Video Games inherently inferior to Film and Literature: Roger Ebert

[Deepak]

Saw this at TXB forums,

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=ANSWERMAN

Q. I was saddened to read that you consider video games an inherently inferior medium to film and literature, despite your admitted lack of familiarity with the great works of the medium. This strikes me as especially perplexing, given how receptive you have been in the past to other oft-maligned media such as comic books and animation. Was not film itself once a new field of art? Did it not also take decades for its academic respectability to be recognized?

There are already countless serious studies on game theory and criticism available, including Mark S. Meadows' Pause & Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, and Mark J.P. Wolf's The Medium of the Video Game, to name a few.

I hold out hope that you will take the time to broaden your experience with games beyond the trashy, artless "adaptations" that pollute our movie theaters, and let you discover the true wonder of this emerging medium, just as you have so passionately helped me to appreciate the greatness of many wonderful films.

Andrew Davis, St. Cloud, Minn.

A. Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

****

Roger Ebert is a Pulitzer Prizer winner Film Critic.

 

[Arun]

Give this man Max Payne, imo.
Pretty good question & answer though, even though I disagree with the answer personally.

Uttar

 

[kyleb]

It looks like a BS answer from a man who likes to talk out his ass to me. Not only does he fail to see the depth which can be gained by alowing player choices, but he also blatently ignores the fact that authorial control is easly acomplished though linear design. Obviously the guy has little to no experience with gaming or he would have never thought to argue otherwise.

 

[Sis]

It looks like a BS answer from a man who likes to talk out his ass to me. Not only does he fail to see the depth which can be gained by alowing player choices, but he also blatently ignores the fact that authorial control is easly acomplished though linear design. Obviously the guy has little to no experience with gaming or he would have never thought to argue otherwise.

Can you back up your assertian with some exemplars from the gaming industry that have the same type of importance as some of the classic movies and books?

Max Payne may compete with some of the best comic books out there, but there's a wide gap between it and the best books and movies. And even the much regarded Ico is not yet there in this regards, but at least it's a game that's finally hitting an emotional nerve.

As of today, I think Ebert is correct, but the industry is quickly evolving, and games like God of War and Ico are movements in the right direction...
.Sis

 

[Bobbler]

Give games another 40 years and then compare them as a medium to what films are today, and you might have a fair comparison. Games are in their infancy; literature, and movies are pretty old in comparison (especially literature).

Games like ICO and SotC are miles ahead of most movies in cinematic experience, story, characters, ambience, etc. Of course, games like ICO/SotC are a rarity at the moment, but I don't believe the medium is inherently worse, it's just different, and you can't expect the same things out of all three... writings and movies offer vastly different experiences, just like games do, none of them are worse than the other depending on what you're looking for.

I don't mind Ebert, I think he's often right about movie reviews -- he often compares movies against their target audience, so his tastes in what he thinks are good movies are probably a bit broader -- but this is absolutely ignorant.

(edit: misunderstood part of what he was saying -- cut a bit out)

 

[Bobbler]

Can you back up your assertian with some exemplars from the gaming industry that have the same type of importance as some of the classic movies and books?

Max Payne may compete with some of the best comic books out there, but there's a wide gap between it and the best books and movies. And even the much regarded Ico is not yet there in this regards, but at least it's a game that's finally hitting an emotional nerve.

As of today, I think Ebert is correct, but the industry is quickly evolving, and games like God of War and Ico are movements in the right direction...
.Sis

I don't want to wear out the welcome of SotC/ICO, but those are two of the easiest examples. The story in them may be simple, but the underlying message is far more powerful than any movie I can think of made in the last 10 years.

You aren't going to get plots like in movies or books, but that shouldn't be taken meaning the medium is somehow inherently worse, it just means that you have to look for different things. You can have dramatic stories in games (FF7 had a pretty dramatic and well told story, whether you enjoyed it or not), you can have stories with a simple message (there are movies that do the same), etc. I think the fact that the players have choices is a bullet point on the list of strengths of the medium, not weaknesses -- often the choice isn't really a choice since games are nearly linear (which makes his point sort of sink in the ocean of valid points), but what about games where there are different endings depending on actions you take during the game? That is something no movie can offer, or book (unless it's one of those choose your own adventure books; Hah).

He's looking at things the wrong way.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I've always found that the point at which things cross from being Entertainment to Art coincides with the point at which I dislike them.

 

[Sis]

I don't want to wear out the welcome of SotC/ICO, but those are two of the easiest examples. The story in them may be simple, but the underlying message is far more powerful than any movie I can think of made in the last 10 years.

I have a ton of respect for the people doing ICO and SotC (which I haven't played yet), but I would argue that ICO is probably the best the video game has to offer in this regards, and yet it still pales in comparison to other mediums.

Video games are probably similar to the silent films in terms of maturity. One or two more things have to happen before we see full blown artistic growth.

.Sis

 

[therealskywolf]

The guy is old.

 

[Sis]

I've always found that the point at which things cross from being Entertainment to Art coincides with the point at which I dislike them.

