Rebuttal: Video Games as Art

My stance on this subject could not be more obvious, as this is a blog about video games of course I will be pro video game. Roger Ebert has made a living discussing movies and therefore will be pro movie. However, he has also started to light a fire under the bellies of us gamers by making the wild assertion that video games are not "art."

Many game websites have delivered their take on this subject and we all agree that video games are indeed art with examples abound, so I need not retread any of their points. I will instead speak simply on this matter categorically why video games are art.

Art Defined:

Before fully pursuing this subject I decided to brush up on exactly how humans define the very word art, and here's a few examples:
1. the products of human creativity; works of art collectively; "an art exhibition"; "a fine collection of art"
2. the creation of beautiful or significant things.
3. artwork: photographs or other visual representations in a printed publication

And so on. Amusingly searching for the definition of art I came across this:
"Myst is a franchise centered around a series of adventure video games. The first game in the series, Myst, was released in 1993 by brothers Rand ..."

While clearly a failure on Google's part, I was still amused that searching "art" would bring up a very specific video game.

Simply reading the three definitions of art that I stumbled across and in no way cherry-picked, anyone can clearly see that Video Games do fall into those definitions. While the third one is clearly pointing out printed material, video games do have instruction manuals which often showcase creative artwork...=) Okay, that's a stretch.

But let us get to the nitty gritty of Ebert's complaints.

1. Games are not art because they require physical interaction on the level of sports.
2. Games have objectives to them, thus they cannot be art as art is not goal oriented but a passive medium.

Reading his article, those were the only two major points I took away from it. He spends most of his article breaking down Kellee Santiago's assertion that video games are art and she goes on to list some examples. All Roger Ebert seems to do is break down her examples with very, very invalid thoughts on them. For instance, he feels that the game Flower evokes no more emotion than that of a hallmark card. He does this from the perspective of someone who has not actually played the game. He even asks ridiculous questions like does the game keep score, or do you 'win.'

Complaint #1:

Ebert feels that because video games require interaction then they are no more art than playing chess, or playing football. While this seems like sound logic, to an avid gamer, it sounds like "To summon Bahamut you need to use the magic command." I mean honestly, does a chessboard tell a story? Do you hear well orchestrated music in tune with the actions you make on the chessboard? Do the pieces evoke any awe inspiring or jaw dropping emotions upon looking at their plastic carvings? The answer to all of these questions is clearly no you stupid fool.

The fact that he lumps video games in with sports amuses me to no end, as there is often heavy debate among athletes and professional gamers in which gamers claim what they do is on the same level as a competitive sport. And with some games, that can be true too. There are games built with a competitive idea in mind, as there are games built with an artistic idea in mind. The fault of Ebert is that he feels all of these games are exactly the same. And this is proven with his notion that he feels they all need to have a 'win' moment, or they are in turn no longer a video game...

Complaint #2:

...And this is how we come to complaint #2. Again, Ebert seems to think that all video games have to have a "win" moment, and end to the objectives, just like any ordinary board game or sport. He goes on to say that even if there are games without this "win" moment, then they are no longer video games, but merely representations of story, music, poetry etc. What? How can something be a representation of a story if it itself tells a story? How can something be a representation of music if it itself offers music? That makes no sense, and is merely stupid wordplay meant to confuse stupid people.

To comment on his logic of this "win" moment in general, do movies not have an ending in which the writer has written? Do movies not mostly all follow the simple formula of beginning, rising actions, climax, falling actions, ending? To say it simply, what is the difference between a movie having an ending, and a video game having an ending? Is it because the pace of the game is dictated by the player? Why does that matter, the content is still the same. The message of the story remains the same as well. Just like a movie, only the pace is dictated by the editors and directors.

I have to take a moment to step away and respond to his last quote in the article that bugs me the most of all.

"I allow Sangtiago the last word. Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of video games as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case."

What he seems to be getting at here is that art can't involve the processes of Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. And he ends his high horse with "I rest my case" only maddening me further.

Let's take a final stab at what art actually is for a moment. He brings up Michelangelo's works like the Sistine Chapel, or Beethoven's music, or let's for the hell of it bring up that poor starving artist you have seen in your local mall. Michelangelo's work was commissioned, Beethoven didn't write music for the shits and giggles of it, and that poor starving artist has price tags on all his works too. Because business in this day and age has become efficient and more defined that we can have categorical ways of selling art, Ebert likes to point out that the video game trade is nothing more than that in the end, a trade, a business, a job. I wonder how many movies Ebert could have reviewed over the years if ticket prices were free. I wonder how successful movies would be without trailers, sweepstakes contests, TV commercials, actors plugging on Letterman, product placement, and so on. I wonder how successful any movie would be without his "thumbs up" for that matter.

To call Ebert a hypocrite would not be going far enough. He is narrow minded, riding on his own high horse, and demeaning a form of expression like video games that he has no knowledge of, and believes that only his definition of art is the correct one.

It is sad that Ebert speaks on a subject he clearly does not understand at all, it is sadder still that people take his opinion on the subject as fact. It would be similar if I agreed with the opinion of Creationists on Evolution. They have no knowledge of science, and they eagerly dismiss every notion of evolution they can. This is the same with Roger Ebert, commenting on a subject he literally knows nothing about.

He challenges in the article for people to offer him examples as Santiago had. While I still feel his rebuttal to her examples were extremely inefficient, I would be doing my own rebuttal a disservice by not offering my own example.

Xenogears:

This is my pick for a video game that can be called art, easily. This game has more story than most movie screenplays. It has more well developed characters struggling through a defined plot than even the best of movies. The music score it offers is nothing short of fantastic, evoking all the same emotions any piece from Beethoven can give. The game itself gives the player a long journey with many beautiful landscapes.

