Video Games are already art, Mr Ebert | Hacker News Reader

Video Games are already art, Mr Ebert

nikgregory.com

33 pointsnikgregory25 comments

I agree with the premise (video games can be art), but I find his arguments unconvincing.

Some games I consider art because of the story, the immersion, and so on. From the top of my head: PlaneScape: Torment, and perhaps The Longest Journey. These games are great because they are great novels, and more.

Other games, such as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (the one by LucasArts) and Grim Fandango I consider art because they are great movies and more. It's really more of an interactive movie than a game. Watching somebody play games like this is almost as much fun as playing it yourself.

Some games I consider art because they make me stop and think. Sanatarium for instance.

On the other end of the spectrum you can have a game like Super Mario. Mario is reductionist. Everything that can be left out, is left out. You walk, you run, you jump. There is no story, you don't need one. I imagine people will still play and enjoy Super Mario 30 years from now, perhaps a 100 years from now. If a game stands the test of time like that, it almost must be art by definition.

A great game, when you pick it up, can immediately blow you away because it's just that good. In the same way a painting can take your breath away or keep you captivated for hours. Music can do this to you too. Paintings, Music and Games can be art because the artists can decide what to leave in and what to take away. They completely own the medium, and so the artist owns the experience.

With movies, this isn't the case. They're clumsy because there are too many details, too many uncontrollable factors, too many budgetary issues. Movies are never perfect. No matter how great a movie is, there are always jarring imperfections. But if there is a perfect movie, a movie that can't be improved upon, that can be really considered art... you'd probably end up with a movie from Pixar.

I think yours will be the best comment on this article.

The trouble with this discussion is people keep attempting to define objective attributes of art. But art doesn't have objective attributes; they are all subjective. Art is a feeling we get when we look at something others call art. We see three paintings, all "art", and two of them give you a certain feeling, so you call it "art" and suppose they feel the same about the third painting. And there it is. You now have an idea called "art" to develop.

It is in this way that our idea of art overlaps with each others, appearing to be the same from a distance, but irreconcilable at proximity. This is why this concept is so fuzzy and difficult to sketch out. We really do need to experience art before we can believe it as art. So, Mr. Ebert's right. Video games aren't art - to him.

Thank you. I was thinking about deleting the comment because it's so disjointed and a bit of a braindump, but now I'll leave it up.

I don't agree that art is just in the eye of the beholder, but this probably isn't the place to get into that whole argument. In short, some things must be art because they're truly timeless, other things cannot be art because they're strictly worse than something else. If you have X, and X' an uninspired derivative of X, then X' cannot be art. So I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of necessary attributes for art. I don't think you (plural you) do art justice by saying it's all subjective.

When you put it that way I agree with you. But I don't believe art is just in the eye of the beholder. I believe there is a web of definitions for art that all overlap. Great Art is art that mostly agreed by everyone that it is great art. People the world over converge to believe a certain symmetry and proportion makes the most beautiful face. In the same way I believe there is a shared inclination for what is Great Art [1]. But I don't know what it is, and challenge you to define it, because it's a little different for everyone, particularly subject to their perspective.

Let's consider person A and person B. Both A and B see and consider derivative art X' separately. A thinks: there's nothing original here. She's already seen art X. B thinks: wow, how interesting. B has not seen art X and so the uninspired derivation is still interesting.

Similarly, I think the Mona Lisa is a reasonably accurate painting of an unattractive woman. There is nothing beautiful or intrinsically interesting about it. It's due to POV. In fact, each of your examples in the OP is a different perspective. A different reason to consider something art. If you had a stricter definition I don't see how you could change perspective so easily.

I actually reduced all words defined on emotions to being subjective. I don't think this causes a problem. I don't see this as doing art injustice. Saying it is just subjective just gives us a spot to start from.

(Oi, now I don't know if I made sense.) [1] There was a PBS like program on the BBC one night that discussed some research about this.

I wholly agree with your points, however I wanted to stay away arguing the point that games like The Longest Journey (one of my favourites for epic stories) are art qualified solely because they're a video-novel not a video-game.

A game is a game, so I wanted to stay away from screwing with definitions and (I hope) I managed that. I don't consider certain things art, which others do. Music is one of my peeves, because it has so rarely emotionally touched me that it barely qualifies as art to me, but (and please do if you disagree) someone else will likely follow this right up disagreeing wholly that music is fundamentally art.

What if fundamentally boils down to is that mine, yours and Eberts opinions on art don't matter and never have. Ebert sadly will be forgotten months after he stops reviewing (for whatever reason), I'll likely be forgotten 5-minutes after this drops from the HN front page. You're right though that Mario in 30 years will likely still be remembered and played and felt as a great game, after all every gamer in threads like this are quoting games that are from two-decades to a few years old. The original Mario has already stood the test of time, so has the original Final Fantasy, yet I'll still pick up a copy and play once in a while just to get that feeling back. Just like I'll rewatch a movie or relook at a piece of art.

