Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet
Some of you may have heard about Roger Ebert’s disparaging comments about video games. If not, I will sum it up for you here.
“The nature of the medium [video games] prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship [however elegant or sophisticated] to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. For most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.” – Roger Ebert
Later, Ebert updated his opinions that games are art, just not high art.
“A year or so ago, I rashly wrote that video games could not be art. That inspired a firestorm among gamers, who wrote me countless messages explaining why I was wrong, and urging me to play their favorite games. Of course, I was asking for it. Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell’s soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art…” – Roger Ebert
This may sound blasphemous, but in a way, I agree with Roger Ebert’s assessment of our industry. Video games are currently not high art and they are an inferior medium to film and literature. I am not saying that video games can never be “high art,” it is that games have not yet reached that point. Video games have many challenges that other mediums do not have. Video games are a relatively young art form, are difficult to create, have to be “fun” and mass-market games have spiraling budgets, which cause a reluctance to experiment. If we are able to move past the video game industry’s self-imposed limitations, games have the potential to be the most powerful and important art form we have. In this article I will define what I believe “high art” is and discuss the challenges that the gaming industry faces to attain this important recognition.
Other gamers may challenge what I am saying by pointing to games such as Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, or Okami as “high art.” I would disagree. Stylized graphics do not make a game high art. High art is a work of importance. Works of importance are pieces of art that have cultural significance that include social commentary. Games as a whole are missing these key ingredients. Where are our games that deal head-on with themes like religious fanaticism, racism or the holocaust? While there are hundreds of films and books dealing with these topics, video games in the pursuit of fun and sales, avoid these touchy subjects at all costs.
Games = Fun
If you look at all the end of the year best of video games lists, what one word determines the placement of these games on those lists? Fun. If you peruse the talk schedule of the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), it seems every other talk is based on how to make games fun. Being a game designer, the main discussion point in every game mechanic meeting is how to get the section of gameplay to be fun. Maybe all of this focus on fun is a bad thing. That possibility is just what Warren Spector discusses in his article; “Fun” is a Four-Letter Word.
But, the word “fun” has other problems. It kind of locks us into a “games are for kids” mentality. It implies that games are good for just one thing: passing time in an enjoyable manner, for want of a better definition.
And perhaps most damning to me is that all this focus on passing time puts a ceiling, of sorts, above us that separates us from other media, media that are allowed to strive for something other than simple “fun-ness.”
Movies, books, musical compositions and so on are – or can be – fun to watch/read/listen to, but there’s nothing in the definition or judgment of those other media that requires fun. We’re the only medium that says to itself, “This is what you must be and all you will ever be.”
– Warren Spector
The mandatory “fun” is what pigeonholes the video game medium into a escapist distraction and puts a self-imposed limitation on video games that prevents it from reaching the high art plateau. I recently watched the movie The Terrorist and asked myself the question, was that movie fun? The film was thought provoking, sad and even disturbing, but can hardly be described as fun. What separates films from games as a medium is film’s willingness to tackle difficult subject matter. In the case of The Terrorist, it chronicles the life of a pregnant female suicide bomber leading up to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. It is hard to imagine a video game based on the same subject matter. This drives home how mature an art form film is and how much further video games have to go to be considered high art. If we do not limit ourselves to games = fun, we could one day see video games encompass so much more. Perhaps video games could be relabeled as interactive media and we could then see games be on equal footing as films. We could have games that genuinely explore and tackle real cultural and societal issues.
Budgets and Sales: Willingness to Experiment
The reality we live with right now is that fun blockbuster video games receive all the press, accolades and most importantly, sales. Publishers make games to sell and games that tackle societal ills or are not “fun” are unproven. Game budgets are now commonly soaring into and beyond the 20 million dollar range and as games get more expensive, publishers are becoming less and less willing to take chances. It is difficult for game developers to tackle difficult subjects that may alienate or divide their intended audience of Western males age 12 to 35.
Here is an example of a game developer’s willingness to make decisions based off of sales. Seth Schiesel of the New York Times wrote an article questioning the Ubisoft Montreal’s decision to Anglicize the main character of the Prince of Persia.
