Video Games Are Art
Roger Ebert recently decided to condemn games again with this story http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html
I was asked to weigh in on Ebert's piece in the comments section of my review of The Whispered World on The A.V. Club. I spent a fair bit of time on the response and I decided to post it here as well. Enjoy.
Ebert’s piece disappoints me much more as a journalist than as a gamer. Essentially Ebert watched Kellee Santiago’s speech and decided that without doing any further research into the subject he could refute her points and thereby validate his dismissal of an entire industry.
I don’t expect Ebert to play video games. There is a huge generation gap at work. But even reading up a little could have answered the questions he had about Flower and pointed him to many other games with strong artistic merit. If he’s not willing to do that work then he should realize he doesn’t have the authority to write about games, no matter how respected he may be as a movie critic.
After watching a clip or reading a summary of a movie I might think it’s pathetic and make a decision not to see it. But I would never voice that opinion in print or online in my professional capacity as a critic unless I had more information to go on. The fact that Ebert thinks that he could condemn Braid and Flower without playing a minute of either game shows an unbelievable hubris and the weight of his disrespect for game developers, reviewers and players.
I also find the condemnation of games based on the need to complete tasks ridiculous. I don’t think I’m performing art when I play a game any more than when I turn the page of a novel or queue up the next track on a CD. In games like The Whispered World the tasks you complete really are just more thought provoking ways of turning the page. There is no score, no fighting and no competition. It just places the player in the role of a character moving through a story from start to finish. That story and the images, voice acting and music that go with it produce a work of art in the same way sets, a score, a script and actors are put together to make a movie.
I don’t need Ebert or anyone else to validate my love of games. I play them because I take pleasure from them, which is the same reason I read books, watch movies and go to shows. Ebert quotes Plato in his story. I just wish he had taken a different piece of wisdom from the Greek philosopher Socrates who said “I do not think I know what I do not know.” Ebert thinks he does and that’s the problem.
I was asked to weigh in on Ebert's piece in the comments section of my review of The Whispered World on The A.V. Club. I spent a fair bit of time on the response and I decided to post it here as well. Enjoy.
Ebert’s piece disappoints me much more as a journalist than as a gamer. Essentially Ebert watched Kellee Santiago’s speech and decided that without doing any further research into the subject he could refute her points and thereby validate his dismissal of an entire industry.
I don’t expect Ebert to play video games. There is a huge generation gap at work. But even reading up a little could have answered the questions he had about Flower and pointed him to many other games with strong artistic merit. If he’s not willing to do that work then he should realize he doesn’t have the authority to write about games, no matter how respected he may be as a movie critic.
After watching a clip or reading a summary of a movie I might think it’s pathetic and make a decision not to see it. But I would never voice that opinion in print or online in my professional capacity as a critic unless I had more information to go on. The fact that Ebert thinks that he could condemn Braid and Flower without playing a minute of either game shows an unbelievable hubris and the weight of his disrespect for game developers, reviewers and players.
I also find the condemnation of games based on the need to complete tasks ridiculous. I don’t think I’m performing art when I play a game any more than when I turn the page of a novel or queue up the next track on a CD. In games like The Whispered World the tasks you complete really are just more thought provoking ways of turning the page. There is no score, no fighting and no competition. It just places the player in the role of a character moving through a story from start to finish. That story and the images, voice acting and music that go with it produce a work of art in the same way sets, a score, a script and actors are put together to make a movie.
I don’t need Ebert or anyone else to validate my love of games. I play them because I take pleasure from them, which is the same reason I read books, watch movies and go to shows. Ebert quotes Plato in his story. I just wish he had taken a different piece of wisdom from the Greek philosopher Socrates who said “I do not think I know what I do not know.” Ebert thinks he does and that’s the problem.