The Ant Nest

[This is the first part of a two-part post. The second part can be found here.]

Film critic Roger Ebert caused a stir recently by declaring “I believe books and films are better mediums [than video games]“.

It’s tricky to know at what level to respond to his comments. He readily admits to being “unfamiliar with video games” but sees this as no obstacle to holding such firm opinions because “if there were video games in the same league [as classic film and literature], someone somewhere who was familiar with the best work in all three mediums would have made a convincing argument in their defense.” Absence of evidence is proof of absence, it seems.

In a follow-up column, he further elaborated on his comments and expanded his assertion. Originally, he argued that as-yet there existed no games that could challenge classic film and literature. In this new column, he condemns video games to an eternity of inadequacy, arguing that the medium is fundamentally wounded by its interactivity.

There is a structural reason for [the inferiority of video games compared to film and literature]: 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.

This is particularly tricky territory in which to manoeuver and, where appropriate, refute and argue against or concur and agree with. Direct questions like ‘are games art?’ lead onto ‘what is art?’ and other such philosophical questions that quickly lead you into a disorienting maze from which it can prove difficult to escape.

If you hone in on with the wrong definition of artistic quality, you can quickly end up arguing Ebert’s point for him, instead of refuting it. Joystiq, angrily ranting, falls into this trap:

Wait, so Roger Ebert is unfamiliar with the linear storylines and cutscene extravaganzas already cliched in console RPGs these days? Has no one deigned to show him a Metal Gear Solid or even the original Xenosaga yet? Or did those wacky endings in fighting games turn him off from the possibility of games with cinematic storytelling forever?

It’s difficult to see how attempting to mimic the conventions of another medium can lead to anything other than hollow replicas that would be better served by being presented in the original medium. This is especially true when, as Joystiq points out, these replicas are created by pushing out everything that makes games unique (the interactivity that is necessarily lost when you emphasise “linear storylines and cutscene extravaganzas”), which is almost a direct acknowledgement of Ebert’s assertion that interactivity acts to dilute. Films aren’t works of art because they try and imitate books, so it seems perverse to argue that games would be any better served by imitation. Such an argument only serves to reinforce Ebert’s point that games will always finish in second place.

There’s a persistent confusion in Ebert’s comments - is he talking about today’s games, or tomorrow’s games?

Warren Spector has notably recently expressed his frustration at how the themes of today’s games can disguise the medium’s artistic merits: “It’s like I want to tell my mother ‘This is what games can be.’ But I can’t because they don’t get past the beating people up with a baseball bat, stealing cars and crashing them, and the foul language and stuff.”

In this light, it’s easy to see how Ebert might find it difficult to find the artistry in today’s games. Chris Remo does a worthy job of seeking it out, though. He picks two examples from his personal experience:

For an example off the top of my head of the former, take the strange yet brutally familiar imagining of America presented in Tim Schafer’s Full Throttle (PC). Set in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic landscape, the seemingly mundane backdrop of a hostile corporate takeover reaches incredible depth of significance. It becomes a metaphor for the country’s slow decline into corporate facelessness and the odd juxtaposition between the freedom allowed by a recreated American frontier with the essential powerlessness of the frontier’s inhabitants. You think I’m kidding? Play it again.

I’m not entirely convinced by his choice of Full Throttle. My experience of LucasArts’ old adventure games is that they can be represented as a largely linear story whose narration is continually interrupted by puzzles whose objective is simply to be completed so that the narration can proceed. The interactivity merely acts as a valve for the storytelling, which owes its effectiveness to film and other visual narration formats. That’s not to diminish the beauty of the stories and experiences presented (pretty much all of them rank among my most favourite gaming memories). However, I find it difficult to think of a compelling reason why the stories and themes presented in Full Throttle are better served in the medium of a game than they would be as an animated cartoon, so I’d be forced to concede that Ebert’s position is unchallenged by this example.

His second example, however, a case for Pikmin’s artistic expression, seems to me entirely solid.

For another spur of the moment example in a more non-narrative setting, take Shigeru Miyamoto’s Pikmin (GCN). Miyamoto didn’t set out to necessarily create a quirky character-based real-time strategy title, though that’s the form the game took. While working in his garden, he decided to craft a game that would evoke the melancholic and solitary feelings he was experiencing. Anybody who has become engrossed in Pikmin can surely attest to those qualities shining through to an almost startling degree. It’s all the more surprising given the typically Miyamoto-esque brightly colored and exaggerated presentation, as the game has less of the carefree nature inherent to, say, a Mario title. The fact that Pikmin so effectively communicates the emotions Miyamoto intended to convey is not simply an issue of craftsmanship (though craftsmanship is present in spades with the balanced and engaging gameplay), it speaks to the artistry with which the game was conceived.

Since Ebert’s charge was that the quantity of artistic games in existence today was none, an example of just one seems to me to be satisfactory defence, though I am certain that others could be produced (the reader comments that accompany Remo’s article contain numerous potentials amongst the usual message board banter).

Today’s games defended successfully or not, it is essential to focus on the charges made by Ebert against tomorrow’s games, against all games, since these charges completely overshadow any commentary on today’s games.

This charge is considered in Part 2 of this post.