“What are we to make of a “Prince of Persia” who talks and behaves like a 17-year-old American mall rat? A “Prince of Persia” with blue eyes, fully Anglicized facial features and what looks like a tan he picked up on spring break? Is it taking a video game too seriously to shrink in distaste from such characterizations?”
It was no mistake that the Prince of Persia is Anglicized. This was done to not alienate the developer’s intended Western audience. Yet the game gets a pass for blatantly disregarding reality, simply because it is a game. If we want games to be viewed as high art, we have to look more closely at our games and not take the approach that all that matters is sales.
It is this sales driven mentality and unwillingness to take chances that have placed a ceiling above this industry’s head and stymied the growth and acceptance of games by the mainstream. If we do not occasionally move away from the big-action-summer style of games, we will never reach that pervasive mainstream audience. Games may be expensive to produce, but so are movies and even large budget movies do not shy away from socially important issues.
The first step to having games be accepted as high art is to be willing to take on criticism and be held accountable for our decisions. We can no longer fall back on the excuse, “It is just a game.”
Complexity in Games
One of the major disadvantages of the video games medium is that games are very complex and difficult to produce. In order to create a mass-market game, it can take team sizes in excess of 100+ developers, each specializing in one of these four disciplines: programming, design, animators and artists well over two years. To a certain degree, independent filmmakers are on an even playing field with bigger budget film projects. The differences between a low budget independent film and a big budget film are much less discernable from the audience’s perspective than an independent video game and a big budget blockbuster video game. With film, anybody can pick up a camera and with post-production and editing software readily available, can make a highly polished mass-marketable film. This is not the case with the complexity required to bring a polished video game to market. It is much more difficult for smaller budget and more experimental games to gain acceptance by wide audiences because the production values between these types of games and games with much larger budgets are so wide and easily noticeable to even a casual observer.
Just as technology has made the independent filmmaker more on par with a studio production, I am hopeful that the day comes when technology closes the gap between independent games and big budget games. There are signs that this movement is already in progress with game development suites like Adobe Flash and Microsoft’s XNA studio. When independent gamemakers are able to remove the disparity between their products they will be more able to compete for the consumers’ dollars and it will empower our industry to push and experiment with new social themes and genres.
Video Games are a Young Industry
When film first took form, few would have called it a “high art” form. It took over a hundred years before it gained that distinction. Many parallels can be drawn from when film was in its infancy to video games of today. When film first appeared on the scene it was a spectacle, but frowned on as not comparable to live theater. The same can be said of games in comparison to films today. It heartens me that the video game industry has come so far and so fast on the technology front, but we cannot neglect our responsibility to our audience to move them to think. We cannot simply dismiss Roger Ebert’s criticism, but instead we need to take it as a challenge and use our medium to make our audience more “cultured, civilized and empathetic”. By doing so we elevate video games as a whole into the realm of high art. Games are a young form of media and in the years to come we will be given the opportunity to answer our critics and gain the respect of the mainstream, let us not waste it.
Conclusion
We are at a crossroads and must confront the self-imposed limitations we have placed on ourselves and start viewing video games as something more than mere escapist fare. It as a challenge to our industry as a whole to produce games that tackle difficult themes and strive for more than simple “fun.” Video games have boundless possibilities and are uniquely suited to surpass any other mediums that currently exist because there is a level of connectivity through open-ended and collaborative interactivity that no other media can hope to match. If we are willing to take head-on serious societal themes and not shirk our responsibilities, I believe we will see the day that the video game is looked upon as more than a way to mindlessly pass time, but as deeply important and socially relevant.
I would like to thank Amadeo Plaza for our discussions on this topic.
See my other related articles:
Become a Video Game Designer: Everything You Need to Know Part 1
Top 5 Greatest Moments in Competitive Gaming (eSports)
What Video Games Taught Me About Life
Low Skill Cap and Luck (RNG) in World of Warcraft PVP
Best Games of All Time by Genre Part 1
10 Greatest Video Game Designers Part 1
Call of Duty: World at War Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
What’s Bad About Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer Mode?
