Ebert's claims sparked hatred for the critic among video game fans. He was the target of many angry e-mails thanks to his contentious statement. If you're a gamer, Ebert's statement may have hit home in your heart. For many of us, games are more than just entertainment, they are most definitely art.
Good games, the really good ones, draw you into their world and immerse you into their surrounding. Other mediums of art accomplish this same goal.
The most successful movie to date, Avatar, also accomplishes the feat of immersion through groundbreaking motion capture, animation, and 3D effects. Some people who had seen the film became depressed because they wanted to live on Pandora with the Na'vi; this communicates the level of immersion the film provided for many viewers.
Fine art, such as works by van Ghogh, Monet, Picasso, Dali--all these artists transport you into another place and often baptize your brain into their world. The artists' brush strokes are an attempt to convey meaning through colors and shape, just as a video game designer hopes to do with pixels and programming.
My personal favorite video games are ones that are so expertly designed, that at moments you forget you are playing a game. You feel as if you are the character you are playing and you must accomplish your objective in the game. Bioshock is one of the best examples to date of a game that accomplishes this. The game uses sound (specifically ambiance), art design, world interaction, music, and narrative to immerse the player in the environment. In the video below, you can get a taste of the game's art design (Art Deco themed) as well as the game's immersive ambiance.
As I said of Bioshock, games can utilize different tools to immerse the gamer into the world of the game. Further examples can be found in Splinter Cell: Conviction and Dead Space.
Dead Space andSplinter Cell Conviction each immerse the gamer in the world by tweeking the rules of gaming. Traditionally gamers are accustomed to third-person shooters (TPSs) featuring healthbars on screen as part of the heads-up-display (HUD). In Dead Space, a survival-horror game released in 2008, the usual health bar is transformed by having a more intuitive and integrated display of your health.
Your character, Isaac, is a mechanic on a spacecraft. As part of his job, he dons a full space suit that features a segmented blue meter along his spine. This meter can be assumed to have some sort of connection to Isaac's nervous system, and is used to inform the player of their current health. The blue bar fills or empties as health is lost or gained. An additional meter on Isaac's back keeps track of his ability to use his telekinetic powers. See this in action in the video below. The video is actually a vidoc (video documentary) about the art of the game and the game desginers' inspirations.
Splinter Cell Conviction is a brand new game that came out this year on April 13th, it is the fifth installment of the series. Previous games in the series informed the player of their objective through audio from other characters and displayed the objective in text boxes on the screen. Conviction puts the player in the head of Sam. In the new game, Sam's objective are projected onto the world.
The objectives are to be read as Sam's thoughts and motvies being displayed in the world. Instead of a text box jarring us out of the game's world, Sam's thoughts become the player's thoughts as they are seamlessly integrated into the environement. The video below is of the game's demo that is available on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The demo teaches the players the controls of the game in this demo through the projection of objectives.
Both of these games communicate information to the player while not pulling them out of them game. I suspect this tactic of creating immersion will continue to advance as games continue to evolve new ways to immerse the player into the game's world.
I had a thought about video games. And it seems Adam Sessler (a game reviewer) has stolen it. Right before I watched the video below, I realized that video games are a collection of different art forms. Sessler actually disagrees with me that the end result is actually art, or he is at least hesitant to place that label on video games. But I digress, video games are a collection of art; concept art, programming, story/narrative, and art direction all come together to form a video game. All of these elements are art individually, so I argue that when they are assembled collectively they should also still be considered art.
Adam Sessler uses his web show Sessler's Soapbox to reply to Ebert's latest claim that video games can never be art. I expected Sessler to be in agreement with me and many other gamers and to say that video games are art, but he surprisingly says that he doesn't want to call them art. He also says that gamers should not get so worked up about whether or not games are art. Check out the video for his explanation.
A definition of art: “The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.”
Clearly, based on this definition, video games should be considered art. Video games are a "conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty" in a "graphic medium".
