Roger Ebert famously declared “Video games can never be art” in his article of the same name. Since then, he has redacted this to restate “video games will not be art during any of our lifetimes.” While this was enough to at least reduce the amount of flack he received from the gaming community, it was not enough to satiate me. As an avid gamer, a dedicated critic of all things creative, and a lover of nitpicking, I take issue with this. In the revised article, Mr. Ebert said that many of the rebuttals included specific recommendations of “play this game” or “play that game” which, obviously, are poorly suited to the argument. Mr. Ebert is a film critic, and a good one at that, and he has proven his mettle as a film critic any time it has been questioned. The man is an expert. However, I can say bluntly that he does not know video games. His established expertise is part of the reason this so badly perturbs me; Mr. Ebert is not the typical internet ignoramus nor a senile old man scared of change and pining for the bygone days that never existed, he is a genius of his craft whom I respect and admire and, as an amateur but devoted critic myself, someone to whom I often turn for research purposes. I care what he thinks, and it is therefore annoying, to say the least, when he says something so drastically wrong. Video games are already art; they have been for some time, and while the definition of art is quite subjective, it is hard to create a fair system of evaluation in which it does not qualify.
I have a great concern that Mr. Ebert is allowing himself to be controlled by a confirmation bias. While he admitted he observed a compelling argument from video game designer Kellee Santiago, who cited several examples of artistically-inspired video games including Flower, the entire premise of which is built around the concept of nature versus industry, Ebert still claims “These three are just a small selection of games, she says, ‘that crossed that boundary into artistic expression.’ IMHO, that boundary remains resolutely uncrossed.” However, he then cited Georges Melies’s A Voyage to the Moon as being more artistic than any of the games provided as examples. A Voyage to the Moon was not made with artistic vision; Georges Melies was a magician, who was more interested in the effects of editing as a means of tricking the audience than in using film as a means of art, and he never pretended otherwise. While A Voyage to the Moon was important in terms of future films, it is not, in and of itself, art, by most definitions. He even goes so far to acknowledge he believes chess to be an art form, though doing so would almost certainly validate Tetris or the Professor Layton series the same way.
Firstly, we must address the issue of “what is art”. The term is so subjective that it is difficult to say it has any true meaning, and my personal definition (a work within a medium which exemplifies its ideals) is a particularly loose one. Internet-based comedian and art film critic Kyle Kallgren, specifically addressing the question “Are video games art?” in response to the opening of the Chicago Museum of Art’s new video games exhibit, says “Of course they are. That’s not even a question. They’re made by artists with a creative vision of an artificial world shaped by the author’s creativity and vision. The medium has given us countless memorable characters, shaped our view of history, added to the cultural lexicon, and, like it or not, video games have touched every part of modern life.” However, if I am to make a fair argument, I need to evaluate video games on Roger Ebert’s criteria. Further, as I said, Mr. Ebert is not a gamer, he is a film critic. If I’m to refute his argument, I’m going to need to level the playing field, so to speak, and approach everything in terms of film. I present my argument in the terms of film, as far as I have learned them: of mise-en-scène, of cinematography and editing, of narrative, and of sound.
However, I would first like to point out that Mr. Ebert’s claim would be far stronger if he were not a critic of film. Film is itself a very new medium, and one that is undoubtedly an art form, at least to the aforementioned Mr. Ebert. The reason he eventually acknowledged he could not say video games will never be art was because “Perhaps it is foolish of me to say ‘never,’ because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time,” elaborating to state, “Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.” Rounding for ease of use, film has been around for roughly 112 years; video games have been around for forty. Forty years, may I remind you, is also a long time. A hypothetical critic of paintings or sculpture or theater could say that film would never be an art; however, were he to say this in 1940, it would mean ignoring the dozens of noteworthy films that had already come out and have since been vindicated by history, as well as proving said critic was only tangentially familiar with the medium. Giving myself a life expectancy of 76 years, that would mean that video games will not develop into an art in ninety-eight years. If this same criterion were applied to film, then Citizen Kane would be considered part of the “dark ages” of film creation, before it became art. Video games, too, have been art for years, evident to those familiar with them.
The interesting thing about that hypothetical critic is that he’s unnecessary. That hypothetical is extraneous, because this has already happened. The exact same thing happened with the introduction of diegetic sound into film in the late twenties. Critics of silent film stated that it was a fad, a gimmick; real artists filmed things silently. Charlie Chaplin outright refused to use sound film for most of his career, only caving decades after the change had become nearly omnipresent in the industry.