> The original Mario has already stood the test of time,...

Just a note: 30 years is not a test of time; I think you need to hit around 200 years to get to that mark. Video games are truly a nascent art form, and I think Mario's got a shot at surviving for a while, but it's too soon to really tell.

Star Wars arguably has stood the test of time, at least in the film realm for being hugely popular 33 years after its initial release. Only 29 years after our first seeing Mario and he's still hugely popular and putting out sequels with new characters everyone hates.

Although I do see your point in that the medium as a whole has only been around, recognizably, for 40 years. Surviving 3/4 the life of your medium isn't a profound achievement, when compared to The Art of War being 2600 years old. It's a bit like comparing a glass of water to the ocean. But then film is still a nascent art form when compared with literature, architecture and theater.

So: Compared to film, I would disagree. Mario has stood his test of time. Compared to literature, then film is in the same boat.

I love video games, and have been playing them my entire life (beyond as far back as my memory goes), and I would not consider the majority of games to be art.

"Is it art or not" is a stupid debate. What is art? You cannot even have this argument, because two opposing viewpoints will not have the same definition of art.

Great essay on this matter: http://johnhenrylambert.com/essays/bad_words.html

Are video games fine art? No. Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely. Almost never, for the sort of game you can buy for a console from the store. Are they art like industrial design, transportation, bridges, etc? Probably not, since the games themselves are usually only software. Is software art? Sometimes, probably. Then are games art like software is art? Could be, but most people think of the game as the entire package itself, not just the code that powers the engine.

Are the in-game assets art? The characters, scenery, etc? Individually, certainly. As a whole? Debatable. Individually, the assets have no purpose other than their form. Collectively, they take the form as fulfilling part of an exchange the consumer (who paid money with the understanding that he or she will receive a minimum amount of stimulation and entertainment) has made with the producer of the game. Few people expect to pay $60, put a disc into their console, and look at pictures of chairs nailed to a wall and read a marker-felted diatribe about the uselessness of progressing fashionable design standards if the functional form does not change over time. If you pay $60 to go through a museum of modern art and don't like it, well, too fucking bad.

Most commercially produced games, just like with most commercially produced movies, the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled.

So by that definition, most Hollywood movies are not art, either. Which I would also agree with.

Entertainment is not exactly the same thing as many of the more formal definitions of art.

I liked the part where you called it a "stupid debate" and said "You cannot even have this argument" and then wrote a long post doing exactly what you criticized.

Also, "[x] is not art" statements are a tremendous bore.

Stupid debates can be fun

"the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled."

That's a very broad statement that disqualifies nearly all paid performances as a form of art. Video games are art, or much or what is commonly considered art isn't. Gesamtkunstwerk is a word/concept that describes a whole artwork made up of other pieces of art. It isn't a new concept. It's been around for nearly two centuries. Take a look at theater for instance. No one doubts that it's art, but it is made up of costume design, acting, the score, etc. This whole debate like everything else will finally end when all the older people who don't believe video games are art grow old and die.

I don't consider most theater to be art in that sense. Art in the sense of craft or technique, certainly. But not a kind of derivative of fine art.

    Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely.

The argument was that games by definition cannot be art.

The counter argument was not that all (or even many) games are art, but that at least one game can be.

The definition of Art suffered its crisis a long time ago, with some people proclaiming the end of art. I remember reading books in the eighties by Gino Dorfles or Arnold Hauser (I hope the names are correctly spelled) and about the Bauhaus or Andy Warhol. My humble conclusion was that Art is now defined more as a concepts than as a technique. The concepts are the kind of making spectator think about interesting ideas (the basic questions we all ask) or even the media through which they're transmitted and their relation to the message.

I don't think what you pay for it is the key, nor is the technical excellence (an ad can be technically superior to some classic paintings) but the intention and ability to make us question our nature and society's.

In this sense, video games are not Art, the same way that design isn't. They can be art in other sense that two hundred years ago was associated with art works, but was later dissociated by the industrial, and now digital, revolution.

Games are mechanisms for play. Play is not art. Play is dynamic, art is static. Play engages, art coerces.

I think Ebert is mostly right, but we shouldn't give much serious attention to someone who has had so little experience with games. That's like arguing about Hermann Hesse with someone who staunchly refuses to read anything longer than a road sign. We should be proud of the distinction between play and art. If we're going to argue at all, our position should be that play is potentially as important as art, if not more so.

---

(Emphasis on "potentially". Game developers still have a lot of ground to cover. The linked article was praising games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect as positive examples of storytelling in games. Yikes.)