So, why aren't video games usually considered art? Our society has held a grudge against games, viewing them as solely children's play and a waste of time. This stigma in our culture skews any potential perception we may have of games being art.
Even when Ebert first addressed this subject via his Answer Man feature in 2005, he used this cheap shot to criticize video games: "But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic."
This point was later rebutted by blogger Matt Paprocki, he stated this in reply:
"Given that Ebert's favorite medium includes works like Deuce Bigalow Male Gigolo, White Chicks, Rambo 3, and Plan 9 From Outer Space, who's really wasting time when we could make ourselves 'more cultured, civilized and empathetic?' Everyone. Film is art. Books, novels, and various other literatures are art. Video games are art. They also have one thing in common: They're entertainment."
But, Ebert's main argument was this: "There is a structural reason for [why video games are not art]: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control."
My argument is that video games often draw on film strategies to construct their narrative, and in doing so are inherently similar and connected to film. By allowing player choice, this creates an expansion on the art form of story-telling that draws the player into the story even further; is this not the ultimate goal of a story-teller?
Because of Ebert's apparent lack of experience in video games, he does not realize that player choice has traditionally been limited. In most games, the path the player must follow to reach his goal is pre-determined. This fact actually has become a point of criticism to many game reviewers. Because of the technology we have today to create games, the possibility of world size and player choice has expanded. When game developers do not utilize this opportunity to expand the world and it's story, it may limit a game's potential quality. When a game is linear, the player's choices are not as significant and his experience may not be as engaging as it could be if his experience were to be less controlled.
Games such as Call of Duty and Halo are far more linear than open-world or sandbox games such as Fallout 3, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or Mass Effect 2.
But even in the open-world games, players are usually faced with pursuing one overall goal. That being said, the addition of player control in a game only deepens the artistic nature of the medium.
While fine art has The Museum of Modern Art in NYC, video games have bargain bins or previously owned shops. Film has the Academy Awards, while video games have the groan-inducing VGAs (Video Games Awards) on SpikeTV.
The VGAs don't respect games the way that the Academy Awards respect film. The VGAs are just an excuse to push products on viewers/gamers and feature celebrities that have nothing to do with games. Rather than honor games that are really good, or bring attention to little-known independent games, the show uses games solely to sell the viewers products that have absolutely nothing to do with the games.
As seen in the video above, instead of nominating real voice actors for their voice work, they nominate celebrities such as Megan Fox for doing voice over in the horrible game accompaniment to the (also horrible)Transformers movie.
The VGAs play a role, if a small one, in why video games are not taken seriously. Video games can be the focus of an award show, just not in a way that gives no respect to the players or the game developers. Video games are still seen as a child or man-child form of play. This notion is reflected in the theme and focus of the VGAs. While video games are a form of play, they are simultaneously art created by the game developers.
As a new form of media, video games have yet to garner the respect that older forms of media have earned. But newer forms of media have faced similar challenges. Even film, for which today much respect is given, had its own fear-mongering critics when it was in its infancy. A criminologist from 1910 had this to say of film:
"85 percent of the juvenile crime which has been investigated has been found traceable either directly or indirectly to motion pictures..."
This quote reflects today's own media's opinion of games, which feeds our society with exclusively negative news about games. When most people think of a gamer, they think of a man in his mid-thirties still living in his mother's attic, usually overweight and unhygienic.
Our society also associates games with violence and the corruption of children's minds. Below is an example of the media promoting the stereotype and stigma of gamers and the supposed negative impact video games have on society. The video below features former Attorney Jack Thompson, who is seen by many gamers as the most prolific opponent against video games. In this video Thompson claims that one of the D.C. snipers, Lee Boyd Malvo, was "trained" on the game Halo to kill. In another video, Thompson also insists that the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, played Counter-Strike extensively and that the game taught him how to kill efficiently.
With so many negative ideas about games in our society, it's no wonder that they are not typically considered art. Those that demonize video games, especially those that claim video games inspire and train people to kill, often cite studies that conclude that video games teach people violence. These same people never consider all of the counter studies that explain that the exact opposite is true.
