The ultimate internet troll?

In case you missed it, Roger Ebert proclaimed recently, and not for the first time, that “video games can never be art.”  Never.  Not at any point in the entire course of human history will our favorite interactive medium achieve such a “lofty” status in the eyes of the man who helped devise the most intricate and nuanced system of critiquing involving a TV-friendly extremity the world has ever seen.

Let’s start at the beginning.  Mr. Ebert claims he “was urged by a reader, Mark Johns, to consider a video of a TED talk given at USC by Kellee Santiago, a designer and producer of video games.”  Ms. Santiago is a co-founder of thatgamecompany, makers of titles such as flOw and Flower.  Actually, those titles constitute two thirds of their entire body of work, which makes me question whether or not she is really the best person upon which Ebert should base his argument (my doubts are cemented by the examples she chooses as you’ll see later).  I played the demo for Flower (I think — it could have been the full version) on a friend’s PS3 for probably close to an hour, and while it certainly was a pleasant and unique experience, I’m not sure a mere three games should immediately launch the developer into the stratosphere of brilliance typically associated with TED Talks (even if this is an “independently organized” TED event, as the video says).  But her presentation is the one with which Mr. Ebert takes issue, so, as usual, my opinion matters very little.  Where was I…?

Oh yes: cave paintings.

Ms. Santiago begins by giving us some quick context:

…she shows a slide of a prehistoric cave painting, calling it “kind of chicken scratches on walls,” and contrasts it with Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Her point is that while video games may be closer to the chicken scratch end of the spectrum, I am foolish to assume they will not evolve.

Beautiful in its simplicity

This is, in fact, a perfectly valid point, but Mr. Ebert disagrees:

They were great artists at that time, geniuses with nothing to build on, and were not in the process of becoming Michelangelo or anyone else.  Any gifted artist will tell you how much he admires the “line” of those prehistoric drawers in the dark, and with what economy and wit they evoked the animals they lived among.

I’d argue that most “ungifted” artists would tell you much the same, but that’s neither here nor there.  Any person can immediately look at the above drawing and say, at the very least, “that is an animal.”  So Mr. Ebert wants to talk about “economy and wit”?  Being a great artist at a given time, with “nothing to build on”?

Beautiful in its simplicity

Talk about economy and wit!  I’d argue that Space Invaders displays this even more so than a cave drawing if only for the fact that the programmers were tasked with evoking extraterrestrial beings, not animals with which people are already very familiar.  Pretty much anyone could look at this and immediately recognize that, though they may not know what those creatures are, these things are bad and want to hurt you.

Mr. Ebert goes on to offer some possible definitions of “art,” but concedes that “we could play all day with definitions, and find exceptions to every one.”  This is essentially true, and it alludes to a larger issue which I’ll get to a little further on.   Unfortunately, Mr. Ebert never really nails down what he believes is art.  He circles it a number of times, making the reader believe he’s going to touch on something insightful, only to skip off to dissect another of Ms. Santiago’s points.  An example:

She quotes Robert McKee’s definition of good writing as “being motivated by a desire to touch the audience.” This is not a useful definition, because a great deal of bad writing is also motivated by the same desire. I might argue that the novels of Cormac McCarthy are so motivated, and Nicholas Sparks would argue that his novels are so motivated. But when I say McCarthy is “better” than Sparks and that his novels are artworks, that is a subjective judgment, made on the basis of my taste (which I would argue is better than the taste of anyone who prefers Sparks).

And:

Santiago now phrases this in her terms: “Art is a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way that the audience finds engaging.” Yet what ideas are contained in Stravinsky, Picasso, “Night of the Hunter,” “Persona,” “Waiting for Godot,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?” Oh, you can perform an exegesis or a paraphrase, but then you are creating your own art object from the materials at hand.

Stravinsky is your go-to composer?  That speaks volumes right there…Anyway, Mr. Ebert goes on to claim that this definition is baseless since he has regarded all of Ms. Santiago’s points to be easily dismissed up to this juncture.  In his own words:

Kellee Santiago has arrived at this point lacking a convincing definition of art. But is Plato’s any better? [Plato, via Aristotle, believed art should be defined as the imitation of nature] Does art grow better the more it imitates nature? My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage [sic] through what we might call the artist’s soul, or vision. Countless artists have drawn countless nudes. They are all working from nature. Some of there [sic] paintings are masterpieces, most are very bad indeed. How do we tell the difference? We know. It is a matter, yes, of taste.

The above passage, along with the following, makes clear the larger issue to which I referred earlier:

One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive [sic] game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.

The thing Mr. Ebert almost gets to a number of times, yet never really comes out and says, is that “art” is perhaps the most intensely subjective concept of the human experience.  The reason he doesn’t say this is so that he can protect himself and his opinions from now to eternity.  If he never says that “art” can mean something different to everyone, he never allows for the validity of a differing view that video games can be — and are — an art form.  Saying that a game is not “art” because it’s something you can “win” is ridiculous.  First of all, we could get into semantics and say “completion,” not necessarily “winning” is the real goal, but even then I’d bet World of Warcraft players would likely tell you that they never want to feel like their game has been completed.  Second, is not winning an experience?  One could argue that the experience of playing a game is richer for it not being something that simply happens in front you the way a film or, to an even lesser extent, a painting does.  As the player, you have some say in the way in which things unfold, and will likely get to the end with a sense of accomplishment.  For these reasons alone Mr. Ebert’s logic is flawed at best.

