Warren Spector (of System Shock and Deus Ex fame) asks, Where's Gaming's Roger Ebert?
42 replies, posted
[QUOTE]In his latest column, Spector argues that the industry will be legitimized if mainstream publications can offer regular critical analysis of games[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]After my last column, I guess you could say, "Enough's enough. Move on to other topics," but I can't stop thinking about one aspect of the column - the idea of what constitutes appropriate games criticism (or, let's just say, something different in addition to what we have now). I promise I'll move on to another topic in the future, but for now, I hope you'll bear with me.
I think everyone can agree that gaming has plenty of consumer-oriented criticism along the lines of "It's great" or "It sucks." Sometimes, though not often enough, writers even share the reasoning behind their opinions. In this journalistic world, the quality of games journalism reminds me of what you used to see in amateur science fiction, comic book and movie fanzines in the days before newsstands were stocked with pop culture coverage. But at least we have some commercial, review-oriented cinema of varying quality.
Similarly, we have some - a growing amount - of academic games criticism. This circulates largely, even exclusively among (surprise!) academics, and most gamers, developers and publishers would be surprised to learn it exists, let alone find any sort of guidance or even utility in it.
Finally, we have a good bit of developer- or publisher-related writing, describing advanced techniques for making games, getting pixels on the screen, AI doing what we want it to do or getting games to market. There's no shortage of this sort, an unassailably good thing. Developers and publishers talking to each other, sharing knowledge and comparing notes? The more of that, the better.
So, we have critical writing and videos and teachers capable of reaching gamers, academics as well as developers and business people. Anyone notice a constituency that's missing here?
Yep.
Normal people.
Not gamers. Not professors. Not game-makers. Normal people.
In other words, we're missing much criticism or historical analysis that might speed up a process of achieving cultural acceptance of games as something more than a way to pluck dollars from the pockets of teenage and 20-something boys or the purses of 30-something women.
(Note: Before anyone accuses me of sexism, let me say I'm simply acknowledging the shameless sexism of the gaming world as it exists today. Call it a mini-column within the column. A two-fer, if you will. Don't kill the messenger.)
What we need, as I said in an earlier column, is our own Andrew Sarris, Leonard Maltin, Pauline Kael, Judith Crist, Manny Farber, David Thomson, or Roger Ebert. We need people in mainstream media who are willing to fight with each other (not literally, of course) about how games work, how they reflect and affect culture, how we judge them as art as well as entertainment. We need people who want to explain games, individually and generically, as much as they want to judge them. We need what might be called mainstream critical theorists.
And they need a home. Not only on the Internet (though we need them there, too), not just for sale at GDC, but on newsstands and bookstore shelves - our own Film Comment, Sight and Sound, Cahiers du Cinema. Magazines you could buy on the newsstand. Why? Because currently, criticism of this - what little we have of it - reaches only the already converted. To reach the parents, the teachers, the politicians, we need to be where they shop. Even if you never pick up a film magazine, the fact that there are obviously serious magazines devoted to the topic makes a difference in the minds of the uninitiated.
Equally important, we need everyday, mainstream media to devote space to different kinds of games coverage. Criticism, not just reviews. What comes to mind is the way the NY Times, the Village Voice, The New Yorker and others treat films.
Check out the June 23rd issue of the NY Times Arts & Leisure section. There you'll find articles of the sort that appear in the Times (and other print and online publications) day after day, week after week. When the topic is film, such articles are expected.
For starters, there's an article about Ernst Lubitsch (look him up) that describes and contextualizes his work. There's a piece on Alfred Hitchcock and how his lesser-known, relatively primitive silent films set the stage for later masterworks. These articles meld criticism and history to provide a context for thinking about movies old and new, not just the specific films and filmmakers they discuss. Articles like this can inspire viewers to think about all the movies they see in new ways. Moviegoers can enjoy the films discussed - or any film - just for what they are, but read enough such articles and it will inform and change the way you think. And that may change the kinds of movies you choose to see as well as how you think about them when you do.
Even better than Lubitsch and Hitchcock, there's a story called "Marriage, the Job" that discusses the ways in which a variety of movies reflect current (changing) attitudes toward marriage. Without assessing the quality of the article or discussing the "appropriate" attitude toward marriage, I'll just say this is a piece of writing that doesn't address or care whether the movies discussed are good or bad, or how they work from a formal, ludological manner. The article is simply about how movies work as cultural objects - not a simple subject at all - in a voice that's well suited to average (okay, maybe above average) readers with even a casual interest in films. It whispers, gently, "Look at me. I'm a serious medium. I'm worthy of your time and attention."
