Roger Ebert and Games

Just read this piece on the Guardian Blog taking acclaimed film critic Roger Ebert to task regarding his statements on videogames. Roger Ebert is one of an old guard of critics on the way out, dragging their heels in light of a new artform that they don't understand. But what amazes me is that he belongs to a generation that fought so hard to have film recognised as an artform...

He's even turned down the offer of a free PS3 with a copy of Flower from opponents wishing to sway him. There's a word for someone who professes strong opinions about something of which they have no knowledge and last time I checked it was spelled B.I.G.O.T. It's tantamount to me proclaiming that Monet was shit (which i don't believe is the case, incidentally) and then closing my eyes when someone tried to show me one of his paintings. Its somewhere between a primary school tactic and an almost Biblical level of ignorance.

Ebert should be given credit for softening his views in a second blog entry, although that might have been a result of the four and a half thousand comments, the majority opposing his view, he recieved. For my money the first comment sums it up: "Roger - as you are sure to be inundated with comments for this post, I will simply say: You just don't get it."

Two of the problems that Ebert has with games is firstly a percieved lack of human empathy and secondly the malleability of the narrative - fact that you can change their outcome. But if Ebert thinks art is about absorbing a preset message from the artist then he's effectively ignored most art and art theory since the sixties when Barthes declared the author dead! perhaps the problem is that Ebert doesn't understand games but doesn't understand post-structuralism. As for the 'empathy' issue, i can appreciate that it may appear to an outsider that most games (especially the most commercially dominant forms) simply involve killing, but he is very wrong to conclude that the entire medium is incapable of dealing with empathy. Games are experienced via an avatar - the player becomes the protagonist via a level of identification and control not seen in any other medium. Even more so than with a first person narrative in literature he is put in that character's shoes. I would argue that games are in fact the very best artistic medium for exploring themes of empathy and self. Of course this rarely happens, but that is because games are still in the early stages of development and are still viewed primarily as an entertainment by many inside and outside of the industry (as was the case with the industrial art of film before the sixties), although I firmly believe that the notions of 'entertainment' and 'art' are not mutually exclusive whatever your definition of art may be.

A growing number of games are dealing with these issues, however, and are finding ways to tell stories that couldn't be replicated in any other medium - this is art. Good examples are Bioshock, which deserves to be considered one of the great works of modern philosophy in light of the way in which it analyses the nature of free will; Prince of Persia, the ending of which forces the player to make a moral and emotional choice that undoes everything thing he has done up to that point; and recently Red Dead Redemption, which has an ending that rivals the greatest of tragedies in its emotional power.

Sergei Eisenstien believed that each artform possessed something that made it unique from all other mediums. For film this was editing; the ability to create meaning from juxtaposing images, which had hitherto only been static. For videogames this is interactivity, and there's no doubt in each of the three examples given above (and there are many more) this played a hugh part in the storytelling innovations on offer (just the fact that you have experienced so much as John Marston makes the ending of Red Dead Redemption shockingly poignant and the designers cleverly play on this by putting you in a position in which you feel utterly powerless). It is quite simply breathtaking and utterly, utterly unique.

Ebert says:

"I thought about those works of Art that had moved me most deeply. I found most of them had one thing in common: Through them I was able to learn more about the experiences, thoughts and feelings of other people. My empathy was engaged. I could use such lessons to apply to myself and my relationships with others. They could instruct me about life, love, disease and death, principles and morality, humor and tragedy. They might make my life more deep, full and rewarding."

I agree this is certainly one important aspect of art, but this statement certainly doesn't exclude games as Ebert thinks it does. After all how does Ebert think he is experiencing any more or any less about life than by sitting in a dark cinema for 2 hours watching the pattern of light play upon a screen than I am sitting in front of a game? At the end of the day films, books, games all have one thing in common - they are artifice (actually I believe this to be the most reliable definition of art), but it's the meaning that is injected into it by the creator and interpreted by the consumer (not necesarilly the same i hasten to add) that elevates it. In that regard games are just as capable of becoming art as films are, and are equally just as capable of becoming completely vacuous. Each work needs to be considered on its own merits. Sweeping judgements like "games can never become art" are ridiculous from the very beginning.