Dead Space Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
Gears of War 2 Through the Eyes of a Game Designer
8 of the Most Underrated or Overlooked Video Games of All Time
Best MMA Fights & Genki Sudo: Real Life Video Game Character
Tags: are games high art?, blog, Comparison, film, film vs. games, game design, games are a waste of time, games are not art, games are not high art, games as a serious art form, Games do not need to be fun, games opinion piece, limitless units, limitlessunits, limitlessunits.com, movie, movies versus video games, review, riposte101, roger ebert, roger ebert games are not art, Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet, social commentary in games, tony huynh, video game design, video game education, Video Games, video games are a young industry, video games are inferior to film and literature, Warren Spector
This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:48 am and is filed under Video Games, film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
21 Responses to “Roger Ebert is Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet”
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I completely agree with this article. Since most definitions of high art that I can find suggest that high art, by definition, tackles lofty material while being unconcerned with entertainment….. well I don’t know how to end that statement. You are right. Heh.
I can’t say I can complain about agreement.
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Well, sorry for my ignorance, but I decided after reading ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ and ‘ICO’ were only termed as art becuase of the artistic direction (which honestly does make me question whether you have played it at ALL). And then skippign down to ‘Games=Fun’ and ‘Budget and Sales: Willingess to Experiment’ as sub-headings, I knew I disagreed.
Not completely, but I will leave that to last.
Now, let me bring up both Team ICO productions (maybe you should play them). These games are far more than just an art direction, which incidently is not ’stylized’ at all. The games are achieveing things that no others have before, through the interaction, and control schemes. The control is devisive, in that it is EMPATHETIC to the avatar.
The games are not fun in this way, they are almost emulative. The way you hold L1 to hold onto Yorda’s hand in ICO. The way the horse in Shadow of the Colossus is not actually a directly controlled character, you control the avatar on the back of the horse, it won’t run off a cliff. The way in which you cling onto a Colossi, and strike maybe 6 times maximum to take it down. Facilitating each action yourself. Ask anyone, these emultive or simultive movements aren’t fun, and why can’t a great movie, have action scenes? Key word here is entertainment as opposed to fun.
The game also has social commentary if you are willing to find it. Infact plent of games have social commentarys, they just aren’t overly deep. This game has heavy and apparent political commentry, and symbolism.
And as for the Budget and Willingess point, both ICo and Shadow of the Colossus were first party! Sales weren’tt the aim of the ‘games’. Which collectively have sold over 2 million. They are there to bolster the hardwares lineup for Sony, and a superb series for Sony to tout exclusively.
I do however agree these are only the first baby steps in this yougn media, but I totally disagree with the rest of your points purely becuase of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. People who mention Okami, have clearly missed the point.
This was a quick and scribbly point, sorry I didn’t put as much effort in as your article, but I so avidly disagree, and not becuase I am a gamer either.
Please, I’d love to discuss this with you further in a less pressured environment. Please join this group and discuss with us there. One of the last places in the corner of the internet to hold sensible conversation:
http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_threads.php?group_id=121
This article has an interesting perspective on where the video game industry stands and what it must do. I am all for, “confronting the self-imposed limitations” of video games. However, I don’t think “fun” is a limitation that we impose upon video games, I think it defines what video games are, add all games for that matter.
Of course you wouldn’t ask yourself if a movie was fun; fun is an active experience, movies aren’t active. But certainly asking if you enjoyed the movie is legitimate. Does it matter if a independent film, that deals with heavy social and political issues, is enjoyable? Does it matter if the film is good or not? Of course, this is subjective, much like fun, but any reasonable person would agree that it has something to do with the overall presentation. In order for a game to be a game it must have gameplay and if this gameplay wasn’t enjoyable then why would I continue to play this game?
I will concede that if a game, or movie, is attempting to take on issues that are not usually in the realm of games then I think we should give it some lee-way for presentation or gameplay. Much like a movie, the presentation of the game mechanics can not hinder or detract from the enjoyment of the game.
