Khuutra said:
I alluded to that last point earlier in the topic: the ugly truth about the academic state of art is that it's not something that's inherent to a work, it's based solely around the critical discourse that surrounds a work or a medium. Critics, not artists, decide what is art, though the sheer fact of talking about something as if it were art. If there were popular research papers dedicated to, say, the agency of the player outside of his avatar in EarthBound, or the subversion of goal-based narrative in Shadow of the Colossus, these games would be art in academic circles by sheer virtue of being taken that seriously on a wide scale. That's what disappoints me so much about gaming criticism as it is now: they seem very much concerned that games should be perceived as art (which is not an altogether coheren or even meaningful concern) but then they keep the critical discourse on a decidedly lower, less critical level. I don't mean to take away from people who talk about how fun games are, either - fun is an immense part of what defines games as an art form - just that people who want video games to be take seriously should do their best to take their own contributions to the discourse seriously. |
Ah. in honesty i didn't really read much outside of Ebert's blog entry because I wanted to process it, and wanted to avoid mostly what I thought would be the early kneejerk reactions that wouldn't be doing anybody any favors... up until about the post you made about your comment on his blog.
As for the rest... I completly agree.
Although I wonder if criticlly you would need another review art wise rather then "fun" wise.
There are probably games that are good examples of art by some metrics, but not much fun in other cases. For example... Killer 7 is just, crazy. The game just has this sense of abstractness and it's just such an expierence, it's hard to not classify it like you would say, something done by David Lynch.
However at it's core... it's gameplay is... just strange, and stiff. I think the stiffness helps the atmosphere of the creepyness of the Heaven's Smile... but if someone just wanted a judgement of the gameplay, or that they could just sit down and have fun with, this is clearly the wrong game. As an expierence it's great... and an actual game... people may not want the expierence because the gameplay is stiff and frustrating.
Other forms of media have found the right level of balance... however other forms of media also seem to have "tells." You know pretty much before you read the review of a movie whether it's being reviewed more as mass media consumption or as art... often by the genre or other tells. While with videogames, pretty much any genre made by anybody could be reviewed on a basis of art or on a basis of "will I enjoy it."
In general, if you don't like "artistic" movies, it's easy for you to identify and skip them.
Also, and it's something I hesitate to bring up but... other forums of media have their reviews read more. It seems like a LOT more people are willing to look at a review as nothing more then a score, then they are a movie review. People are more likely to read movie reviews.
As such, if you include art in you criteria for review... if ends up confounding the issue for your average reader, who may skim a bit then skip to the score.
Well, all that and the fact that videogame critics have never gone to school to do it.... most likely haven't even studied any kind of criticism for any medium. I'm not sure how critics came to be in other mediums, whether it was how it is for videogames or whether it was by poaching critics from other fields but... I feel something in general is just currently missing for critics to help elevate gaming to art. Maybe it is just a definitive "what is art" stance.