In terms of mise-en-scène, video games represent a great amount of creativity and effort. Video games are the only medium where science fiction and high fantasy are alive and well; as a result, many video games rely on intricately-designed and extremely creative settings, props, and characters of diversity rarely seen outside German Expressionism and its derivatives. In games more founded in reality, such as L.A. Noir, mise-en-scene is still extremely important and even minute details are critical. With the advent of cutscenes and improved graphical and mechanical engines, this has only become more pronounced in recent years. I learned about composition not from watching movies, but from a particular animation in Final Fantasy IX. One example of truly brilliant mise-en-scene comes from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles; the game utilizes a “chalice” which must be carried by one of the players. Though generally detested by the players of the game, it in fact served a very simple way of ensuring the four players could stay on the screen at the same time without crowding nor stretching. Indeed, there are professional artists whose sole outlet of expression is in designing characters, settings, weaponry, and other elements of composition for video games and who indeed innovate and express artistic vision in their efforts of doing so.
While it is more difficult to point to use of cinematography or editing, as video games are of course made without cameras, there is no more of a difference in this respect than there is in an average animated film; to deny them on this standard would be to deny Spirited Away and Beauty and the Beast from being art in the same sentence. However, many games such as Pokemon Black and White still play with the hypothetical camera angles, as seen in scenes such as in and near Castelia City. In addition, codes of cinematic conduct such as the Rule of Thirds and the Axis of Action are both enforced and toyed with freely, the same as in a film, even with the added challenge of accounting for a dynamic environment.
Video games’ stories have developed greatly from the basic linear plots from the early games. Starting around the time of the first Final Fantasy, video games have taken on increasingly complex stories, characters, themes, and motifs. In fact, not being bound by the three-act structure common to most films, they are free to explore far larger stories. A movie is considered “too long” if it takes more than a few hours; a game is considered “too short” if it takes less than a few dozen. While action is enough to keep players playing, in order to keep them interested and invested in the characters an intricate storyline is necessary for most games with artistic vision. Often it is not that a professional video game story writer was told, “Here’s a video game, give it a story” and more that someone created a story from passion and felt that a video game would be the best medium for expressing it. Characters in good video games are no less potent and interesting than characters in good movies. Their lives can be interesting, their deaths can be tragic. Their dialogue and actions give them just as much depth as a Hollywood film. Roger Ebert noted of Santiago, “She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.” This is depending on the incorrect belief that video games cannot have clever or important dialogue, disproven many times over. It is here that my concerns of a notable confirmation bias become more pronounced. Like any form of art, video games are even open to experimentation and deviation from formula. Very few works outside the medium offer such options as branched endings, which are quite common in video games. Others, like the aforementioned Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, use methods such as gradually hinting at the backstory and relying on the protagonists to proactively seek it at their own pace. There is no argument one could make against the story elements of video games that would not quash the idea that film can be an art as well.
Sound and the manipulation thereof is a major part of what sets video games apart. While few non-musical movies have a truly spectacular soundtrack, this is a very common feature in video games. ZUN, the one-man creative team behind the Touhou Project series of video games, has composed literally dozens of sonatas to act as character and level themes in his games. The soundtrack for the video game Tempest 2000 was so well-composed it ended up outselling the game’s console port. The mastery is not limited to non-diegetic sound, either. Particularly in action-heavy games, a massive amount of sound engineering goes into ensuring that sounds seem to be coming from the right place, that they are realistic and not distracting yet distinct, etc. To say this much hard work and creativity does not constitute “art” seems like an insult to these engineers, let alone the rest of the finished product.
While I said I would stick exclusively to the terms of art that apply to film, I do feel I should at least acknowledge that video games do have a dimension that film does not, the aspect normally referred to as gameplay. This is what defines games such as Tetris as art, in their beautiful simplicity; like with any gauge of art, it can then range from the immaculately minimalist to the mesmerizingly complex. Much how a book can not be judged for its art or a painting for its soundtrack, the gameplay aspect of video games is unique to the medium. The creative effort that goes into ensuring games are diverse and enjoyable is what defines them and could be evaluated on its own multi-part scale.
