Arthouse Games

Debate: Arthouse Games vs. Ebert

by jcr13

Saturday, July 28, 2007 [2:47 am]

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Can games be art?

It all started back in October of 2005, when Ebert reviewed the film Doom and gave it one star. A few days later, a gamer wrote to Ebert and insisted that he had missed the point---Doom wasn't supposed to be a good, watchable film; it was supposed to be a tribute to a seminal video game. The Kurosawa film Rashomon was mentioned as comparable in terms of---shall we say---seminality to the game Doom. In response, Ebert planted the seed that would eventually grow into the vine that we are all still climbing. He wrote, "As long as there is a great movie unseen or a great book unread, I will continue to be unable to find the time to play video games."

A few weeks later, Ebert expanded on that point, claiming that books and films are better mediums than games. A few weeks after that, Ebert dropped his first explicit "games can't be art" bombshell, citing the lack of authorial control, due to player choice, as the hurdle that would forever keep games from catching up with art-capable mediums like literature and film.

Ebert kept quiet about games for a year or so after that. Then along came Mr. Clive Barker, who, somewhat clumsily, claimed that games can be art (a video of his full keynote would be nice---anyone got it?). Just last week, Ebert responded to Barker in mock-dialog style, somewhat revising his former position: games can be art, but not high art, as he understands it. Kotaku just posted a worthwhile feature that responds to Ebert's latest.

It's time for me to chime in here, and I'm going to continue the mock-dialog style. I don't know Ebert, but I feel like I do, because I've been reading his reviews for years. This man knows film, and I respect him deeply. Okay, let's get started.

Barker: It's evident that Ebert had a prejudiced vision of what the medium is, or more importantly what it can be.

Ebert: The word "prejudiced" often translates as "disagrees with me." I might suggest that gamers have a prejudiced view of their medium, and particularly what it can be. Games may not be Shakespeare quite yet, but I have the prejudice that they never will be, and some gamers are prejudiced that they will.

Rohrer: The word "prejudiced" can also translate into "making unfounded generalizations about a class based on experience with too few example members of that class." In other words, since Pong wasn't art and Pac-Man wasn't art, then no games are art. Via Webster, it can also translate into "an opinion made without adequate basis." In other words, Mr. Ebert, if you are too busy reading great books and watching great films to play any games, let alone great games, how can you be sure that no game out there has reached the heights of Shakespeare yet?

I'm going to beat a tired drum for a minute and remind you that video games are a young medium---not quite pushing 50 years yet. Heck, it took English literature 400 years to move up from monster-mash schlock like Beowulf to the soap operas of Shakespeare, and another 500 years for us to hit high-art pay-dirt with the likes of Joyce and Nabokov. Yeah, film was on a faster track, but it still took some time---the tip of the art-film iceberg wasn't really scraped until the late 1920s, more that 60 years after the advent of moving pictures.

Barker: We can debate what art is, we can debate it forever. If the experience moves you in some way or another ... even if it moves your bowels ... I think it is worthy of some serious study.

Ebert: Perhaps if the experience moves your bowels, it is worthy of some serious medical study. Many experiences that move me in some way or another are not art. A year ago I lost the ability (temporarily, I hope) to speak. I was deeply moved by the experience. It was not art.

Rohrer: [no response]

Barker: It used to worry me that the New York Times never reviewed my books. But the point is that people like the books. Books aren't about reviewers. Games aren't about reviewers. They are about players.

Ebert: A reviewer is a reader, a viewer or a player with an opinion about what he or she has viewed, read or played. Whether that opinion is valid is up to his audience, books, games and all forms of created experience are about themselves; the real question is, do we as their consumers become more or less complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, philosophical (and so on) by experiencing them? Something may be excellent as itself, and yet be ultimately worthless. A bowel movement, for example.

Rohrer: Now we're getting down to some nuts and bolts---what, Mr. Ebert, is your definition of art? Is it really about "authorial intent?" Certainly, plenty of non-art has authorial intent. I'm reading a slightly different definition in there, something about improving the consumers as people. "Look at this painting and you'll walk away understanding something new and important about yourself, so this painting is art." Notice your choice of adjectives: complex, thoughtful, empathetic, and so on. These certainly can be seen as "high" characteristics of the human makeup. What about pieces of work that simply make their consumers hungry, angry, scared, excited, or sexually aroused? Instead of high art, we might call those works food advertisements, war propaganda, horror films, action films, and pornography, respectively. Those pieces aren't high art, perhaps, because they don't engender high emotions. That's not a perfect definition, but it's a much better dividing criteria for art and non-art than "authorial intent."