You don't like the Godfather, Schindler's List, It's a Wonderful Life, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Fargo, or Silence of the Lambs? These are just a sampling of films that are both highly entertaining yet well regarded from an artistic perspective. It's a worthy goal to strive for.

.Sis

 

[NRP]

Ultimately, it's just one person's opinion. Given time, I think it's possible for video games to equal (possibly eclipse) literature and movies because games are interactive. This opens up a whole other plane of experience that neither literature nor movies have.

 

[AlphaWolf]

You don't like the Godfather, Schindler's List, It's a Wonderful Life, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Fargo, or Silence of the Lambs? These are just a sampling of films that are both highly entertaining yet well regarded from an artistic perspective. It's a worthy goal to strive for.

.Sis

Let's just say that I wouldn't watch any of them again unless I were suffering from insomnia.

 

[Bobbler]

Video games are probably similar to the silent films in terms of maturity. One or two more things have to happen before we see full blown artistic growth.

.Sis

Oh, definately, I agree there. It's his comment that makes it seem like he thinks video games will never be anything more than Madden style games are what I don't like -- he's completely ignoring how young the medium is and how much time Movies/Literature have had to mature. And even considering that, I wouldn't say games are really all that far behind.

 

[Bobbler]

Let's just say that I wouldn't watch any of them again unless I were suffering from insomnia.

It isn't like there is any shortage of mindless entertainment movies, even with the medium being considered art. So I'm not sure what the deal is -- have you never enjoyed movies? because they've been considered an "art form" for years now.

 

[AlphaWolf]

It isn't like there is any shortage of mindless entertainment movies, even with the medium being considered art. So I'm not sure what the deal is -- have you never enjoyed movies? because they've been considered an "art form" for years now.

hah, you are going to call the crap that a director like uwe boll spills out art? I can take some crayons and smear some crap on a piece of paper, I don't think anyone would call that art either.

My point is that when usually when directors seek to make art they often fail to make entertainment. At least from my perspective.

 

[Tap In]

You don't like the Godfather, Schindler's List, It's a Wonderful Life, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Fargo, or Silence of the Lambs? These are just a sampling of films that are both highly entertaining yet well regarded from an artistic perspective. It's a worthy goal to strive for.

.Sis

great list

 

[Bobbler]

hah, you are going to call the crap that a director like uwe boll spills out art? I can take some crayons and smear some crap on a piece of paper, I don't think anyone would call that art either.

My point is that when usually when directors seek to make art they often fail to make entertainment. At least from my perspective.

What part of anything I said implied that Uwe boll has any sort of talent, let alone is able to make anything that is remotely close to being considered "art"?

I said the medium of movies is considered an art form (or at least holds the capacity to be considered art, like games or literature), not that every movie is art (which is where you seem to be having a problem, individual movies that are considered "art") -- hence my talking about mindless entertainment movies still existing (which are far from art), even though movies are considered an art form.

 

[AlphaWolf]

What part of anything I said implied that Uwe boll has any sort of talent, let alone is able to make anything that is remotely close to being considered "art"?

I said the medium of movies is considered an art form (or at least holds the capacity to be considered art, like games or literature), not that every movie is art (which is where you seem to be having a problem, individual movies that are considered "art") -- hence my talking about mindless entertainment movies still existing (which are far from art), even though movies are considered an art form.

Considering how you are backtracking on what you said originally you can see why I made the uwe boll comment.

Movies don't have to be mindless to be entertaining, nor do they have to be art, or artless. Video games are no different.

 

[kyleb]

Can you back up your assertian with some exemplars from the gaming industry that have the same type of importance as some of the classic movies and books?

Max Payne may compete with some of the best comic books out there, but there's a wide gap between it and the best books and movies. And even the much regarded Ico is not yet there in this regards, but at least it's a game that's finally hitting an emotional nerve.

As of today, I think Ebert is correct, but the industry is quickly evolving, and games like God of War and Ico are movements in the right direction...
.Sis

I'm calling BS on Eperts assertation that the medium of video games inherently lacks the authorial control necessary to become a form of art. The examples you list are good ones, as are much older games like Metal Gear Solid and Ocarina of Time.

 

[Bobbler]

Considering how you are backtracking on what you said originally you can see why I made the uwe boll comment.

Movies don't have to be mindless to be entertaining, nor do they have to be art, or artless. Video games are no different.

I just wrote out a big long thing about art and deleted it. It's not worth arguing over because art is so incredibly subjective and it makes me sick using the term art so much (it's so overused now as it is; innovation and art are getting on my nerves).

I will say that my term mindless was probably improperly used (as it wasn't meant to be derogatory towards those type of movies, at all). I'm also not really sure where you think I backtracked (but I can bet it has to do with the topic being "art", which is inherently messy to talk about to begin with).

I have a feeling we more or less agree, as that second sentence I completely agree with -- which is what I was saying, you shouldn't care if games are considered art because even if you don't like those "artsy" games or movies (like ICO, or Godfather) there should still be plenty that will satisfy you.