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Comment by MattGrommes | Hacker News Reader

I haven't played the ME series but it's interesting that this fits in nicely with one of the arguments against video games being art (brought up a year or so most famously by Roger Ebert). That is, the fact that players can petition the maker of the game for a new ending and get some kind of concession shows that it wasn't Art in the first place. I'm not sure if I agree or not but this is the first big event that's played right into one of Ebert's complaints.

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This is fun! There have to be millions of definitions of art, each one weirder than the next.

Your definition seems to include bizarre sentences like “When the creators can (maybe ‘sometimes do’ would be better here) change their work after they released it, that work is not art.” Maybe you qualify sentences like that further (and propel it to ever more bizarre heights) to only include changes made because of public pressure.

Throughout history, many artists took commissions. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was a commissioned work. Do you really want to tell me that if we were to find out that Michelangelo was asked by the pope (the customer) to change something after he finished and did so, the fresco would no longer be a piece of art?

Stuff like that makes me never want to use the word art again. Videogames as works to be appreciated by others most certainly do not have to hide behind any other works made for the appreciation of others.

I think I assumed a little more than I should have about how much people would know about Ebert's argument. No, the customer changing the art has nothing to do with it. The audience complaining is what this was in reference to. The argument Ebert made is that if the ending of a game is up to the player it's not the result of an artist's vision. This is even one more step from that, not only do your actions as a player affect the ending, the players don't like the ending they got and the company is going to change it. I don't know how I would personally feel about Michelangelo changing the Sistine Chapel in response to tourists complaining about it, which is more like what this is.

Obviously this is not black/white and everybody has their own definition of Art, I was just pointing out how this connects to the pretty major controversy from Ebert's pronouncements last year.

You definition of art (and Ebert’s, it seems) gets weirder by the second. Now we can add this deranged sentence to your definition of art: “If there are different ways of experiencing some work, it’s not art.”

The justification for that kind of mindless definition just makes no sense at all. The artist sets the parameters and all possible different endings (if they exist at all, most games don't have something like that) are obviously part of the artistic vision. Someone had to make those endings. The player certainly doesn’t. Why can the artistic vision only encompass a single way of experiencing a work? What’s the reasoning for that? Why can’t the artist offer multiple ways of experiencing a work and let a player (in this case) pick? Because doing stuff like that didn't used to be possible? Why add something as ridiculous as that to the definition?

It boggles the mind.

(Oh, and I was picking the pope because he is the customer - just like in this case customers of the game are complaining and potential customers say they want things changed before they buy. Talking about tourists in this context makes no sense at all.)

So if I take on a commission to paint something for you, and once I deliver it you decide you wanted a different expression on the face, and I then change it, does that mean that my painting wasn't art in the first place?

If I'm in a band, and I make some music and the fans don't like the buzzsaw sound, and I then remove it and remaster the track, does that mean that my song wasn't art in the first place?

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