I believe it is clear from the evidence that video games not only are art, but that they have been for some time. Evaluation as you have posited it is not only unfair in its criteria but also demonstrably wrong by way of lack of research of the subject in question and its contents. Roger Ebert claims several times that "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." The only reason this is so is because of the negative stigma associated with video games, and an impartial analysis, as I believe and hope I have given, will clearly reveal them as such. I’ve cited Tetris several times; I would also like to present games like Super Mario World, Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, and Doom, just to lay the groundwork. They have established new boundaries of culture, they have become ingrained in the collective unconscious, and they have impacted other media as well. Video games are art.
I have a great concern that Mr. Ebert is allowing himself to be controlled by a confirmation bias. While he admitted he observed a compelling argument from video game designer Kellee Santiago, who cited several examples of artistically-inspired video games including Flower, the entire premise of which is built around the concept of nature versus industry, Ebert still claims “These three are just a small selection of games, she says, ‘that crossed that boundary into artistic expression.’ IMHO, that boundary remains resolutely uncrossed.” However, he then cited Georges Melies’s A Voyage to the Moon as being more artistic than any of the games provided as examples. A Voyage to the Moon was not made with artistic vision; Georges Melies was a magician, who was more interested in the effects of editing as a means of tricking the audience than in using film as a means of art, and he never pretended otherwise. While A Voyage to the Moon was important in terms of future films, it is not, in and of itself, art, by most definitions. He even goes so far to acknowledge he believes chess to be an art form, though doing so would almost certainly validate Tetris or the Professor Layton series the same way.
Firstly, we must address the issue of “what is art”. The term is so subjective that it is difficult to say it has any true meaning, and my personal definition (a work within a medium which exemplifies its ideals) is a particularly loose one. Internet-based comedian and art film critic Kyle Kallgren, specifically addressing the question “Are video games art?” in response to the opening of the Chicago Museum of Art’s new video games exhibit, says “Of course they are. That’s not even a question. They’re made by artists with a creative vision of an artificial world shaped by the author’s creativity and vision. The medium has given us countless memorable characters, shaped our view of history, added to the cultural lexicon, and, like it or not, video games have touched every part of modern life.” However, if I am to make a fair argument, I need to evaluate video games on Roger Ebert’s criteria. Further, as I said, Mr. Ebert is not a gamer, he is a film critic. If I’m to refute his argument, I’m going to need to level the playing field, so to speak, and approach everything in terms of film. I present my argument in the terms of film, as far as I have learned them: of mise-en-scène, of cinematography and editing, of narrative, and of sound.
However, I would first like to point out that Mr. Ebert’s claim would be far stronger if he were not a critic of film. Film is itself a very new medium, and one that is undoubtedly an art form, at least to the aforementioned Mr. Ebert. The reason he eventually acknowledged he could not say video games will never be art was because “Perhaps it is foolish of me to say ‘never,’ because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time,” elaborating to state, “Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.” Rounding for ease of use, film has been around for roughly 112 years; video games have been around for forty. Forty years, may I remind you, is also a long time. A hypothetical critic of paintings or sculpture or theater could say that film would never be an art; however, were he to say this in 1940, it would mean ignoring the dozens of noteworthy films that had already come out and have since been vindicated by history, as well as proving said critic was only tangentially familiar with the medium. Giving myself a life expectancy of 76 years, that would mean that video games will not develop into an art in ninety-eight years. If this same criterion were applied to film, then Citizen Kane would be considered part of the “dark ages” of film creation, before it became art. Video games, too, have been art for years, evident to those familiar with them.
The interesting thing about that hypothetical critic is that he’s unnecessary. That hypothetical is extraneous, because this has already happened. The exact same thing happened with the introduction of diegetic sound into film in the late twenties. Critics of silent film stated that it was a fad, a gimmick; real artists filmed things silently. Charlie Chaplin outright refused to use sound film for most of his career, only caving decades after the change had become nearly omnipresent in the industry.