Ebert would point out that to experience all of these moments in the game the player has to continually compete in the games battle system defeating enemies, thus "winning," the game. Of course, I am giving Ebert too much credit in making a game reference such as "battle system," but I'm just stretching my imagination a bit. Still, why do the game elements of a video game lessen the artistic elements in it? That's a question he doesn't answer.

*Goes to play Mario Paint*

Let Me Play!

Patience has not always been a virtue in gaming. However, these days patience is a must. We must wait, and wait we shall. As gaming became more and more complex, and the medium in which games are played changed and progressed, we as gamers find ourselves doing more of nothing than something.

I for one am quite agitated with how video games have "progressed." It amuses me that years ago I could simply pop in my favorite game, flip the on switch, and boom I was playing. Here I will discuss just how gaming has made us wait far more than we ever had to and why it has caused me such frustration.

First let me briefly delve into what struck me to write this. Yesterday, I fired up my PS3 and wanted to check out the updates to the PSN store. For some wacky reason my PS3 would not connect to the internet, it has never done this before. Thirty minutes later I solve this issue, only to be stopped once again by an update. That took another twenty minutes to download and then install. Finally, that was done, and not to my surprise the PSN store wasn't even updated. So I go and play some Zen Pinball, a quick bite sized game I love dearly. I play the new table I got last week, but I swear I started to fall asleep waiting for it to load...And so the idea for this blog was born.

Gaming Medium:

This is the very first offender to how games over time have "progressed" only to get slower and slower. Now admittedly it started off worse with the Commadore 64, but those memories were quickly wiped away with the Atari and its cartridge based games that immediately started to work right away. Aside from having to blow in those games through the NES era, it wasn't all that inconvenient. Convenient gaming in this respect died right when the Playstation came out. Here we were given a few problems with this CD format. Firstly, of course is the loading times. They got ridiculous. Loading before the game starts, loading before cut-scenes, loading between stages, loading before a round in a fighting game, loading loading loading. You had to get used to it, there was no way around it.

Another problem CD's introduced was the hazard of having to change discs. It was annoying to me for such an advanced medium such as the CD to make me change discs and then remember which one to pop in if I came back months later. What annoyed me most though was that Sony boasted how much more memory its games can contain by comparison to a N64 cartridge, and yet still most great games took up 3 or 4 of them, whereas to play one amazing N64 game I only needed ONE N64 cartridge. A cartridge that didn't load, and that I didn't have to swap out. Oh, and something that didn't die immediately when it got a teeny tiny scratch on it. I have to this day, an old Kirby's Adventure NES cartridge that's missing a large chunk of itself in the top right corner and it works flawlessly still. I have a barely visible tiny scratch on disc 2 of Chrono Cross that causes the game to be unplayable.

Advanced technology my ass.

Updates:

You really can't avoid this anymore, this never used to be an issue in any way. But be it a combination of pirate protection, keeping games working, or keeping things fresh, for whatever reason game developers these days feel the need to update their games constantly and it could not be more annoying. I'm spoiled, I'll admit it, I was used to the idea that I would buy a game and it would be the final product. Now I understand that when I buy a game, they were not done with it yet, clearly they just didn't finish it. I cannot honestly fire up any older PS3 game I have because it will want me to update it, I almost guarantee this. The worst thing is, I'm not even allowed to play it if I'm connected to the internet, there's no bypassing the update. So if I ever want to play Grand Theft Auto, Resistance 2, or any number of games I'd like to go back to someday, I will have to update it. This could take anywhere from ten to forty minutes.

And for what purpose are these updates? Well most of them are to ensure that the new Down-loadable Content or "DLC" they are selling works with everyone's games, it patches them for the DLC to work in other words. But why should I care? I usually don't want the DLC. Very rarely will a game be patched because they want to fix something they didn't during development. It just awes me that I can plug in any Zelda or Mario game without the fear of seeing the dreaded "update" screen and I can't do this with half of my PS3 library.

Installing:

Games load times haven't got better, that's for sure. Now developers are actually having us install our games on our systems just so the load times are bearable. This usually takes thirty to forty minutes too. While this problem mostly pertains to the PS3, the Xbox 360 is not without this issue. Hell even the PSP has optional installation these days. The sad thing is, this really is not the fault of the console believe it or not. This is the fault of lazy developers. There are big badass games that exist on the PS3 with no installation, like Final Fantasy 13....lol, but still it's a HUGE game, no installation, and bearable loading times. But developers like Capcom will consistently have 5GB installations on ALL of there games, for no other reason than that they are lazy.

Logos:

These days, games aren't made by one company. Seemingly, they are made by HUNDREDS (exaggeration) and we are subjected to see who helped make the game every time we fire it up. I remember playing Maximum Carnage on the SNES, and this game drove me insane with the number of companies I had to sift through to finally get to the start screen. This is how it is now for nearly EVERY game made. The worst offenders are the ones that won't let you skip them, which is the vast majority of them.

Conclusion:

So between the loading times it takes to start them up, and the logos, and the possible update to follow, and nixing the loading times with a long installation, or the possibility that your game has a minor defect on it that you won't notice until the game freezes twenty hours in, waiting to play games these days gets pretty intense. Thankfully, not all gaming is like this. Nintendo for instance is still fantastic with the Nintendo DS being cartridge based still, and the Wii games don't usually have a logo problem, they have no installation, and the only thing that ever updates is the system itself and not the games. I breathe a sigh of relief playing those games, games that I know will function immediately without "advanced technology" getting in the way.

*.....loading......loading......*