I think the biggest obstacle is interactivity. If you want to create a compelling narrative then your story structure is probably going to be pretty rigid, much like film and literature. In a game this means you have to limit the number of choices that you can let the player make. For example, you can not let the player kill NPC’s that are vital to the plot of the story. If you let the play have a lot of choice then either you create some pretty advanced AI that reacts and changes depending on the choice you make allowing you to continue to tell the story. Or, you drop the story almost entirely. This is where we are at in the current video game paradigm. Games that pretend to give you choice, (Fallout 3, Fable 2) rarely let you makes choices that pertain to the main story. All the choices I ever made only affected secondary, or tertiary, characters and environments.
I personally think the complexity of story telling compounded with the complexity of game development won’t allow many games to be considered high art and good (in the traditional sense). But I sure am hoping that someone can pull it off.
Hey Erik,
Thanks for the thought out response.
You say that fun defines video games. I agree with you. Perhaps one day video games will cease to be called games and be called Interactive Media so that they do not have to be only “fun.” You would continue to not play with the game, but interact with it because it is not fun, but because it is interesting or thought-provoking like my example of the movie the Terrorist.
Kind of off-topic, but if you want to play a game with a great deal of choice making you shouldn’t miss Deus Ex. One of my favorites.
“I personally think the complexity of story telling compounded with the complexity of game development won’t allow many games to be considered high art and good (in the traditional sense). But I sure am hoping that someone can pull it off.”
You and me also.
“Other gamers may challenge what I am saying by pointing to games such as Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, or Okami as “high art.” I would disagree. Stylized graphics do not make a game high art.”
So that leaves Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.
Now for the rest of the argument. You should know that dealing with the Holocaust, racism etc. – that means jack all. High art deals with humanity at its most base. It’s able to explore a segment of (universal) human existence, emotion or experience in a profound way. When a filmmaker or writer isolates a segment of humanity, or worse, a human with their own quirks and achievements (such as for a biopic), they make something alien and unrecognisable.
Furthermore, art is not, as some people tend to mistake it for, “any sort of creative production.”
You’re correct in assuming that the problem is self-imposed limitations, especially the one that states games must be fun. That’s not wrong. Games MUST be fun to be succesful games, but video games aren’t a medium. That’s the biggest misconception, and Warren Spector falls for it.
We’re talking about the interactive medium here, and there’s a myriad of potential within the now widened walls.
Sales are sadly very relevant now, because of high budgets, and because low budget works have difficulty attaining a presentable standard. I’m not talking about glossy polish, but about a human character emoting when it’s called for rather than looking like a statue a la Mass Effect. The only problem with silent films was that people were speaking and no words came out.
Now, I have to both agree and disagree with Erik here. Agree with games being inherently fun, disagree that there must be an enjoyable aspect in art.
I think art, especially high art has to challenge you, teach you and change you. Most films Ebert champions don’t do that, but he has personal, irrelevant criteria on which he judges them. Lack of women is a slight against the film in his book, so you know.
I suggest you play Shadow and Ico (or play them again). Don’t look for the irrelevant aspects of a work – social/contemporary commentary (it has none), symbolism (there is none) or ‘well developed’ story and characters (they’re there as a foundation). Think about it this way. In real life, do we have stories? Do one man’s actions represent the entirety of a political movement in all its complexity? Do things actually symbolise other things? Does the light change or does soft, tragic background music kick in when someone dies? Art reflects life!
Take a look at the loyalty Agro shows you, and how it is built up by you calling for him or him running to meet you. How you need him to defeat several colossi. The devotion the Wanderer maintains for someone he still holds dear, even in their death and despite his progressive illness. Also bear in mind that none of this is established in cutscenes or with non-interactive tools.
I mean, it’s not exactly profound, and most of it is scratching the surface, but that’s just perfect when the next best thing has its head in the clouds.
Shadow gives you zero choice about your actions, and choice is worthless when it comes to art anyway.
Sorry, I should’ve also added a few thoughts on critical darlings like Braid, Passage and The Marriage.
The Marriage is especially worthless, reducing a marriage to a set of symbols and abstract concepts. It’s quite insulting really. What the man’s supposedly saying by making any false move end the game is that a marriage is fragile. How shallow is that? See L’Atalante for a beautiful example of something that understands human relationships (one of the all time greats).