Henry Jenkins wrote an essay for pbs.org in which he debunks many of the myths associated with video games.
In his essay, Jenkins states that "A large gap exists between the public's perception of video games and what the research actually shows. The following is an attempt to separate fact from fiction." Jenkin's essay helps to illustrate just how skewed our society's view on video games actually is.
One criticism that Jenkin's refutes in his essay (and Thompson mentions in the video above) is the idea that because video games have been used in military training, that they also train kids to kill. Jenkins brings up these points on the matter: "Former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that because the military uses games in training (including, he claims, training soldiers to shoot and kill), the generation of young people who play such games are similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in their everyday social interactions.
Grossman's model only works if:
* we remove training and education from a meaningful cultural context. * we assume learners have no conscious goals and that they show no resistance to what they are being taught. * we assume that they unwittingly apply what they learn in a fantasy environment to real world spaces."
Jenkin's uses James Gee's book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy to point out that games do help children learn, but not in a negative way.
Jenkins: "James Gee describes game players as active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for improvement. Players search for newer, better solutions to problems and challenges, he says. And they are encouraged to constantly form and test hypotheses. This research points to a fundamentally different model of how and what players learn from games."
In Henry Jenkin's lecture on transmedia, he talks about "the revenge of the origami unicorn". An origami unicorn is a "single element that transforms our understanding of a core narrative." And this element is about "extending meaning, deepening emotional resonance, and transforming the way we see the original."
While this blog does not focus on transmedia, I am using Jenkin's "origami unicorn" idea to emphasize the importance of a game's narrative and player choice. Jenkin's explanation of the origami unicorn and it's expansion of knowledge that pertains to a particular narrative can be used in defense of video games, in that player choice allows for further exploration and discovery of story elements within a game's world and narrative.
Assassin's Creed 2 featured an origami unicorn in the form of an optional objective. Throughout this sandbox game, the player is encouraged to find 20 glyphs throughout the different historical cities he explores. These glyphs lead to puzzles, and once these puzzles are solved the player is rewarded with a video clip. Each clip does not make sense on its own, but once the player has found and deciphered all of the glyphs, the completed video makes sense in the game's world; the video is an elaboration upon the game's story.
Below are a video of a player locating a glyph, and also a video of the puzzle that follows.
The following video is from Mass Effect 2. The video features a side-quest, and this one happens to be a sort of quest that is known as a loyalty quest. Throughout the game the player is given a choice to acquire crew members for his spaceship that will help the player in battle. Once you have acquired the crew member, you have the further option of their loyalty quest which will be beneficial for the player to complete. In Samara's loyalty quest, the player actually has the choice to kill her and choose to have her daughter, Morinth, join the crew instead. There are many choices like this in the game, and each choice affects the player's renegade or paragon levels. If the player's level of renegade or paragon is weighed down on one side more than the other, the player's avatar in the game will change in appearance to look evil or normal. The player's conversation choices are also affected.
The final example of an origami unicorn is from Fallout 3. In this game, the player has emerged from his life in a nuclear fallout shelter and begins to explore the world in 2277, 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse that occurred in Fallout 2. The player has one main quest that he follows, but along the way may do a large number of side quests. One side quest that is easy to miss is a quest where the player can acquire a canine companion, Dogmeat. Once the player beats the quest, Dogmeat will follow him around and help him in battle. If the player did not have the choice of exploration and of so many different quests and objectives, the story of the game would never be expanded upon with the addition of Dogmeat.
All three of these examples are completely optional portions of the games and are not required to "beat" the game. The purpose of these optional quests are to provide deeper narrative and also sometimes provide rewards for the player. Ebert's notion that player choice is the number one reason why games cannot be art is easily refuted based on these examples. If the player did not have the choice to do these side quests, the game narrative would not be extended upon in these specific ways. The fact that there is an option for the gamer to further explore the game's narrative is an example of why games are art, not why they are not.
