ebert and games
By now I think we have all read or heard about Roger Ebert's weird claim that video games cannot be art. His argument seems based in equal parts on a dull- and ill-advised TED talk about games as art, and on his own claims that a game cannot be art because a) it is participatory and b) you can win or lose. So just because lots of other people have already made most of the obvious arguments I'm sure we're all thinking of right now, I'm going to entertain Mr Ebert's claim that art cannot be participatory. I will ignore all the dances and plays I've attended which involved audience participation. As for winning and losing, I will also pretend for a moment that no one has ever heard of the art of war, or practiced martial arts, or seen David Beckham play soccer; and I will pretend that Gaius Valerius Catullus wrote all his poems for art's sake, and not to help him get laid. On both counts I will pretend that the entire tradition of West African practical material culture never existed. I will assume that Mr Ebert's hyperbolic over-refinement of Oscar Wilde's concept of art is in fact legitimate.
So a video game isn't art, then. But what are a video game's component parts? A story, graphics, a soundtrack … these components are art, and often they're really breathtaking, beautiful, touching art. So a good video game, whether or not it is art, must always be made of art, arranged in such a way that people can experience it in a variety of productive and individual ways. So the word for a video game is perhaps not art, but instead art installation, or art institute, or art museum.
I think if you asked Roger Ebert whether the Musée du Louvre was or was not art, he would tell you that you were missing the point about the Louvre's significance to art. He's welcome to his self-derived definition of art that excludes video games; but I'm still going to visit the Louvre, and play video games, in order to experience art.
So a video game isn't art, then. But what are a video game's component parts? A story, graphics, a soundtrack … these components are art, and often they're really breathtaking, beautiful, touching art. So a good video game, whether or not it is art, must always be made of art, arranged in such a way that people can experience it in a variety of productive and individual ways. So the word for a video game is perhaps not art, but instead art installation, or art institute, or art museum.
I think if you asked Roger Ebert whether the Musée du Louvre was or was not art, he would tell you that you were missing the point about the Louvre's significance to art. He's welcome to his self-derived definition of art that excludes video games; but I'm still going to visit the Louvre, and play video games, in order to experience art.