropriate. Anyway, a story I heard on NPR a while ago came to my mind, combined with something about Which Way™books, so here goes:

----------------------

Roger Ebert has argued against video games as art, citing the interactive choices of the player altering the experience as rendering it “not art”. Despite the fact that everyone working on the project is an artist (be they a graphic designer, script writer, director, scenario director, etc.), the final culminated piece is “not art” because the player’s own choices affect the experience and “alter” it in unique ways.

Roger Ebert may have a problem with his definition of art, based on this recent exhibit at the Guggenheim:

Link

…After loading up on vicarious thrill, the “participant,” as Sehgal labels each visitor, works his or her way up the first ramp, only to be greeted by a skipping, meditative, or intimidatingly precocious child, who introduces himself, the artist, and a rather grown-up question.

The little “tour guide,” Aidan is a quiet, but nonetheless daunting eight-year-old. Suddenly, he asks a question: “What is progress?” Replaying the query in my head, I hear an eerily adult voice emerging from his miniature mouth. I was struck by the thought-provoking question at a relatively unexpected time and place.

Halfway through my somewhat uninspired answer about “moving forward,” I thought to myself, “I am having a conversation about progress with an eight-year-old.” The shock factor was there, and yet it felt oddly stimulating and comfortable.

Soon, after Aidan and I had walked and talked up and around the breathtakingly empty space for some time, we came to a stop and met up with a teenager named Bob.

Aidan and Bob were nearly identical, so I immediately speculated that the children would “grow up” throughout the process, lending an added layer to the concept of progress. The exhibition prompted me to engage in such hyperactive, analytical thinking from the very beginning of, at the risk of sounding cliché, my journey.

Two Columbia students involved in the teenage group and enrolled in Higonnet’s class say that many visitors are initially uncertain. Rachel Solomon, CC ‘12, described some participants as “disoriented” or “confused,” while Danielle Dillon, BC ‘12, characterized them as “nervous.”

I undeniably fell in that category, as I was grasping for ideas to reconcile what was happening with what I expected of art. I soon learned, however, to expel all preconceived notions and just enjoy the invigoration that comes with talking to various intelligent, open, and unique people...

Emphasis added.

A visitor enters the museum, gives an impromptu answer to a child’s question, this child “actor” must then improvise a response based on that visitor’s unique answer, and then they move on through three more such experiences before leaving. If a person were to return and give a different answer, the experience would be different. Even if they gave the exact same answer a week down the road, the experience would be different. This exhibit is considered art despite the visitor’s interaction with it altering the experience significantly every time.

What is being done here is precisely what many modern video games do: create a work of art which the player then interacts with, altering the experience based on their own choices.

Another fundamental argument of Ebert’s is that video games are not art because they rules. This is true: even the most “open world” games such as GTA IV have rules based on physics, geography, and so on. You can’t walk through walls, if you run you car head on into a concrete pylon at 60 miles per hour you will be ejected through the windshield, and so forth. GTA has many of the “rules” of real life forced upon the player, whereas other games may have rules that are fantastical (ability to fly, etc.), but they are all pre-decided by the creators and your possible interactions with them are often pre-surmised by the creators. Games are more linear and stringent than we think: even though a particular experience may have been randomly generated by a computer algorithm interacting with your choices, it stands to reason that you won’t be able to do anything that is out of line with the basic “rules” the game creator has come up with, nor will you be able to advance in the plot the creator has designed for you to go through except through the channels they have decided (if it is possible to do this, the game is considered “broken”, i.e., you’ve done something the creators didn’t intend for, an element they overlooked that allows you to do this. It’s not something you’re supposed to be able to do). So even within what are supposedly your “choices”, the creators have often thought them out ahead of time and accounted for them in crafting their game. As gamers, we have less choices than we think.

Art, according to Ebert, does not have “rules” and an end objective to “beat” the game, besides the interactivity (which we must now ignore because of the Guggenheim exhibit). However, this brings to mind what are alternatively called Choose Your Own Adventure™, Which Way™, etc. books, which have multiple endings based on your choices. There is no particular way to “beat” a Which Way™ book. You make predefined choices and follow predefined plot lines to their conclusion, an ending, which may be “good” with your character achieving some good feat, or “bad”, with your character dying. There are clear “rules” to these books: when you reach an ending, you’re supposed to start over from the beginning and make different choices.

