Are Video Games Art? (Spoiler alert: Yes. )
Over the past week or so, some comments from film Critic Roger Ebert about the artistic value of video games (really, the lack thereof) have been making lots of people cranky. Why does this matter? If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already got an opinion on that here’s the skinny on what has happened, though.
On March 23, 2009, Kellee Santiago from Thatvideogamecompany gave a speech at USC not only suggesting the merit of video games becoming art, but gave evidence as to why we have already arrived. Her fifteen minute speech can be seen here.
One of the more salient points to her argument is that painting started out as crude scribbles on a cave, and we lack the perspective needed to judge games as a wholly artistic medium, since they’ve only really been around a couple decades.
Santiago mentions early in her speech that Roger Ebert once said games would never be art, which apparently made him cranky. His response (more than a year later, mind you), can be read here.
He acknowledges the response benefits from rumination, and while I believe he initially treads carefully and could have been more inflammatory, the gamer response has varied from “You are not a video game critic.” (Brian Ashcraft) to a certain edgier vein, wherein Ebert’s article is referred to as “reeking ejaculate” (Penny Arcade’s Jerry Holkins). Santiago herself responded to his article, and even offers to send him a PS3 so he can actually play the things he writes mean things about.
I’m going to come back around and explain my airier criticism about what Ebert says, but let’s start with things that can be addressed quickly:
- He says her definition of “a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way that the audience finds engaging” is flawed by his asking “…what ideas are contained in Stravinsky, Picasso…”The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?” what he seems to mean is “Artists create art in a way that there is one idea, and if you don’t get it, you’re wrong.” This suggests to me that Roger Ebert suggests that Roger Ebert is an asshole. And I know this has nothing to do with video games. This has to do with how I feel about fiction as a narrative.
- Ebert notes, and I agree with him, that the ability to measure art relies on taste, and uses painters as an example. “Some of there paintings are masterpieces, most are very bad indeed. How do we tell the difference? We know. It is a matter, yes, of taste.” This is a strange point for someone who is denigrating games to make when said denigrator has not played a lot of them.
- I don’t completely agree with what Santiago says about Braid. It was a great game, but what you take away from it depends on what you invest. If you buy into the larger metaphor of the game, the message is completely different than if you come at it from a “I am the protagonist, how do I feel about undoing my mistakes”, because your mistakes as a person are different than your ones as a player. For some people, the story probably just made them feel funny.
- A Voyage to the Moon (1902) was a major film milestone, but you think Braid can’t serve as that for games? And you say gamers won’t see a point where games become art in our lifetime? Do you realize the difference between that film and films largely held as masterpieces was about 60 years? Do you realize the difference between the first crude game and 60 years from then would be about 2040? And you think it’s completely beyond the realm of possibility that games will be art by then? Kindly stuff yourself, sir.
- “Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?” That depends, Mr. Ebert. Why do you film should be? Why do you think it’s important enough that games not be that you are willing to throw your opinions to the internet and the great gnashing of teeth?
Phew. Okay, not all of those points are cut-and-dry to everyone, but they are to me. Pike off.
One of his stickier points is that games have a distinct goal, and he uses Flower as an example of this.
The game is “about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural.” Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn’t say. Do you win if you’re the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?
My knee-jerk reaction is to light the guy on fire for completely missing the point of the game, which isn’t meant to have a true goal like Pac-Man or a scoring system like Tetris. Instead, Flower presents itself as a more cerebral experiment, where the point is not to reach a destination, but rather enjoy the journey and reflect on what it says about reality or how it makes us feel. To jump back to how he feels about T.S. Elliot or Picasso, Ebert shows his prejudice as a film critic by suggesting that without a goal something is not a game, and without a clear intent narrative is not a valid way to explore ideas.
This is where Ebert nearly a point that has some semblance of validity, and it is even one that academia will vigorously nod their heads at. Santiago pulls the Wikipedia definition for art, which notes “Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.” The idea that elements in a work of art are arranged by how their creator intended is usually considered important, and literary critics are pretty crazy about that sort of thing. Believe me: if you look a PHD student in the eyes and say “enplotment,” they’ll jabber for hours. The careful construction of a story is often pivotal to an audience interpreting things as intended. In writing, this is done by careful word selection. In film, it can be even more important, since there are so many additional factors that can be examined in a very concrete way. When a scene on film is shot with red lighting there is a far more pervasive feeling than a writer noting in a single instance “The room was red.”
Santiago doesn’t consider the artist’s construction to be as important to art being art. To her, the idea that an audience is touched by an experience is more important (ie, the video at 3:00). While the small, shriveled remaining bit of joy in me is willing to agree, the sadistic, bloodthirsty college student is very angry. If the immutability of art isn’t important…that means a choose-your-own adventure book could be art! Have you read those?!
Well, yeah okay they are pretty awesome but that’s beside the point.
WARNING, literary critical theory follows:
What Ebert and my angry college education don’t account for is how mutable all art is. The artistic intent of directors has been distorted since the invention of the television, which has a much smaller screen and a different aspect ratio than the once lauded silver screen. To be only a tinge more radical, is the experience of seeing Michelangelo’s fresco in the Cappella Sistina completely negated when it is seen on a print? Or a television? Or a computer monitor? Or is the experience of awe still possible, but the author’s carefully constructed and inclusive narrative is lost?
Even literature, which is about as immutable as art can possibly be, is often considered dependent on the viewer for true context. Someone who is reading War and Peace in a furnished study smelling of rich mahogany–whilst, oh let’s say sipping a 20-year-old scotch–cannot be said to hold the same experience as someone reading the literary titan on a commuter bus. You’d be an ass to suggest the former is the proper way to read and strange to recommend the latter, but they certainly are different, and any post-modern critic would agree with that sentiment.
So: You want to really give Ebert the shakes? Tell him you recently saw Beyond the Valley of the Dolls–which he co-directed–and tell him it was a moving experience from a bygone era. Gush about how fantastic it was, and let him sullenly acknowledge your appreciation. Then tell him you watched it on a 4 inch iPod screen, and watch his head explode.
</literary crap>
Ebert starts off saying that we can debate classification all day, so it’s not helpful, then resorts to it in the end. To me, this is silly, but does point to the main problem in discussing games as art. Avoiding classification is impossible, and current classification of art relies on a construction the artist creates with minimal chance of interference on the part of the viewer (even though some interference is absolutely inevitable).
This does not mean games are not art, it means our system for classifying art is neither perfect nor accurate. I don’t know how to fix that. The more important question: “If a hundred artists create art for five years, how could the result not be art?“
