http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html#more - A link to a recent article about video games written by film critic and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert.
I found the way he presented the argument within the article to be an incredibly spurious one considering that Ebert is no real authority on video games, accordingly I sent him the following message:
Mr. Ebert,
I imagine upon reading the subject of my message, which is in relation to your recent article about video games, you are probably tempted to pay it no heed and place it in the same frame of mind as the 'volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways'. I have no interest in nagging you to play certain video games nor do I wish for you to simply write a second article admitting you were wrong. I am writing this to tell you a film critic as seasoned as you are, no matter how insightful, is largely incapable of being an authority on the validity of video games as an art form UNLESS they themselves are an avid gamer. I've been reading your articles for a long time and rarely find myself disagreeing with statements you make and never before anywhere near this strongly but the moment I read the article I felt that I needed to make my voice heard. I believe that art is not necessarily a concrete term in the same way that something may or may not be a brick, arguing that a banana is a brick would be absurd. In one sense the only real art is artwork in the traditional sense, paintings, sculpture etc. However art can indeed have a second meaning within which it can be applied to film, theatre, literature, music and indeed, games. Saying that games can never be art or will never be art as long as you or I live as if it were a concrete fact that is beyond protest is an unfair thing to do.
I realise that listening to this person you've never met and have no knowledge of telling you that you've made a terrible mistake must be somewhat confusing but please allow me to make the point I am trying to make. Yes, I am an avid gamer but like you my passion is film, which I am currently studying in at Newport university. I therefore often find myself judging games on similar merits to films, something I cannot help doing and wish I could avoid doing, with regards to that I often find it rather difficult to find games that I genuinely love as much as any of my favourite films because they do not live up to the same standard of visual storytelling. The obvious response is that they were never intended to be, they are intended to be fun and challenging. All films are intended to be entertaining and some are also fun or even challenging in the complexity of their narrative as a by product of this, sometimes even intentionally. It is the same with literature, take for example Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Leaves ), this is a book written in a deliberately unconventional format in order to challenge the reader via footnotes, mirror writing and so forth; in House of Leaves the reader actually has to work to solve to mystery integral to the plot. I therefore submit that just as challenge and fun can be by products of film and literature, engaging storytelling that could potentially be considered art in either of the two previous mediums is possible in video games.
Art is, of course, primarily an expression brought out in a visual or indeed audible way. Some games can never be art, racing games can never be art, football sims can never be art because they are simulations. Games that tell stories interactively, however basic those stories may be, can be art. If such games were purely intended to be a fun pastime then there would be no need for the level of visual detail, thought and abstract design that goes into them, looking at The Scream does not entertain me but I am awestruck by the beauty of its design and the ideas behind it. I doubt you will have heard of Dear Esther:
It's a mod of another game Half-Life 2, so it takes the basic structure of that game and builds a new one around it. It's free and available online, largely unheard of within the mainstream community. It tells the story of an enigmatic narrator who you play as on a small Hebridean Island. You explore the island in a largely linear fashion and new segments of the story are triggered in voice-over as you progress further, the man is dying of a fever that begins to incite hallucinations as you go on further, the narrated story thereby bleeds into the largely arbitrary setting visually as you go on. The only challenge offered by this game is the act of knowing what direction to travel in, the fun is offered in the same way as any horror film, it has a hugely tense, ethereal atmosphere. It could have been a short film, it could have been a novella, but instead it is an hour or so's worth of an interactive experience within which you gain control of a character you do not fully understand. You are effectively pointed in a direction and the pace at which you progress is the only thing left to you. It is impossible to fail. One might then suggest that Dear Esther isn't a game at all but an interactive storytelling experience. There have been films that have deliberately broken the basic principles of film-making and books that have done similar things. Dear Esther is to video games what say, Wavelength is to films, regardless of popularity or quality, it breaks many of the rules only retaining the basic structure in the name of expressing an idea. Dear Esther is art.
There have been similar games that have followed this trend, Darkseed was a similar interactive tale that featured design work done by none other than H.R. Giger himself. Within the mainstream games such as these do exist, they adhere to the aforementioned basic principles a great deal more but the chief focus is still on plot and visual expression, Bioshock, a dystopian tale that utilises the ideas of Ayne Rand to create an underwater 'utopia' for the player to experience and Shadow of the Colossus which gives us a massive landscape rules by 16 god-like, majestic creatures, based around a tale comparable to many ancient myths are key examples. I could file through examples of this phenomenon in their many forms all day but there is no need to. As I said before I cannot just argue that games can be art as a fact because all forms of media can only really be considered art subjectively, one could probably argue against the idea of certain films being thought of as art. What I will say though is that based upon the strength of their visual storytelling and how in many cases it has in fact undercut the basic principles of gaming, video games have earned every right to sit amongst films, books, plays, music, dance and every other form of mass communication that has in the past been thought of as an article of self expression and therefore a work of art. I do not ask that you agree with this opinion, I simply submit that your argument, like mine is an opinion and not by any means a fact.
Yours,
Callum Davies
So, that was the message I sent him, hopefully at the very least he'll read it and take my point of view on board. Now, to lighten the mood:
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