Good News: Shut Up!

Ebert and gamers have engaged in a bit of a disagreement.  Head after the jump to hear our collected thoughts on the subject…

what about now? is this art?

Rogert Ebert is old and just doesn’t get it.  That’s a common accusation tossed at the famous critic regarding his “controversial” stance on the “games as art” debate.  In his latest reply Ebert calmly, and intelligently, states that he should have never brought it up to begin with.  “Some opinions are best kept to yourself,” he says, addressing his previous essays.  In the article posted early this morning he details his thoughts quite a bit, between how he arrived at his opinion and how he has been offered “proof” that his opinion is entirely unreasonable.  In the end, Ebert concludes that he really doesn’t know much of gaming.  He has played very little and it’s not quite fair for him to pass judgment.  Even with this latest commentary, I couldn’t help but recall that my initial reaction to the debate as a whole was: “It’s just one dude, what the fuck?”  Sure, Ebert is a well respected voice within the movie industry and his thoughts are very well regarded, but for the love of god – who cares about what ONE person thinks of it?  Is it because the community wants someone with stature outside their circle to give their favorite titles the nod of approval?  Does it really legitimize anything?

I suppose that’s what this is really about – it’s not entirely about just one guy’s opinion but whether or not it’s legitimate as a whole.  Ebert’s just a public platform for the argument which has gone on and on and on and on within the gaming community itself.  When he posted the essay on his stance some number of months ago, a number of well respected voices of the gaming community spoke up on it.  Sure, they didn’t have the stature of Ebert maybe but they certainly had a lot to say and a lot of people were listening.  In particular I recall the reply of Gabe and Tycho at Penny Arcade.  Gabe’s tongue in cheek reply was a simple “I say games are art and last time I checked, I was beating Michelle Obama, Oprah and Taylor swift in Time’s 100 most influential people list” while Tycho relayed his opinion in typically wordy fashion.  The bottom line from the both of them came in comic form. Out of all the yelling and screaming and angry posts and witty replies on the web and the not-web and whatever medium people are using to go back on forth on this about, the comic from the Penny Arcade guys summed up the “Games are art!” stance pretty well.  Really goddamn well actually.  Even with this outstanding argument in support of “Games as Art” I have to bring up a point that Arien made to me.

Art is subjective.

This is definitely art.

Not even whether or not a “piece” is good or bad art, but whether or not it’s art at all.  It’s so hard to define.  Ebert even admitted that.  He searched for simplest possible definition put forth by a dictionary – and by those standards you could rope in games as art.  Or not.  He states that music and abstract works do not move him as “art” and therefore could be dismissed in the same manner but they are undoubtedly considered art.  He doesn’t quite concede and give up his stance but he does lend a fair amount of good points to the idea of art being subjective.  For me it came down to a couple of pieces I saw in the Modern Art section at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  There was a series of thousands of tiny hand cut paper butterflies installed all over the wall in groups through the section as well is in the stairway to the next floor up.   There was also a giant yellow piece of canvas painted yellow.  I loved the butterflies but didn’t understand for a second what the deal with the giant yellow square was.  Maybe it represented something important like the sun, or Big Bird, or maybe it was just a joke.  Who knows?  It means something to someone and it was in the goddamn museum of art so it “counts” right?

I still stand by the point I made – Ebert is just another guy.  He has a lot of people listening and responding but in the end he’s just one guy.  I don’t agree with him necessarily but   I’m not going to get into all the itty bitty components of what could make a gaming “experience” art for someone – and even if I did what does it matter anyway?  I’m just some dude and it’s my opinion.

That yellow square sucked though.

Tags: art, debate, games, games as art, penny arcade, roger ebert

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 10:53 am and is filed under Game News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.