Roger Ebert (arguably the most well-known movie critic in the U.S.) controversially declared his stand on video games in 2005; Ebert's opinion is that video games are not art. Last month, Ebert elaborated on his claim, further stating that video games can never be art.
Ebert's stance on games can be quickly dismissed as his being just an old fuddy-duddy ignorantly criticizing a newer form of media that he is not familiar with. Or one can examine the nature of video games and intelligently defend their opposing opinion. This blog will do the latter.
This is a presentation by Kellee Santiago, a game developer from thatgamecompany. Her game company was behind such critically-acclaimed games such as Flower, Flow, and Cloud. Santiago's TED talk at USC, seen in the video above, began with talking about Roger Ebert's opinion on video games. Santiago then delves into video game apologetics.
To get the full scope of the Roger Ebert vs. Kellee Santiago saga, you will need to be aware of a series of links and an explanation as to why you are being sent to the said link's pages! Here you go!
Now that that is out of the way, onto Santiago's TED talk. Her presentation included this:
The contrast between cave drawings and Michelangelo's work in the Sistine chapel brings up an interesting point. Games are evolving just as fine art has evolved, just as literature and music have evolved. At first art seemed like "chicken scracthes on a wall" says Santiago. But now fine art has developed into something as impressive and impactful as Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine chapel.
Just as film was feared and lacked society's respect in it's infancy (illustrated in the quote in the beginning of this post), video games are feared today and do not garner the same respect as older forms of art.
Santiago says that we have witnessed "the birth of an entirely new artistic medium." And also that "games could be the collaboration between everything that we've learned to date as humans about telling stories through visuals, through audio, and now with the added component of interactivity."
That last quote is particularly significant when thinking about Ebert's criticism that video games can't be art because the player has choices, i.e. interactivity. Looked at in this way, video games can be seen as an extension of film or as an elaboration of film. Having mixed together various different elements of story telling, maybe games can be seen as possessing even more artistic quality than film.