However, most of us “broke” these “rules” by leaving our finger in the page where we ran into the choice, just in case our decision led to us falling down in a pit and dying or being eaten by giant ants or whatever the case may be (these books ran through pretty much every genre of adventure fiction ever devised). We would then backtrack and attempt to get to a “good” ending, which had our character having a happy ending. In fact, some of these books told you to go back to an earlier page, as opposed to making you start over (a difference in the “rules” of each book). Would Ebert define these books as “art”? I believe he would have to. And what are video games but massively complex Which Way™ books with a hundred choices for each situation?

Games are similar to this. We can “backtrack” and make new choices which lead to achieving the objective of a “mission”. However with most games this objective is now to get to the end of the story (often a fairly linear path, as well). In GTA IV you may “beat” each mission (which are analogous to “complications” in the arc of a book or movie), but the end “goal” to “beat” the game is to get to the ending, to see the entire plot. And this ending is predefined by the creators, you have no say in it. So if it is a sad or bittersweet ending that comes at the end of the plot of numerous games (Max Payne 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, Shadow of the Colossus), we as the players have no say in making it a “good” ending. You can play through it as many times as you want and it will still not be a “good” ending, if we define this as a happy ending, you will simply get the ending. Even the complications are often far more choreographed than we think. The earlier example of the Max Payne series comes to mind, with heavily choreographed gun battles which are not quite as “random” or “interactive” as we the player think they are. And all games have set pieces, which are often described as “cinematic” because you are kept to a heavily linear path through them.

There is no real “beating” of modern games, there is only seeing the plot through to the end, much like a good movie or book. That there are challenges that we interact with to get to this ending is not a detriment to games being art, it simply makes them a different form of art, possibly even more enjoyable, depending on a person’s own tastes. That this is also interactive does not keep it from being art, as illustrated in the Guggenheim exhibit. We can argue over the quality of this art, but it does not preclude it from being art. Quite simply, games are art.

-------------------

My apologies to anyone who has already brought up Which Way™ books or even the Guggenheim exhibit in past arguments, I just now remembered hearing about that exhibit on NPR one day and this morning went "blast, that would be an incredibly good argument against Ebert's annoying 'video games are not art' statements."

[Amake]

Way to expel your preconceived notions there, Roger. Well, he seems to be trying anyway.

So what is progress? That's an interesting question I think. The word for it in Swedish means "steps forward" while etymologically I'd say it means "fore-way". Pretty much the same idea. It implies a beneficial direction. It's the nature of all living things, I suppose, to want to move on, to grow forward, upward, outward and onward through time. It can become a problem when you get too good at it though, wiz. human civilization. Just some thoughts.

[Lumenskir]

Interesting, but first a few deflations I came up with while reading.

Despite the fact that everyone working on the project is an artist (be they a graphic designer, script writer, director, scenario director, etc.)

Quite simply, games are art.

Everyone working on a movie is also an artist, but this does not mean that Epic Movie (which has writers, cinematographers, directors, etc.) is art. I'll address this just below, but while Ebert is wrong in saying that videogames cannot be art ever, taking as gospel the opposite of this thought (all videogames are art) is just as wrong, unless you stretch the definition of art to encompass any vaguely artistic endeavor, in which case everything is art and then the word doesn't mean anything.

Would Ebert define these books as “art”? I believe he would have to.

Ebert is a world-renowned movie critic, so I think it's safe to assume that he loves movies. However, when asked, even he admitted that only a few films are worthy, to him, of being called art. With that being said, I think you presenting an example of a subgenre of something he admitted is art would not cause him to overlook the shitty writing almost all Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books and call all of them art.

