Video games can never be art (?!)

[FrieChamp]

I don't get your post nineaxis. The Mona Lisa should be labeled "Painting" considering how you labeled the other things.

no no, it is art!

yes it is. but so are literature, films etc.

shhh Sentura, I'm afraid he didn't get it...

[Steppenwolf]

This gets too confusing now

[-HP-]

Sarcasm and metaphors do that to topics. They have the ability to turn sane into a pseudo smart-insane.

[Sentura]

I don't get your post nineaxis. The Mona Lisa should be labeled "Painting" considering how you labeled the other things.

no no, it is art!

yes it is. but so are literature, films etc.

shhh Sentura, I'm afraid he didn't get it...

i think so too

smart-insane

word of the day. i'll put it to good use!

[Pericolos0]

I like art that has a strong singleplayer campaign backed up by solid multiplayer.

[General Vivi]

I like art that has a strong singleplayer campaign backed up by solid multiplayer.

[-HP-]

lol, this thread got Hurg'ed.

[Taylor]

I feel like writing an article for Gamasutra now. It will be entitled The Collapse of Expression: The Prestructuralist Theory of Narrative and Games as Art, and contain a singular

[Sentura]

I feel like writing an article for Gamasutra now. It will be entitled The Collapse of Expression: The Prestructuralist Theory of Narrative and Games as Art, and contain a singular

that really does sound smart-insane

[Taylor]

I still think my stance on ‘are games art’ is one of indifference. But I can see Roger’s argument is about something unquantifiable, that games do not have a soul, and I can take issue with that. Essentially, he’s in no position to judge. You can’t experience a game just by watching it - the same way you can’t experience a film by just hearing it or an album by looking at the liner notes. Games are about the interaction.

So, given that, I find it funny that half the games used to argue ‘games as art’ are often classified by purists as not being games. Of course, game (like art) is impossible to define, but would Passage and fl0wer being approved as art by Roger actually mean anything? We say games should not be judged as films because they’re interactive and then offer titles that downplay interaction.

This – for me – this is what gives games a soul. Frame data, level design, difficulty adjustment, artificial intelligence, and Bridget 2F cancelling 214K into FD into j.66 to IAD without jump start up. Not my emotional state when, after walking in a straight line, I discover it was all a complicated metaphor about the monotony of being monotonous.

[Nurb]

Roger Ebert presents a typical example of argumentation for the sake of wanting to be correct, as opposed to wanting to find out the truth. If you are somewhat of a rhetorician, you can make yourself seem correct on any given topic of discussion, providing that you twist or disregard the most compelling opposing arguments. Disregarding arguments like this is a big no-no if you are a professor writing a scientific report. Roger Ebert bring up many referenses in his article, and write in a way that somewhat resemble an academic report. However, Roger Ebert is a screen-writer, movie critic and blogger and certainly not a professor in the field of art. He has no real need to find out the truth, because his work will not be disputed. So Ebert is basically just expressing his opinion, which has just as little value as everyone elses. So the bottom line is:

I don't know what all the fuzz is about

[cincinnati]

surprised nobody's posted this yet

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/okay_kids_play_on_my_lawn.html

[Jetsetlemming]

surprised nobody's posted this yet

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/07/okay_kids_play_on_my_lawn.html

I can't think of a single artistic game that doesn't come preloaded with baggage that requires game knowledge and experience to work with. You need a History of Gaming under your belt, really. The same thing actually applies to movies- my favorite novel is One Hundred Years of Solitude, which covers a small South American town from its early 19th century inception to the mid 20th or so, and somewhere in the middle, as the town starts towards integration with larger society and modernization, it gets a movie theater. None of the characters like it, because they can't get over seeing someone die in one movie only to come back in another- the repeat performances of Hollywood actors turned them off completely to the medium.

Ebert really doesn't stand much of a chance of ever "getting" videogames. It really is something you had to have been there at the right personal time for. Same as movies. Same as books. You need education to properly appreciate these forms of entertainment.

Edit: Annoying. At the end of that article is a link to another article about Clive Barker, and I clicked it wanting to see what possible connection Clive Barker had to art and videogames (Personally: Undying far outmatches Midnight Meat Train as far as artistic merit goes, though the part when a guy's hit in the back of his head with a hammer and his eyeball pops out and hits the person standing in front of him was brilliant) but the link's dead.