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.

Video Games in the Papers

Its good to see video games in the papers for the right reasons (ie, not as a knee jerk reaction to all social evils by lazy journalists and showboating politicians). In this case Independent columnist Tom Sutcliffe takes to task the prejudice surrounding the medium, asking why games are criticised for the kind of depictions of sex and violence that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in other art forms. He suggests that its because games still have a foot in the toy box as well as art and the assumption is that as they are for kids they carry certain expectations of moral innocence. Of course we know that this isn't true, but the wider public perception of games still needs to change in much the same way people needed to revise their opinion of animation in the late eighties as something 'just for kids' in order to appreciate the credence of masterpieces like Akira and Perfect Blue. The truth is that since the Playstation emerged the gaming demographic has shifted firmly away from kids towards people in their 20s (a generation who grew up with the medium) and video games are now subject to the same kind of age classification as films.

Tom Sutcliffe also touches on a point that i've been fascinated by for years now. He says: "Video games have been around for years but they are still struggling to pass through that long gestation that any new creative form must go through before it matures from frivolity into art." Film only really attained the status of 'art' in the sixties thanks to a new generation of filmmaker/critics driven by the French New Wave and modernism. Sure there were isolated figures who argued the toss before then (Eisenstien and Vertov, Renoir and Melies) but by and large the medium was seen as purely an entertainment for the first 60 years of its life. Video games are developing much faster and I believe that they have reached roughly a similar stage in their development. Like the directors and critics who fought tooth and nail for cinema to be recognised as an artform, our generation must likewise fight for our medium, the 'eighth art' of video games, to be accepted.

E3 Roundup

Last week LA once again played host to the biggest event in the gaming calendar; striding across the urban skyline like a virtual Godzilla, E3 whipped the media circus into a frenzy with its yearly avalanche of video game news (for the first time the event was even broadcast live to Time Square). New consoles where unveiled, killer titles unearthed and certain things under whelmed. Here’s Rhythm circus’s take on the proceedings with the juiciest pieces of information lovingly harvested just for you.

Given that E3 is the place that the industry prefers to make its biggest announcements, inevitably it’s the press conferences in the city’s massive auditoria by the big three – Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo – that are going to be of most interest, so let’s begin there. Of course by their very nature press conferences are annoyingly self congratulating affairs, but this year Microsoft carried off our award for most toe curling delivery. Whilst Kinect, the new name for project Natal which is to be released in North America on November 4, underwhelmed with its array of inane dancing and sports mini games, Microsoft desperately tried to inject some excitement into proceedings by enlisting the help of Cirque de Soleil to put on a bit of a show. At the actual conference they dragged out an overly cute pig-tailed child to demonstrate Kinectimals, Xbox’s take on Eye Pet, featuring a series of exotic animals. Next came some annoyingly hip street dancers to demonstrate the device’s generic dance title. Oh and let’s not forget the female executive with the voice of an American school girl who demoed Kinect’s video messaging abilities with her twin in Atlanta.

Although also to be released on the PS3 the psychedelic synesthetic shooter Child of Eden, by game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Rez fame, points to more innovative uses of the technology than the games on display at the conference, which ape the kind of games Wii has been churning out for years. Lion Head’s Milo, another one of the more creative Kinect titles in the pipeline, was conspicuously absent, although Molyneux himself appeared under the guise of Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios Europe, to show additional footage of Fable 3, the concluding part of Lion Head’s brilliant adventure RPG series. Still poised somewhere between a quirky Japanese title and a sprawling western RPG, this time the player is after the crown of Albion itself, and the game promises to add even more weight and responsibility to the moral decisions you make in that they now effect the entire populace. Molyneux also reminded us about the return of “the great British humour... we all know what that means”. We certainly do Peter, and I for one can’t wait to be performing vulgar thrusts at my loyal subjects in the town square wearing nothing but a crown.

But of course where would you be without Microsoft’s big core exclusive franchises? True to form Call of Duty, Halo and Gears of War sequels all headlined the show. But as impressive as Black Ops, Halo Reach and Gears of War 3 look as games, and as groundbreaking as their predecessors are, the fact that they all belong to exactly the same genre continues to cast doubt on the width of Xbox’s appeal. Surely Microsoft have been keeping themselves aloft on these titles for far too long?

