MasterKromm
Sentinel
- Joined
- February 28, 2010
- Messages
- 380
I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.
At this moment, 4,547 comments have rained down upon me for that blog entry. I'm informed by Wayne Hepner, who turned them into a text file: "It's more than Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and The Brothers Karamazov." I would rather have reread all three than vet that thread. Still, they were a good set of comments for the most part. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition.
If you assume I received a lot of cretinous comments from gamers, you would be wrong. I probably killed no more than a dozen. What you see now posted are almost all of the comments sent in. They are mostly intelligent, well-written, and right about one thing in particular:
I should not have written that entry without being more familiar with the actual experience of video games.
This is inarguable. Many of the comments continued by debating the definition of art, which, it was pointed out, I never provided. Many others defined art in terms that would include video games. I received dozens of names for video games that the posters said had affected them like art, and they told me why. Three or four games came up time and again.
In my actual experience, I have played "Cosmology of Kyoto," which I enormously enjoyed, and "Myst," for which I lacked the patience. Both games are from the infancy of the form. I'd played no others because—well, because I didn't want to. I particularly didn't want to play one right now, this moment, on demand…
I first expressed my opinion on video games in 2006. At a 2007 "Hollywood and Games Summit" conference, the filmmaker and game auteur Clive Barker responded to some of my statements. Under the circumstances, he was quite civilized. I responded, and you will find the link below. Barker studied English and philosophy at Liverpool, and understood where I was coming from. He said:
"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."…
I concluded without a definition that satisfied me. I had to be prepared to agree that gamers can have an experience that, for them, is Art. I don't know what they can learn about another human being that way, no matter how much they learn about Human Nature. I don't know if they can be inspired to transcend themselves. Perhaps they can. How can I say? I may be wrong. but if 'm not willing to play a video game to find that out, I should say so. I have books to read and movies to see. I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place.
Rest @ [SOURCE]
Is Ebert correct, are games capable of becoming art in the future but currently lacking "artistic" values/requisites? Or are games already a form of art?
IMO, as a medium, gaming offers a level of complexity and interactiveness that is unrivaled and as such has the potential to take art to another level altogether… For example, while I wasn't enamored with the Witcher, Ebert should check it out - the game does a good job of exploring relativism/gray morality(Though entirely fictitious, you also get to explore the character/person of Geralt)… Then again he does not want to even try, which (IMO) reeks of elitism.
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2010
- Messages
- 380