Braid tries to be fun, and Blow’s philosophy is that we must make games that are profound, rather than interactive works. That’s impossible, seeing as orienting something towards entertainment is exactly what prevents it from achieving artistry. Mostly, his artistic ideas follow The Marriage’s. Symbols and whatnot.
Thanks for the blog, and it has lead me to wonder about what is this thing called “high art”.
If i look at your definition and i quote “High art is a work of importance. Works of importance are pieces of art that have cultural significance that include social commentary.” If you use that definition on art, like i see it “das Kapital” “Mein Kampf” and “The Wealth of Nations” are all high art, and i would find it hard to find the social commentary in “Mona Lisa” and “Vase with 12 sunflowers” therefore they are not high art per definition. Where as be the means of you definition i could argue that Bioshock and MGS4 are “high art”. There i agree with Erik
The point i am trying to make is like the concept love, the concept art is tied in with our feelings and how we experience things it has almost a different meaning for each individual.
Also the biggest hurdle in my opinion in considering video games art is not necessarily fun but the fact how we have experienced what has be called art through out the ages, or the interactivity like Erik mentioned. In the past enjoying art has almost always been passive you listen, watch and read the work/performance where as in a video game you are in someway a performer or the conductor of the work. And since we are controlling it how can that be art, a feeling many artist share with us commoners, many times i have heard artist* have trouble defining them as artist.
*whom i define as artists
just my thoughts
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[...] Bioshock is the most important game of this console generation. Bioshock not only succeeds as a well-crafted game, but transcends being “just a game” by enticing the player to think about philosophical ideas like Objectivism and Altruism as well as important topics such as government oversight and stem cell research. Bioshock is a game that shows the promise and the flexibility of our industry. For those of you interested, I explore the topic of social commentary in games further in my article: Roger Ebert was Right: Games are Not High Art…Yet. [...]
I would put Passage clearly in the Art column. I would even argue that it comes close to high art.
Passage is an interesting game. I won’t ruin it for other people. For those of you interested here is a link to passage.
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/
i agree with you and i even agree with you on the first three games mentioned (ico, shadow, okami). video games these days focus more and more on entertainment over anything else and it is not just the industry but also the consumers who want to be entertained. i agree with roger’s second statement, video games now are not on the same level in art as films and novels. but it can be.
my definition of art (or at least a part of it) is that art can stand the test of time. and not a lot of games can do this… their relevance decreases as newer generations come into the video game scene.
the only thing i disagree with you is that the industry is young. it is not the industry but it is the maturity of the games. when i play god of war, despite its supposedly great non-cliche storyline, i could care less about the story as long as i’m pulling off combos.
the funny thing is, when i hear someone say “games are art” it only occurs when art and video games are mentioned in the same sentence. but no where else.
[...] on Spector’s argument, Huynh wrote: It heartens me that the video game industry has come so far and so fast on the technology front, [...]
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus don’t have cultural significance and social commentary? Since when? Have you actually played those games?
Matthew Tran for some reason thought it made sense to say:
“my definition of art (or at least a part of it) is that art can stand the test of time. and not a lot of games can do this… their relevance decreases as newer generations come into the video game scene”
Wow, could you be more wrong about this? Do you live under a rock? There actually is literally tons of nostalgia and a market for retro games. Any truth there may have been in your comment (there is interest in new games strictly for their cutting edge graphics but the same is true for film) is rendered utterly fail by the fact that great games actually do stand the test of time and remain quite relevant, in exactly the same way that great films do.
Fail comment is fail.
does the guy who wrote this blog actually work in the game industry? That’s pretty sad. He must be one of those “too busy making games to actually play any of them” people, because the things he’s saying are so fucking off base. I’ve played more games than I can count which deal with social and political issues. Japanese RPGs are particularly notorious for their commentaries on things like organized religion.
I just can’t stress how far up his ass this guy’s head must be. I mean, for god’s sake, he specifically mentioned Shadow of the Colossus as an example of a game that ISN’T art… That’s about as clueless as it gets.
In short Tony, get back to whatever your little “cog in the machine” job is and stop blogging about games because you obviously don’t know shit about them.