I think what's being lost in the kerfluffle over Ebert's words is that he's wrong about one big macro thing, but taking the complete opposite view isn't right. He contends that videogames as a medium can never be art, but I think what he's truly saying is that they can never be considered an artform, the way movies and books and music and television (and etc) can, which is undeniably wrong, but not unexpected of someone in his position. I admire and respect Ebert's views on movies, but I wouldn't say he's a great prognosticator, because no one really is. It's much too easy to look at the current present and extrapolate the future based on what you can immediately see, and when all you see is junk it's easy to assume it'll remain that way forever, especially because you can't think of a way to solve/correct it.* What's important to remember in this position is that it's not your job to fix it; It's up to future artists to figure out a way to fully utilize the medium's potential.

*A great example of this is to go back 20 or 30 years to see what people were saying about the future of television. Even David Mamet, who I consider one of the greatest writers (screen or otherwise) alive, couldn't conceive of television being anything other than a waste of time, because when you're surrounded by Three's Company-s it's hard to imagine that something like The Wire will one day come along and justify the format.

[Magus]

Three's Company is art, it's just not "high art" or "great art" or maybe even "good art". Epic Movie was also (and this pains me)...art. There was clearly some semblance of an attempt at acting within its hellish environs, or perhaps even a story. It is absolutely the trashiest of art. Hell, most things ARE art, whether it be someone's design for a car or a building or whatever, if it has any aesthetic purpose behind it (this wouldn't include anything, some things are built entirely for function, after all). If Ebert doesn't think video games are good art, he should just say so. Most of them are entirely for entertainment purposes, just like most movies which he doesn't consider art (or good art, if he doesn't want to sound wrong.)

Oh, and Queen, Ebert didn't write that article, I just bolded that part because it seemed like something Ebert should do or try to keep in mind as he relegates entire swaths of artistic endeavors to the trash bin. Someone was experiencing something new which was considered art and instead of falling back on their preconceived notions of art they were trying to keep an open mind. Everyone should do that, otherwise our urinals will never be water fountains.

[Lumenskir]

Three's Company is art, it's just not "high art" or "great art" or maybe even "good art". Epic Movie was also (and this pains me)...art. There was clearly some semblance of an attempt at acting within its hellish environs, or perhaps even a story. It is absolutely the trashiest of art. Hell, most things ARE art, whether it be someone's design for a car or a building or whatever, if it has any aesthetic purpose behind it (this wouldn't include anything, some things are built entirely for function, after all).

See, I just can't personally subscribe to this viewpoint. Movies and television and so on are artforms (mediums capable of creating art), but to say that anything that isn't a tool (or whatever "things built entirely for function" entails) is then art is just way too broad. If you have varying levels of high-->low art, why not slash a line at some point close to the 'high' mark and shunt everything below it to 'not art but entertainment'.

If Ebert doesn't think video games are good art, he should just say so. Most of them are entirely for entertainment purposes, just like most movies which he doesn't consider art (or good art, if he doesn't want to sound wrong.)

But's that not his problem; He doesn't think the entire medium is even up for consideration as an artform (as in, not capable of ever making something artistic), not just that it isn't good. Showing that someone else reconsidered art doesn't really compel Ebert to reshape his worldview, especially since the bigger problem is the fact that 99% of games, and all of the most successful ones, don't really present the medium as anything other than a mishmash of interactive elements strung together with stolen movie and novel tricks, rather than anything that employs the unique elements of videogames intrinsically to explore a theme. It's understandable that he'd assume the trend would continue, just like Mamet thought TV would never escape being disposable commercial time sucks. They're both wrong, but given the evidence, understandable.

[Magus]

why not slash a line at some point close to the 'high' mark and shunt everything below it to 'not art but entertainment'.

It makes you sound like a know-it-all, I guess. Yeah, I get it, he's a critic, it's his job to be a know-it-all and define what is good, but I don't think it's his job to define what is art. But anyway, if his position is that only good art is art then I misunderstood his basic position somewhat. But yeah, that he believes the entire medium is incapable of sustaining art seems extreme, and it seems like the kind of position you take when you don't have an open mind about what constitutes art.