One listening to these whispers might be inspired to seek out some or all of the films discussed, but that isn't the fundamental point. These articles, all of them, in a single day's Times, aren't about how good or bad these movies are - they're about what these movies are about and how they go about being what they're about. These articles don't deny the commercial and business aspects of any film, but they choose to ignore or minimize these elements in a search for meaning and how meaning is communicated. These articles are about understanding, about authorial point of view, about the historical context in which a film came to be made and how films old and new can be relevant to us today.
In other words, these writers, seemingly, couldn't care less whether readers learn if they think a movie is good or bad. Their goal (again, seemingly, since I haven't asked any of them and wouldn't really care what their answer might be) is to communicate that, in some way, a film or director is worth writing and thinking about - certainly worth it for the critic and, one hopes, for the reader as well.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-09-warren-spector-wheres-gamings-roger-ebert[/url]
allot more continued in the source because SH rules won't let me post all of it
I always kind of thought Yahtzee fulfilled that niche rather nicely.
Gaming doesn't need a Roger Ebert because nothing needs a Roger Ebert anymore. The internet makes it simple to aggregate thousands of opinions instantly, what use is there for a lone critic?
I see your article about gamings inferiotiy complex, and I raise you an article on the subject
[url]http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/07/12/citizen-kane-ebert-and-gamings-inferiority-complex/[/url]
[editline]13th July 2013[/editline]
games aren't movies, and interacting with a media is unique to each person. How can we really expect to have one person be the medium in which we all try to force our interactions through?
we don't need to see games through a "super critics" lens. We can play them and actually deal with them first hand.
Where's gaming's Roger Ebert? Probably waiting for the day that games have matured as an art form to the point where a story and characterization on the level of a Michael Bay explosion-fest isn't held up as 'THE CITIZEN KANE OF GAMING'. I think games that can be held up as proof that games can be art are few and far between at the moment.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41443378]Gaming doesn't need a Roger Ebert because nothing needs a Roger Ebert anymore. The internet makes it simple to aggregate thousands of opinions instantly, what use is there for a lone critic?[/QUOTE]
Someone who is familiar with a medium and educated and knowledgeable about it and art criticism is probably a lot more useful as a resource than the aggregated opinions of a thousand bro shooter fans.
[QUOTE=catbarf;41443654]Where's gaming's Roger Ebert? Probably waiting for the day that games have matured as an art form to the point where a story and characterization on the level of a Michael Bay explosion-fest isn't held up as 'THE CITIZEN KANE OF GAMING'. I think games that can be held up as proof that games can be art are few and far between at the moment.
Someone who is familiar with a medium and educated and knowledgeable about it and art criticism is probably a lot more useful as a resource than the aggregated opinions of a thousand bro shooter fans.[/QUOTE]
yeah it pains when people praise a game for having a good story when odds are that game's story is comparable to some forgettable Summer film that did bad
As long as games keep being a way to shovel $60 of content per year down the throats of anyone who buys into repetitive marketing campaigns, games don't need to be elevated critically. The cheapest games to develop are profitable at the top, and the art is incidental.
Call of Duty: Reskin, I'm looking at you.
The worst thing for gaming being recognized as art or culturally significant is gaming itself, or at least the money tied up in it.
How do you make a "Citizen Kane" game? How do you suppose you can break ground the way that movie did, and make an impact the way that movie did, when literally nothing has since? It has an incredible deep cultural presence and understanding, where we all know, "hey, that movie was, and is, one of the most incredible pieces of it's artform" but we never really stop to think that's because it broke ground, and did things so well and so new that it's mind blowing and will stay in the public mind for a long time. How can games do this at this stage in the mediums life? How can they be expected to hold up to that kind of standard when nothing does just based on principle almost?
Why do we need a Roger Ebert? I don't feel like one person can be more understanding of all the varied possibilities of games, as one can be with movies. Movies have many genre, but I think you can easily make the argument that games through their very nature of being interactive, and having various forms of interactivity, are too broad a spectrum for one person to really be all knowing on in the way we think of Ebert. Sure, a person could be a master of stories, but games aren't just stories, they're a story bundled with interactivity and a bit of randomness. I don't feel like we should take one person's word so seriously, Ebert being a masterful writer and a very clever film critic serves his purpose and has done a great job of it but I think to say we need one for gaming is wrong.
[QUOTE=Solo Wing;41443366]I always kind of thought Yahtzee fulfilled that niche rather nicely.[/QUOTE]
yahtzee doesnt have good opinions on anything. he oversimplifies everything about a game to the point where hes just rambling and making fun of it for nothing but attention. he has never shown much knowledge for anything game design and id barely call what he does a review. i certainly wouldnt call him a critic
I don't agree with Spector that we need a MAINSTREAM critical analysis of games. We just need MORE critical analysis of games and I think that's where he's mostly getting at. Not just reviewing games but more conversation on games and even more "academic" driven analysis. I think the headline for the article is dumb. We don't need a "Roger Ebert" we just need more serious analysis of video games, and to hell with the mainstream media, this is a great opportunity to grow the gaming industry/community on itself.