If that's your definition of art---improving the consumer along one of these noble axes---then games are already art, and I am proof positive of that fact. I can think of two games that changed my philosophical understanding of the world and reality (Metal Gear Solid 2 and Braid). Furthermore, I saw both a documentary and a narrative film about the Columbine shooting, but neither gave me the kind of profound insights that I got from playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

Barker: I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written 'Romeo and Juliet' as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn't taken the damn poison. If only he'd have gotten there quicker.

Ebert: He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would "Romeo and Juliet" have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. "King Lear" was also subjected to rewrites; it's such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare's or Barker's, is superior, deeper, more moving, more "artistic"?

Rohrer: Of course, you must believe in collaborative art. A work does not need to be created solely by "an artist" to be art, does it? Sure, novels are usually written by one author, and paintings are usually painted by one painter, but what about your favorite medium, film? Most films are collaborations. In fact, the very best art films are those where all of the collaborative elements are top-notch: great writing, great acting, great lighting, great directing, great camera work, and so on. Sure, there is collaboration involved in the publication of a novel---editing, cover art, and binding---but the core work has a single author, and the other elements are really side notes. You never hear someone say, "The writing and story were excellent, but I can't ignore the lousy typesetting job---two thumbs down."

I'm just guessing here, but didn't the "too many fingers in the creative pie" problem stand as a barrier to film's acceptance as a high art form? Regardless, we all accept that film can be art, and that collaboration does not in fact spoil art.

Furthermore, you must acknowledge that some form of audience collaboration is necessary for an art experience. Readers don't sit back passively and let the words wash over them. Instead, they actively imagine the unfolding narrative, including character's faces and room layouts, in their own minds. There's an old saying about novels being superior to movies "because the pictures are better," and we all know how disappointing a film adaptation of a book can be if we've already read the book beforehand.

For film, perhaps there is a bit less collaboration on the audience's part. Some films, however, demand quite a bit of participation, leaving the audience hanging at the end with unanswered questions. The art experience continues after the audience leaves the theater as they discuss the film with each other or simply think about it by themselves. A perfect example might be the aforementioned Kurosawa film Rashomon, which you review as a Great Movie. I haven't seen this film yet, but my understanding is that it tells four variations of the same events as recalled by four observers, and it leaves the audience hanging with no clear indication of which version is actually true. Part of the art experience, then, might be selecting which version of the events seems most believable, and perhaps asking yourself why your belief leans in that particular direction.

Couldn't we say that the very best art films are the ones that rely on the most heavy lifting from the audience? In other words, if you walk out of the theater with no unresolved issues and nothing to ponder, did you really just see an art film? How can a work improve us deeply as people if it does not pull us in closely as collaborators?

In fact, I claim that this kind of audience collaboration is crucial for a work to attain the upper reaches of artistic achievement.

However, if we push too far in that direction, can't we cross the line? I mean, if we start pulling audience members up on stage with the actors, we end up with a real mess. What you're saying Mr. Ebert, I think, is that too much audience participation spoils the art. If the viewer (or player) starts to usurp the creator in terms of authorial intent, then the viewer becomes too much of the artist. Of course, a book is nothing but paper and ink without a reader, and a movie is just reflected light and air vibrations without an audience, but we don't ever call the reader of a book a co-author or artist.

But if the player of the game is rightfully the co-artist, and a given gameplay experience (or path through some hypothetical Romeo and Juliet narrative web) is the work, then couldn't that particular gameplay instance be a work of high art in itself? Maybe the game is a half-finished work of art waiting for a co-artist, like a half-filled canvas, or like a screenplay waiting for a film crew. Maybe some co-artists are particularly good, and the resulting experience is high art, while others are bad, and the result is schlock. Maybe Mr. Barker's choices in the narrative would produce an even finer work than Shakespeare's original---is that not possible? Of course, it would be only for Barker himself to experience and enjoy---an ethereal work of art, of sorts.