In terms of mise-en-scène, video games represent a great amount of creativity and effort. Video games are the only medium where science fiction and high fantasy are alive and well; as a result, many video games rely on intricately-designed and extremely creative settings, props, and characters of diversity rarely seen outside German Expressionism and its derivatives. In games more founded in reality, such as L.A. Noir, mise-en-scene is still extremely important and even minute details are critical. With the advent of cutscenes and improved graphical and mechanical engines, this has only become more pronounced in recent years. I learned about composition not from watching movies, but from a particular animation in Final Fantasy IX. One example of truly brilliant mise-en-scene comes from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles; the game utilizes a “chalice” which must be carried by one of the players. Though generally detested by the players of the game, it in fact served a very simple way of ensuring the four players could stay on the screen at the same time without crowding nor stretching. Indeed, there are professional artists whose sole outlet of expression is in designing characters, settings, weaponry, and other elements of composition for video games and who indeed innovate and express artistic vision in their efforts of doing so.
While it is more difficult to point to use of cinematography or editing, as video games are of course made without cameras, there is no more of a difference in this respect than there is in an average animated film; to deny them on this standard would be to deny Spirited Away and Beauty and the Beast from being art in the same sentence. However, many games such as Pokemon Black and White still play with the hypothetical camera angles, as seen in scenes such as in and near Castelia City. In addition, codes of cinematic conduct such as the Rule of Thirds and the Axis of Action are both enforced and toyed with freely, the same as in a film, even with the added challenge of accounting for a dynamic environment.
Video games’ stories have developed greatly from the basic linear plots from the early games. Starting around the time of the first Final Fantasy, video games have taken on increasingly complex stories, characters, themes, and motifs. In fact, not being bound by the three-act structure common to most films, they are free to explore far larger stories. A movie is considered “too long” if it takes more than a few hours; a game is considered “too short” if it takes less than a few dozen. While action is enough to keep players playing, in order to keep them interested and invested in the characters an intricate storyline is necessary for most games with artistic vision. Often it is not that a professional video game story writer was told, “Here’s a video game, give it a story” and more that someone created a story from passion and felt that a video game would be the best medium for expressing it. Characters in good video games are no less potent and interesting than characters in good movies. Their lives can be interesting, their deaths can be tragic. Their dialogue and actions give them just as much depth as a Hollywood film. Roger Ebert noted of Santiago, “She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.” This is depending on the incorrect belief that video games cannot have clever or important dialogue, disproven many times over. It is here that my concerns of a notable confirmation bias become more pronounced. Like any form of art, video games are even open to experimentation and deviation from formula. Very few works outside the medium offer such options as branched endings, which are quite common in video games. Others, like the aforementioned Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, use methods such as gradually hinting at the backstory and relying on the protagonists to proactively seek it at their own pace. There is no argument one could make against the story elements of video games that would not quash the idea that film can be an art as well.
Sound and the manipulation thereof is a major part of what sets video games apart. While few non-musical movies have a truly spectacular soundtrack, this is a very common feature in video games. ZUN, the one-man creative team behind the Touhou Project series of video games, has composed literally dozens of sonatas to act as character and level themes in his games. The soundtrack for the video game Tempest 2000 was so well-composed it ended up outselling the game’s console port. The mastery is not limited to non-diegetic sound, either. Particularly in action-heavy games, a massive amount of sound engineering goes into ensuring that sounds seem to be coming from the right place, that they are realistic and not distracting yet distinct, etc. To say this much hard work and creativity does not constitute “art” seems like an insult to these engineers, let alone the rest of the finished product.
While I said I would stick exclusively to the terms of art that apply to film, I do feel I should at least acknowledge that video games do have a dimension that film does not, the aspect normally referred to as gameplay. This is what defines games such as Tetris as art, in their beautiful simplicity; like with any gauge of art, it can then range from the immaculately minimalist to the mesmerizingly complex. Much how a book can not be judged for its art or a painting for its soundtrack, the gameplay aspect of video games is unique to the medium. The creative effort that goes into ensuring games are diverse and enjoyable is what defines them and could be evaluated on its own multi-part scale.
I believe it is clear from the evidence that video games not only are art, but that they have been for some time. Evaluation as you have posited it is not only unfair in its criteria but also demonstrably wrong by way of lack of research of the subject in question and its contents. Roger Ebert claims several times that "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." The only reason this is so is because of the negative stigma associated with video games, and an impartial analysis, as I believe and hope I have given, will clearly reveal them as such. I’ve cited Tetris several times; I would also like to present games like Super Mario World, Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, and Doom, just to lay the groundwork. They have established new boundaries of culture, they have become ingrained in the collective unconscious, and they have impacted other media as well. Video games are art.
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