Video Games as Art

 Donkey Kong, 1981

I recently read an article by the esteemed Roger Ebert entitled "Video Games Can Never Be Art." Ebert's core declaration is this: "No one in or out of the [gaming industry] has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." Regardless of what you may think of video games, I think it can be agreed that this is a distressingly strong assertion. All art is, after all, subjective, even within the fields Ebert mentions. Generational differences play a large part as well - I imagine that Dickens might have a hard time accepting the novels of Cormac McCarthy (an author that Ebert specifically praises in the article) as "art". Then again, Dickens might not even think of his own writing as art; only relatively recently have we been so keen to draw a line between what is and isn't art across all media. My point is that Ebert is positioning himself as a voice of authority on what can be considered art - an egregious error as it is - and views video games with a fairly narrow mindset.

More after the jump!

The Lewis Chessmen, 12th century

Let us look at Ebert's arguments for just why a video game cannot be art. First, he seems to believe that if you can win, it's not art. There are rules, goals, etc., and these somehow make it a game instead of art. he says that one "might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but...then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story... Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them." However, he never explains what it is about the playable nature of games that precludes them from artistry. Many games progress in a linear fashion, giving the player no true choice regarding how the events will unfold. How is this different from the linear storytelling of a novel or film? The only difference I can see is that players must complete certain tasks for the story to progress itself - usually, there is no real agency and no real changes to the story can occur, so I fail to see Ebert's argument that games' "playability" somehow prevents them from being art. And...that's really it. Ebert looks at a few examples of games labeled as artistic and tears them down on an individual basis, but he does not provide any overarching support for his earlier thesis. At one point, he ponders the fact that chess genius Bobby Fischer never tried to claim his sport as an art form. Maybe that's true of the game itself, but can anyone deny the artistry visible in (and necessary to produce) chess sets? The ancient Norse carvings of the Lewis chessmen, or the Faberge set, or Salvador Dali's set - these all have plenty of artistic merit of their own. Perhaps Ebert needs to look beyond the concept of "a video game" and start seeing the artistry in the way those games are designed and presented. At the end of this blog entry, I will share some images and videos from games that I believe to exhibit true art in their atmosphere and design, and I hope that you will consider their legitimacy more than Ebert has.

 Action Comics #1, 1938 - Superman's first appearance

I have to wonder what Mr. Ebert thinks of comic books. Another of his articles uses an altered comic book cover as its thumbnail image, which implies that he has at least a modicum of respect for the medium. Comics started as simple escapist fantasies to entertain children. In 1938 we saw the introduction of Superman: essentially a Boy Scout with astounding powers, doing nothing but good and giving bad guys their comeuppance. Now, comics are recognized as having at least the potential to be true art, and some have achieved wide acclaim as legitimate literature. Alan Moore's Watchmen, published as a serial between 1986 and 1987, treated its superheroes like real people with real desires and flaws and emotions. Once it was published as a single work, it managed to make TIME's list of the 100 Greatest Novels. Not just "graphic novels", but "novels", and while it wasn't at the top of the list, Watchmen landed only a few spaces away from books like The Sun Also Rises and To Kill a Mockingbird. Another famous comic books is Art Spiegelman's Maus, an illustrated representation of Spiegelman's father's Holocaust experiences. Though all the characters are represented as animals - Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, and so on - the comic maintains an appropriately somber tone and somehow makes the Holocaust more relatable.

 Maus Vol. II, 1991

Clearly comic books have transformed from mindless entertainment into a serious storytelling medium. So even if we were to concede that there is nothing artful about the current state of video games, who is to say that games will not undergo a similar transformation? Says Ebert, "Perhaps it is foolish of me to say 'never,' because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form." Well, comic books went from pulp to art in roughly fifty years. The video game industry been around since Pong entered people's homes in 1975. That means they've been developing and maturing for thirty-five years already. I would personally argue that several video games have already achieved a status of "art", but let's just see what Ebert thinks of gaming after another fifteen years of maturation. Near the end of his article, Ebert asks "Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? ...Why aren't gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves? ... Do they require validation?" I (and most other gamers) wish to defend video games not on behalf of the people playing the games, but on behalf of those who make them. Many game designers surely feel they are making art, and their work is being unfairly disqualified from that aspiration.

Here are a few examples of games that I believe to have achieved art in one war or another, and I hope you will agree with me. Consider the character design, level design, general presentation/atmosphere, and musical composition. At the same time, take my word that the storytelling in these particular games is as complex, moving, and skillful as in most novels or films.

 Shadow of the Colossus, 2005 - click for video. If you're impatient, I recommend watching the first minute or so, then skipping to 5:20 and watching the rest. This will give you an excellent idea of the emotional impact possible - even without dialogue or narration - in video game storytelling.

Bioshock, 2007 - click for video. An excellent example of narrative video game storytelling, and a showcase of the game's "majestic yet crumbling art deco utopia" style.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, 2003 - click for video. An example of particularly unique design in a game: extremely stylized, bright colors, almost like a moving, playable comic book. This video is the game's introductory sequence, which describes the events of previous games in the series in the form of a fairy tale, and is illustrated like a series of woodcut prints.