    BioWare has got lost in the dense tangle of what it was trying to
    accomplish. It hasn't been able to see the wood for the trees. It
    has summoned an entire world into existence in the most meticulous
    detail, but failed to give it an identity beyond the blandest
    cliché. It has created living characters that respond like humans,
    but speak like dictionaries and move like mannequins. It has
    engineered solidly absorbing RPG gameplay and character progression
    and stranded them in a succession of hackneyed and hide-bound
    scenarios.
    
    http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dragon-age-origins-review

Play is not art... why?

Art is static? So fountains, kinetic sculptures, improvisational comedy, and rose gardens are not art? I find your definitions lacking.

Fine art is (generally) static, but film and theatre are not, they're the performing arts and this is where I believe video games fall. Where is the difference between Titanic and Avatar? Is Avatar not art or is it excluded because of graphics? Is Shreck not art because it's even more computerised? Where is the line? There isn't one, people insist there is a line somewhere yet they, like Ebert, fail to define where and why that line is.

As I said, there are many things I wouldn't consider art, but I know for a fact 90% of people disagree with me.

"If we're going to argue at all, our position should be that play is potentially as important as art, if not more so."

I think that's an interesting point to make. What does art bring that play doesn't do so more?

Play has, for centuries, been the way of passing down history via stories and songs. It's been part of culture so much more than mere pictures, which can be destroyed.

While you won't be popular because of your stance against games being art, hopefully people won't stop before the end of your comment and will ponder this point.

This argument is all about what's good enough to be art.

If the first film ever made was boring, film was not yet art. If the second film was good, film suddenly became art. Including the first film?

Is a really really good film art, or must it be at least really really really really good?

There is no film everyone likes, so the only way to recognize a good film is by majority. Must it be filibuster-proof?

This debate makes no sense.

Why do we care what Ebert thinks?

This was my reaction too, at first.

But Ebert is a hugely influential cultural figure, spreading ill-informed opinions to a public who would rather listen to what he says than think for themselves. Willful ignorance is a metavirus.

Very few films are "art". Who's the video game equivalent of Kubrick or Kurosawa or Bergman?

Penny Arcade's comment on this is wonderfully wrong: "If a hundred artists create art for five years, how could the result not be art?"

Interestingly, that's exactly the sort of film that fails to be art. Great films are, without exception, products of a single driving vision, not designed by committee.

The only way to really claim that video games are art is to say, "Here, this game X is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai." Only that's not going to happen, because it doesn't exist. And because it doesn't exist, Ebert gets pummeled with long screeds of gamer angst rather than the only answer that would matter: "Game X is art."

Could you say that the Mona Lisa is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai? If so in what way is it equivalent? How do you define art?

I for one would say that the Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, the Secret of Monkey Island and Sanitarium are art. But that's according to my definition of Art... I feel that they are games with great stories, great vision and that make me feel emotions.

Half Life is the equivalent to The Seven Samurai.

I have Half Life. Yes, I have The Seven Samurai, in its black and white goodness. They both helped define in their respective areas the future. Half Life was that game for me. I still remember the feeling of finally seeing the soldiers, and then coming to a firm realization in horror that they were trying to kill me as well. The entire pulled me in at the time.

Art is, at it's core, something someone creates to experience. A painting is art because you experience it with your eyes. A song is art because you experience it with your ears. Both were creations intended to be experienced.

Architecture is art, not just because you can see it, but because you can actually feel it, move through it, use it. Beautiful architecture can be functional, and usually is. It solves a problem while being beautiful.

So, why does a game not become art? Winning, as described by Ebert? Architecture's goal isn't being art, it's to be a structure. The purpose of the art doesn't dictate whether it's art. The Mona Lisa isn't less art because it was commissioned. The goal of the Mona Lisa was in celebration of a birth, but does this diminish it's artistic value? The 'players' here used the painting for another purpose.

So, it can't be the goal. Winning isn't why I played Half Life. The story was why I played, the emotions it pulled on.

You make the argument that great films are driven by a single vision. But The Seven Samurai was not driven by a single person. So, if a game is designed by a single vision, can it become art?

The argument against games as an art is not new. Movies weren't art. Pictures weren't art. So many things weren't art before their time, and had to become art, evolve to art.

No. Discounting games as art diminishes all other forms of art.

Kurosawa worked with a team of writers, cinematographers, actors, assistants, producers. Seven Samurai was designed by committee -- Kurosawa just happened to have been at the head of that committee.

This is true for almost every film in existence. Certainly every widely distributed film.

This is also true for games. Some of the best games are driven by a single person -- think Kojima and Metal Gear or Miyamoto and Mario -- but they are the product of many, many talented artists working their asses off.

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