As for "things that exist only for function", I don't know, tools is a good start, like a bulldozer, or anything which is not specifically designed to be aesthetically pleasant in some way. Like one guy could make a toaster and it wouldn't be art, another guy could make a toaster that looked exactly the same but he intended it to fit in with a specific decor pleasingly and be nice on the eyes and it would then be art. You can say that is too vague for categorizing things as art but I'm not sure why we need to put art in a little box. If it can range from architecture to fashion it seems pretty broad anyway, so the question is why can't Ebert include video games in his definition? Because he wants to define art as something specific when it's incredibly broad.

[Amake]

Ah, I should have known it was too much like a genuine revelation to come from Ebert. Well, as I've said before in related topics, audience participation starts when you open your mouth to share an idea, it's impossible to have a work of art that isn't experienced differently depending on who experiences it. (Or when or where or why or with whom.) Games are not different because they put a controller in your hand, they're different because Ebert says so.

Also the rules argument is crap. I'm pretty sure there's a rule against me eating the Mona Lisa, however vital that may be to my objective of experiencing the painting.*

Meanwhile I have to point out Epic Movie got a few chuckles from me. Meet the Spartans is the real bottom of the barrel of unfunny, cheap-assed, meaningless, not-even-so-bad-it's-awful-it-just-sits-there-about-as-blank-as-a-last-stage-Alzheimer-patient movies not even trying to recreate memorable scenes from other movies but settling for recreating unremarkable moments from piss-poor low budget comatose uninteresting what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-the-world-that-even-one-of-these-shows-gets-watched reality TV.

Now, I thought I'd conclude by being forced to admit that it's nonetheless art, but on reflection it might fail even the most liberal definitions. No creativity has been put into it, no will to make something new that wasn't in the world before - it doesn't have any original or even parodied characters or plot points. It's not the result of an act not immediately related to surviving or improving one's situation - it's a blatant cash grab. It doesn't make anyone proud to be human, quite the reverse. It's not an attempt to look at anything from a new perspective, or giving anyone a new perspective. The production values are so low it's questionable if even the physical effort or craft involved in making it account for anything. It's made for the a very obvious function of making the audience pay for a ticket and grunt in recognition. If they made more movies like this, maybe Ebert would question movies as a valid art form?

[Kim]

If you have varying levels of high-->low art, why not slash a line at some point close to the 'high' mark and shunt everything below it to 'not art but entertainment'.

Because what is high art is subjective. No matter how certain you are that something is low art, someone could come along with their own interpretation of it that, at least to them, makes it high art. What gives you the authority to tell them that they're wrong? You can argue whether or not it is, but ultimately it's in the eye of the beholder. I think Ebert trying to define what is or is not art is putting himself on too high a pedestal.

[Jagos]

Roger Ebert is pretty smart.

He is saying that games can't be art because " they are bound by rules, points, objectives and achievements. When rules and objectives are eliminated, "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."

I think a lot of people got a knee jerk reaction to his words. Granted, games may not be an artform right now, but it doesn't mean they can't expand into that view.

Almost every game out there gets attributed to a few specific genres. Even off the top of my head if I do think of a few special games (Guitar Hero, Chrono Trigger or even Flower) they represent a goal or objective to complete, not necessarily a story advancing the state of gaming.

Not like that's the huge thing. We still play games to enjoy them. Why do we need them defined as high art when that's not their purpose in the first place?

[Kim]

He is saying that games can't be art because " they are bound by rules, points, objectives and achievements. When rules and objectives are eliminated, "it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance a film.

This is nonsense. I could point out several of instances where the rules are what made a game art. By this backwards logic, a film is just a representation of a story. If that's the case, and that's why games can't be art, then I declare that no film is art.

I think a lot of people got a knee jerk reaction to his words.

Seeing as there's really no way to interpret his behavior other than "Roger Ebert is being a massive troll," I can't say I blame them.

games may not be an artform right now

They are.

We still play games to enjoy them.

The same can be said of any artistic medium.

Originally Posted by Jagos

Why do we need them defined as high art when that's not their purpose in the first place?

I've played several games that I feel were designed to be art in the first place.

Why care if a painting is high art? A poem? A movie? A song?

Art needs to be appreciated.

Being seen as art encourages discussion from that angle.

Etc.