In contrast Playstation’s biggest exclusive titles – Little Big Planet, Uncharted, God of War – although fewer, operate in a far broader spectrum of genres. This year one of those titles, the incomparable, indefinable Little Big Planet spawned a sequel, which will up the ante by empowering players to make even more crazy games including Micro machine-esque racers and even complete Command & Conquer style RTS games with a full range of units and AI. The new addition of holographic material allows for the creation of neon soaked psychedelic shooters or custom HUDs, expanding the creative potential of the game considerably.

Sony showed off Move, which actually looks like it might achieve what it set out to achieve, with the intriguing title Sorcery, in which you take on the role of an apprentice spell caster in the fairy kingdom. It’s the perfect showcase for the Move peripheral, which fluidly replicates all your flicks and swishes into fireballs and whirlwinds sent speeding towards the game’s bumbling foes (it’s always surprising how something falling off the edge of a cliff emitting a high pitched comedy scream never gets old). Things really got interesting when Kevin Butler, Sony’s ‘VP of Sharpening Things’ and star of the Sony’s best ad campaign since Chris Cunningham learned to use the warp tool in After Effects, crashed host Jack Tretton’s party to deliver a few humorously scathing remarks at Microsoft (“Did anyone see a bunch of French acrobats yesterday? I hear there was a sale on blue ponchos”) and a spirited speech celebrating gaming backed by soaring Hollywood strings: “gaming is having a ridiculously huge TV in a one room apartment… and staying up until 3am to earn a trophy that doesn’t exist – but does”. Couldn’t have put it better myself. Another unexpected entrance came at the conference’s finale in the form of psychotic clown Sweet Tooth driving his rail-gun mounted ice-cream truck on stage, as David Jaffe announced the new installment of Twisted Metal – putting to bed speculation as to what the rumour of “a sequel to a classic series” referred to. For anyone who is old enough to fondly remember blowing up the Eiffel Tower in Twisted Metal World Tour it was hard to contain the excitement at the prospect of playing 16 player online death matches or four-way split screen in vast environments.

But for all their pomp, Microsoft and Sony failed to even come close to the excitement generated by Nintendo’s press show, which was like seeing an old friend wake from a coma. Their show was a perfectly poised combination of nostalgia and technical innovation. It begun with Zelda creator Shiguro Miyamoto addressing the audience via a video screen against a funky green background to introduce the eagerly anticipated new Zelda title, The Skyward Sword, before becoming so frustrated at the incompetence of the man playtesting the thing that he slices his way through the screen and into LA. Nice. This was the first of many classic titles getting a new lease of life including Donkey Kong Country Returns, which looks so delightfully old-school that it brings a tear to your eye, Kirby’s Epic Yarn with its astonishingly fresh looking needle and thread aesthetic, and then of course the return of the greatest first person shooter ever made: Goldeneye (sorry Bungie, Nintendo just bitch slapped you for a one hit kill). As if that wasn’t enough Deus Ex creator Warren Spector came along to showcase the ingenious looking gameplay for Epic Mickey, which looks set to become a postmodern classic as it literally redraws the platform genre and remixes Disney’s back catalogue with joyful abandon.

This time last year when Nintendo unveiled their laughable vitality sensor, I would never have thought I’d be writing that they stole the show in 2010. This is simply the biggest turn-around since, er… Nintendo’s last turn-around. The announcement of the 3DS as the first ever glasses-free 3D entertainment platform kind of caught Sony and Microsoft with their pants down, especially given how much Sony were emphasizing the native 3D capabilities of Playstation 3 (next generation Bravia TV not included). Of course Nintendo admitted it was impossible to actually see the effect of the 3D without actually holding the thing in your hands, but what is immediately obvious is the increased graphical capabilities of this successor to the frankly shameful DS. The bigger screen boasted graphics on games like resident Evil Revelation that easily surpassed the PSP. On top of that Project Sora, founded by Nintendo last year, has spawned the platform’s first homegrown 3D hit. Kid Icarus: Uprising sees the return of yet another vintage Nintendo flag bearer who joins the rest of Nintendo’s impressive all-star line-up for 2011.

As if all of those announcements weren’t enough to fill up their hearts and their notepads, the journalists who dared to venture into Nintendo’s conference after the embarrassment of last year were treated by the appearance of about a hundred sexy models with 3DS units tethered to their waists (strap-ons as I prefer to call them). As dozens of glowing screens made their way into the eager, sweaty-pawed audience, a dozen Wii consoles rose on obelisks from the stage with the first hands on copies of The Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword. Nintendo just delivered the year’s biggest sucker punch.

Published with permission of www.rhythmcircus.co.uk. Read the full article and watch trailers of their top 20 games of the event here.