Ebert - "Video Games are not Art"

THAT MARIO'S NO ANGELA LANSBURY!

In a new Journal post, Roger Ebert defends his long implied opinion that video games cannot be art, which means, of course, that Roger Ebert is too busy playing Bingo and being enthralled with Matlock to bother with, I don't know; what's the current Best Game Ever? Anyway, he's strictly speaking from the point of view of the generationally marginalized. His biases as a grey haired person make him incapable of appreciating the subtle nuances of running over roller bladers in Grand Theft Auto, and he's trying to qualify it intellectually.

That's how it feels, right? Even as we begin to qualify that intellectually, delving into our minds after a notably mature understanding of notably great game that might harness all the wisdom and good nature with which Ebert recieved Taxi Driver. It's not the argument we're really concerned with. He just doesn't get it, and, fortunately, we certainly do, and we'll disect art in whichever way necessary to decide that Metal Gear Solid is something beyond mere recreation.

That's how I feel, anyway, and I'm not going to be self-correcting about it, because, honestly, I don't think the argument really is about an argument at all. I do not believe that Roger Ebert is some bitter old man who believes that all video games look like pong and take place on "that intendo box"; I've read his defense and of course it's smart, but then his three and a half star review of xXx wasn't idiotic either. The issue is not that he's dumb or elusively brilliant, about this or anything else; his smarts don't matter, in this case. All that matters in this (now over 3000 comment) debate, is that Roger Ebert has not played a game that has meant something to him, and a lot of people my age have.

In pixels, how like an Angel!

I am not much of a gamer. Like most young men, however, I had my teenaged hay-day with it, the highlight of which took place with a game called Metal Gear Solid. I have dearly loved other games ( I was, for a time, probably the best Tony Hawk 2 player on earth) but I recieved something from MGS. Lines from that game became as pivitol to me, personally, as any I've taken from books or films. The process of playing and replaying it is something I regard as soulful - an excisice in motor skills and problem solving, yes, but an excercise of the spirit, too. This has partly to do, I'm sure, with the game's cinematic appeal, and I'm postive that others have had more pure responses to games for the innate properties of the medium, but I'm not sure I would feel the same way had MGS simply been a film. I could ruminate forever as to why, but we'll just leave it at that.

And the funny thing is that the game's creator would agree with Ebert: games are not art. The gamer's experience, however, can be, and for all the mulling of art's definition one could do in this discussion, I think it's fair to say that when one experiences something personally meaningful that seems bigger than it's formal title, art may not be a terrible stretch in terminology. And if it does push at the traditional boundaries, then why not? What esle is art bloody well about?

Ebert defends that so much of what people are great at, which mean special things to them, are not nor need be construde as art. Michael Jordan does not, for instance, think of basketball as art, so why must I think of MGS as art? Thing is, I don't care what Michael Jordan thinks; someone in his shoes should be allowed to think of their movements on the court as art, just as I should be able to do as a spectator. In the film a River Runs Through it, there's some pretensious examination of fly fishing as art, which doesn't do much for me but I wouldn't fight with for a second. One man might attend karate class as a work out, another might find his truest self there.

It's just that it doesn't matter what outsiders think. It doesn't, because art has never been about thinking. If you do something that means the world to you, simply to do, you're likely to find art a fitting label, if you feel like bothering with one. Which leads to Roger's final point about why gamers feel the need to designate video games as art in the first place. What is it earning them? Nothing, is the answer. No one needs to call their practice art to have it. It's when people say it cannot be art that those areas of ourselves that feel as strongly as they know how, get a little irked. We're not concerned with the precise boundaries of artistic designation; you're saying we don't have what we know we do.

Also, Metal Gear's main character has THE SAME NAME AS ME. What else do you want, Roger?!


By Dave Beauchene