If we continue down this track, we might conclude that the games themselves are not art, but instead tools that have the potential of producing art experiences for their users. In fact, I have seen hints of this with Facade. I've had good Facade runs that produce good, interesting stories and bad runs that produce bad, boring stories. There's a "script output" feature for a reason: so you can carry home a token of your high artistic achievement if you ever hit pay-dirt.

Barker: We should be stretching the imaginations of our players and ourselves. Let's invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art.

Ebert: If you can go through "every emotional journey available," doesn't that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time, I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what?

Rohrer: You're right on this one, I think. A game where you can "go anywhere and do anything" might lack enough focus to land in art territory. Wouldn't that just be a simulation of real life? On the other hand, aren't there so-called "verite" art films that do just that---give you a slice of life, raw and unfiltered, complete with real-time shaving and teeth-brushing? As such a film can be an artistic commentary on life, so could such a game be. It might get you to ask yourself deep questions like, "Why am I playing this?"

I strongly disagree with the claim that "[a]rt seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion." Take Rashomon as an example again: not a smorgasbord of choices, perhaps, but at least four choices, and not one of them inevitable. On the other hand, I might be reading too deeply here---you might simply mean that every work of art needs to follow a fixed track toward one ending as set by the creator (which Rashomon, as a linear film, certainly does). I disagree with that requirement too. Take Robert Coover's story "The Babysitter" as a fine example of a work of art with no fixed track. Plenty of hypertext fiction, widely recognized as a medium capable of high art, also violates the supposed requirement of linearity.

Barker: I'm not doing an evangelical job here. I'm just saying that gaming is a great way to do what we as human beings need to do all the time -- to take ourselves away from the oppressive facts of our lives and go somewhere where we have our own control.

Ebert: Spoken with the maturity of an honest and articulate 4-year old. I do not have a need "all the time" to take myself away from the oppressive facts of my life, however oppressive they may be, in order to go somewhere where I have control. I need to stay here and take control. Right now, for example, I cannot speak, but I am writing this. You lose some, you win some.

Rohrer: Yeah, games can allow us to escape from our lives into worlds where we are more powerful, but that has little to do with whether or not games are art.

Ebert: That said, let me confess I enjoy entertainments, but I think it important to know what they are. I like the circus as much as the ballet. I like crime novels. (I just finished an advance copy of Henry Kisor's Cache of Corpses, about GPS geo-caching gamesters and a macabre murder conspiracy. Couldn't put it down.) And I like horror stories, where Edgar Allen Poe in particular represents art. I think I know what Stan Brakhage meant when he said Poe invented the cinema, lacking only film.

Rohrer: That leads me to wonder how Poe pole-vaults over the art bar. How does he change the reader in a profound way, if that's your true definition? I recall feeling very scared while reading Poe, but that's about it. Are you perhaps confusing high art with high craft a bit here?

Ebert: I treasure escapism in the movies. I tirelessly quote Pauline Kael: The movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have no reason to go. I admired "Spiderman II," "Superman," and many of the "Star Wars," Indiana Jones, James Bond and Harry Potter films. The idea, I think, is to value what is good at whatever level you find it. "Spiderman II" is one of the great comic superhero movies but it is not great art.

Rohrer: Who tried to connect escapism with art in the first place? Oh, yeah, that was Mr. Barker. Oh well.

Ebert: Barker is right that we can debate art forever. I mentioned that a Campbell's soup could be art. I was imprecise. Actually, it is Andy Warhol's painting of the label that is art. Would Warhol have considered Clive Barker's video game "Undying" as art? Certainly. He would have kept it in its shrink-wrapped box, placed it inside a Plexiglas display case, mounted it on a pedestal, and labeled it "Video Game."

Rohrer: It seems, Mr. Ebert, that you have been more interested in clever zingers and rhetoric than actual discussion of the topic at hand. Granted, you started from one of the weakest "games are art" arguments ever committed to text. You have received better arguments as submissions to your Answer Man column, and you received a slew of better arguments in response to your latest dialog. In the future, I hope you pick the strongest argument and respond directly to that one. I think this is a discussion worth having, and I think you are a person worth having it with.