How games-as-art closer reveals the heart of Art work

Roger Ebert’s recent piece that challenges the presence of Art within games is wonderful.  Though I think his article has a mix of flaws and insights, the essential elements that drive criticism are wholly important.  It has generated response from key people in the dialogue, and so much hating.  I think the stand-out things to me are:

  • He misses the identification that a root element of Art (as in ‘a work of art’ rather than ‘arts practice’ or ‘artform’) is its novelty….  that it does something, contextually, that is different.  The broader the context in which this difference stands, the more solidly something is a work of art.  Thus Ebert misses the way in which Flower is art, or the ‘temporal proposition’ in Braid.

  • He’s spot on that there exists within the game development community a neurosis about being defined as Art.   Maybe it’s a cynicism regarding the ability for illustrators, working toward expressionism or realism in the medium of paint, to be granted the honorific of ‘art makers’ by the lay public, when those painting are no more novel then the genre-style-repetition occurrent in most games.  I suppose all people who profess a sense of style desire to claim that they have made art - i_n similar ratio_ to the number of Mexican Catholics who desire to receive a vision of the Virgin de Guadeloupe.

  • I do think Ebert is a pandering wanker when he titles his article “Games will never be art”.  He rips away potential and hope, and in doing so does more the work of Loki, who tricks and enrages the world in a divine deceitfulness that, knowingly or not, is designed to evolve the state of reality.  This is honorable work only in the eyes of Illuminati, and other affectionate titles toward ascended masterhood.  To the rest of the world you’re a demon.

  • The confluence of dialogue around these articles reinforces how much gamers and game thinkers need a more holistic sense of what a Human needs to feel.  Flower puts one in a nice space of feelings, but it’s very relative to the rest of the gaming spectrum.  The blossoming of sensation and consciousness that happens in the game indeed is something that other achieve by walking through the world.  In this regard, the true art in the game may be the delivery of this experience of nature to people who are in ecologically-bereft environments.


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