Unfortunately, Ms. Santiago hamstrings herself with the examples she chooses to support her argument.  Waco Resurrection?  First of all, who as ever even heard of this game?  Second, who in the blue fuck thought that would be a good example of anything but bad taste?  Its own website claims that it uses “elements of subjective documentary.”  …Wait, what?  “Subjective documentary”?  Hate to break it to you, but that is about as oxymoronic as you can be.  Just poke around the website for all of 15 seconds and you can see that this is not a game that should be played by anyone.

Art? No. Creepy? You betcha

Braid?  It may be a good example of indie success, but this is not art.  And Ebert’s comment about the game’s between-level story-telling being “on the level of a wordy fortune cookie” is pretty much spot-on from the video’s example.

Modest success does not equal art

Her last example, Flower — which just so happens to be made by her own developer — is her best chance, but Mr. Ebert completely misses the point:

The game is “about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural.” Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn’t say. Do you win if you’re the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?

So in one paragraph, he claims that a game can’t be art because you can win and there are points involved and blah blah blah, then he’s confused about a game in which there is no real score or particularly restrictive objectives, etc.  Here’s an idea: TRY THE GAME.  Could you imagine the fallout if Mr. Ebert wrote his personal opinion of a film (read: review) without watching it?  Without experiencing it?  But this is exactly how he’s writing off the whole of interactive media: without so much as a thought of trying the experience for himself.

The truth is that Flower is pretty close to being a “crossover” title into the art category.  Not because of a strong narrative or characters.  Not because of inspired and innovative gameplay.  But because of the feeling of serenity and carelessness it imparts upon the player.  Just take a look at a video:

Doesn’t it just make you want to take a nap or something?  It’s a sort of meditative…what’s the word I’m looking for?  Oh yeah, EXPERIENCE.

There are a great deal many more titles one could use, all of which would be news to Ebert, that could make the case much better.  Something with strong characters like Half Life 2, or a strong narrative like World In Conflict.  Hell, maybe even a Call of Duty title since it essentially just “happens to you” while you look on.  But here, we get to his big issue:

Obviously, I’m hopelessly handicapped because of my love of cinema.

In context, he’s not actually admitting that he just doesn’t get it — that he NEVER will get it.  But this is exactly what it comes down to: he thinks his passion is better than ours.

The three games she chooses as examples do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic. I repeat: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”

Yes, the three games Ms. Santiago chose were poor examples, but it’s incredibly closed-minded to assume that they represent all the medium has to offer.  Imagine if I was making the case that movies are not art and the only examples I had presented to me were Sharktopus, The Killer Shrews and…oh I dunno, something like Flower…pretty but vapid…let’s say Transformers 2.  Clearly my position will not have changed, and by Mr. Ebert’s logic, these three examples should be enough to convince me that nothing is, was or ever will be good enough to alter that.

Do [gamers] require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, “I’m studying a great form of art?”

We do not require validation.  At least, not from Roger Ebert.  With one article, he has shown just how ignorant and pompous a person can be.  To claim that nothing to this point is art is one thing.  To claim that nothing ever will be is ignorance of the highest order.  Mr. Ebert, not surprisingly, leaves out the quote with which Ms. Santiago closes her presentation (though she does not cite a source, so take it for what it’s worth):

85 percent of the juvenile crime which has been investigated has been found traceable either directly or indirectly to motion pictures.
-circa 1910

This is another thing he really doesn’t seem to grasp: cinema was once a new medium!  It’s had well over 100 years to develop.  By the time he became a critic, it had been going strong for more than 60 years.  Were the first “talkies” artistic films?  No.  They were, first and foremost, entertainment.  Video games have really only been around in commercial form for about 40 years, and have seen unprecedented growth in the past few years — reportedly worth about $32.6 billion in 2005, revenues are expected to reach nearly $66 billion by next year, all while movies hover around a comparatively modest $10 billion.  While he makes it clear that he does not consider financial success to be a determining factor in what is or not art (and rightly so), he seems happy to dismiss video games as nothing more than a passing fancy that creators use simply to make money.  Mr. Ebert clearly harbors some sort of resentment for the medium as a whole, as evidenced by a quote from the first article in which he made the claim that games will never be art:

For most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

I mean, really, how arrogant can you be?  So sitting in a darkened theater for a few hours, not talking to anyone, then looking down your nose at people who disagree with your opinion makes you, what…cultured?  Or is that what makes you civilized?  And how exactly does watching a person pretend to be someone he is not (an actor) make you more empathetic?

Again, proving why Ms. Santiago was really not the most fit to take Mr. Ebert head-on, we come to this:

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.

The implication here is that none of these “elements” can really be considered artistic in any way.  This is mostly correct, however the “Development” circle is likely meant to encompass the creative portions, and the information is poorly presented due to the presumably informed audience at the event.  But all of these elements are present in film as well (with perhaps the exception of publishing), and you’d have to be pretty stupid to think that these were the only things involved in producing such a project.  Again, Mr. Ebert’s arrogance gets the better of him.

Since this post has been quite long enough already, I’ll wrap things up here.  To me, art is more than a “thing.”  Music, paintings, movies, video games, etc. can all surely be art, but more important is a work’s goal: expression.  The beautiful thing about an artistic expression is that, while it will inevitably be quite personal, it can remain as such or have the broadest of appeal.  It all comes back to how subjective art is.

Having a Bachelor of Music degree, it was repeatedly driven into my head that things like this were art:

What manner of expression is this?  How can someone claim to have “good taste” and call this art?  I just don’t see it, but some do.  And Stockhausen was expressing…something.  My point being, not everyone has to “get it” for it to be art.

Let’s go back to the quote that started all this; the one where Ebert says no game to this point that is “worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”  I would ask Mr. Ebert to play only one game and tell me that it is not a smart, funny, witty, cultured, touching, engaging, incredible, one-of-a-kind, beautiful experience.

Tell me this is not art: