Video games as art.

There has been an interesting kerfuffle over the artistic value of the video game.

Movie critic Roger Ebert takes umbrage at the idea that a video game, with open endings and consumer controls is an art.

In response, Clive Barker, respected horror writer, retorted.

Responding to film critic Roger Ebert’s infamous comment that games cannot move beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art, Barker noted: “It’s evident that Ebert had a prejudiced vision of what the medium is, or more importantly, what it can be.”

“We can debate what art is, we can debate it forever. If the experience moves you in some way or another… Even if it moves your bowels… I think it is worthy of some serious study.”

Barker said he faced similar prejudice against his genre of choice, horror. “It used to worry me that the New York Times never reviewed my books… But the point is that people like the books. Books aren’t about reviewers,” he said.

“Games aren’t about reviewers. They are about players.”

Addressing Ebert’s criticism further, Barker explained: “I think that Roger Ebert’s problem is that he thinks you can’t have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written Romeo and Juliet as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn’t taken the damn poison. If only he’d have gotten there quicker.

“If something is so malleable, full of possibilities not under the artist’s control, then it cannot be art,” he continued. “That’s where he is wrong.

“We should be stretching the imaginations of our players and ourselves. Let’s invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art.”

“I’m not doing an evangelical job here. I’m just saying that gaming is a great way to do what we as human beings need to do all the time - to take ourselves away from the oppressive facts of our lives and go somewhere where we have our own control,” Barker concluded.

More from Ebert:

Ebert recently responded to Barker’s comments on his blog, and muddies the waters a bit by amending his stance to be that games cannot be “high” art...

Ebert dismisses the idea of art presenting choices, asserting that if one is offered ‘every emotional journey available’, then each is individually devalued...

He also took exception to Barker’s assertion that art can be linked to escapism. Ebert does not believe that the two are linked by necessity. Great movies can be escapist, but escapism itself does not make “great” art. He also called Barker’s desire for escapism as “spoken with the maturity of an honest and articulate 4-year old.”

Finally, Ebert puts forth his criteria for accepting a video game as art:

I mentioned that a Campbell’s soup could be art. I was imprecise. Actually, it is Andy Warhol’s painting of the label that is art. Would Warhol have considered Clive Barker’s video game ‘Undying’ as art? Certainly. He would have kept it in its shrink-wrapped box, placed it inside a Plexiglass display case, mounted it on a pedestal, and labeled it ‘Video Game.’

Ars Technica writer Ben Kuchera examines Ebert’s reply, and takes issue with the fact that Ebert seems willing to debate whether games can be art, but completely unwilling to step into the realm of gaming to see if his conclusions are well founded, citing gaming as a waste of time and “childish”:

I’ve enjoyed reading the back and forth between Barker and Ebert because I enjoy conversation about art, especially as it pertains to games, but I get upset when Ebert can’t be bothered to actually look at what’s he’s writing about, even topically. If he’s going to have a stance on an issue, he needs to become informed about it. He has a large audience, and they deserve better.

CM: The “high/great” art comments only add to the confusion as to what Ebert would actually classify as art. Sometimes he states that games cannot be art, at other times, they cannot be “high” art. So can games be “art” but not “high art”? On the subject of a “smorgasborg” of choices, does that mean that games that are non-sandbox are “art” because they DO restrict the player to an “inevitable conclusion”?

His criticism comes off more as ignorance and dislike of something he just doesn't get.