Roger Ebert doesn't know a damned about video games does he?
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=ANSWERMAN
Q. I was saddened to read that you consider video games an inherently inferior medium to film and literature, despite your admitted lack of familiarity with the great works of the medium. This strikes me as especially perplexing, given how receptive you have been in the past to other oft-maligned media such as comic books and animation. Was not film itself once a new field of art? Did it not also take decades for its academic respectability to be recognized?
There are already countless serious studies on game theory and criticism available, including Mark S. Meadows' Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, and Mark J.P. Wolf's The Medium of the Video Game, to name a few.
I hold out hope that you will take the time to broaden your experience with games beyond the trashy, artless "adaptations" that pollute our movie theaters, and let you discover the true wonder of this emerging medium, just as you have so passionately helped me to appreciate the greatness of many wonderful films.
Andrew Davis, St. Cloud, Minn.
A. Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.
I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.
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So Ebert doesn't think video games can ever be considered art. I don't even know what to say. Except...
...I think his ego is tied up in this one.
"To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers."
I'm guessing that's because ebert doesn't know shit about video games. And what are the parameters of compairison by the way?
and...
what the fuck does this mean?
"But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art."
craftsmanship and art?
dictionary.com
"crafter n.
Usage Note: Craft has been used as a verb since the Old English period and was used in Middle English to refer specifically to the artful construction of a text or discourse. In recent years, crafted, the past participle of craft, has enjoyed a vogue as a participle referring to well-wrought writing. Craft is more acceptable when applied to literary works than to other sorts of writing, and more acceptable as a participle than as a verb. Seventy-three percent of the Usage Panel accepts the phrase beautifully crafted prose. By contrast, only 35 percent accept the sentence The planners crafted their proposal so as to anticipate the objections of local businesses."
There is some variation of "art" in the definitionof craft in no less that three places; maybe it's the same thing? Or differnt aspects of the same idea.
Someone with more of a background in Art theory, please enlighten me.
Q. I was saddened to read that you consider video games an inherently inferior medium to film and literature, despite your admitted lack of familiarity with the great works of the medium. This strikes me as especially perplexing, given how receptive you have been in the past to other oft-maligned media such as comic books and animation. Was not film itself once a new field of art? Did it not also take decades for its academic respectability to be recognized?
There are already countless serious studies on game theory and criticism available, including Mark S. Meadows' Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, and Mark J.P. Wolf's The Medium of the Video Game, to name a few.
I hold out hope that you will take the time to broaden your experience with games beyond the trashy, artless "adaptations" that pollute our movie theaters, and let you discover the true wonder of this emerging medium, just as you have so passionately helped me to appreciate the greatness of many wonderful films.
Andrew Davis, St. Cloud, Minn.
A. Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.
I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.
-----------------
So Ebert doesn't think video games can ever be considered art. I don't even know what to say. Except...
...I think his ego is tied up in this one.
"To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers."
I'm guessing that's because ebert doesn't know shit about video games. And what are the parameters of compairison by the way?
and...
what the fuck does this mean?
"But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art."
craftsmanship and art?
dictionary.com
"crafter n.
Usage Note: Craft has been used as a verb since the Old English period and was used in Middle English to refer specifically to the artful construction of a text or discourse. In recent years, crafted, the past participle of craft, has enjoyed a vogue as a participle referring to well-wrought writing. Craft is more acceptable when applied to literary works than to other sorts of writing, and more acceptable as a participle than as a verb. Seventy-three percent of the Usage Panel accepts the phrase beautifully crafted prose. By contrast, only 35 percent accept the sentence The planners crafted their proposal so as to anticipate the objections of local businesses."
There is some variation of "art" in the definitionof craft in no less that three places; maybe it's the same thing? Or differnt aspects of the same idea.
Someone with more of a background in Art theory, please enlighten me.