[QUOTE=catbarf;41443654]Where's gaming's Roger Ebert? Probably waiting for the day that games have matured as an art form to the point where a story and characterization on the level of a Michael Bay explosion-fest isn't held up as 'THE CITIZEN KANE OF GAMING'. I think games that can be held up as proof that games can be art are few and far between at the moment.[/QUOTE]
Not to mention that most games that want to qualify as art right now tend to be pretentious shit.
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;41444376]Not to mention that most games that want to qualify as art right now tend to be pretentious shit.[/QUOTE]
do you know how pretentious it is to say that
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;41444376]Not to mention that most games that want to qualify as art right now tend to be pretentious shit.[/QUOTE]
this is rly dumb and you should be ashamed for having a mindset that holds back an entire artform.
all games are art by definition end of story. anyone who disagrees is wrong and ignorant.
[QUOTE=DOG-GY;41444402]this is rly dumb and you should be ashamed for having a mindset that holds back an entire artform.
all games are art by definition end of story. anyone who disagrees is wrong and ignorant.[/QUOTE]
No I mean games made to be art and not to be games. Stuff like Fez, Proteus, Bientôt l'été, The Graveyard, and most of the Newgrounds flash games out there.
I didn't say games weren't art, I said that most devs trying to push their games as ~art~ and ~deep~ tend to forget to actually make a game and instead end up releasing a snorefest that's full of itself, pretentious and up its own ass.
[QUOTE=catbarf;41443654]Where's gaming's Roger Ebert? Probably waiting for the day that games have matured as an art form to the point where a story and characterization on the level of a Michael Bay explosion-fest isn't held up as 'THE CITIZEN KANE OF GAMING'. I think games that can be held up as proof that games can be art are few and far between at the moment.[/QUOTE]
It doesn't really help that nobody is sure what games can be called art and what games can't.
"Art" games usually fall flat on their faces because you can tell it's just trying to be artistic for the sake of being artistic, as opposed to achieving such a state through being well thought out and having a lot of good work put into it. You end up with these games like Fez, or that one where you play as an old woman and just walk to a bench and that's it (The Graveyard? Something like that). It's just trying to be "art" and you just end up with the gaming equal to Yoko Ono. Art should be a natural end goal of doing well and making something good, not because you set out to make "art".
[QUOTE=Ganerumo;41444442]No I mean games made to be art and not to be games. Stuff like Fez, Proteus, Bientôt l'été, The Graveyard, and most of the Newgrounds flash games out there.
I didn't say games weren't art, I said that most devs trying to push their games as ~art~ and ~deep~ tend to forget to actually make a game and instead end up releasing a snorefest that's full of itself, pretentious and up its own ass.[/QUOTE]
1st off Fez is a great game despite Fish being an asshole. i havent played the others. youre depriving a style of game (one that focuses more on an overall experience rather than a robust set of mechanics) from the same status as other games, and at the same time calling the game (and by extension the devs) pretentious. ur kind of being an asshole
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41443378]Gaming doesn't need a Roger Ebert because nothing needs a Roger Ebert anymore. The internet makes it simple to aggregate thousands of opinions instantly, what use is there for a lone critic?[/QUOTE]
Because most of those thousands opinions are idiotic, short sighted and/or uneducated and sifting through those to find the gems can be a pain in the ass or impossible depending on the situation.
The point of a lone critic is not having someone who you'll trust blindly to make your judgements for you, it is to have an educated, inspired person writing about and on subjects he/she knows a lot about and you drawing conclusions from them. I did not agree with Ebert's judgements on many films but I still read his reviews because I wanted to learn more about his point of view and to catch things I might have missed or things I just don't have the background knowledge to think about.
The biggest problem I can see with this is the lone critic model requires a vast knowledge on the subject to be relevant and while we are all more or less pretty serious gamers here, one can almost never reach the same volume of games fully played and appreciated as one can with movies. A 4-5 hour game is considered short, when you could watch 2-3 films in the same amount of time.
Why does Warren Spectre only get credit for System Shock and Deus Ex? Why not give him credit for the hit titles Invisible War and Epic Mickey 1 and 2?
We have a ton of Roger Eberts on the internet
[editline]13th July 2013[/editline]
[sp]they have bad opinions[/sp]
[QUOTE=Solo Wing;41443366]I always kind of thought Yahtzee fulfilled that niche rather nicely.[/QUOTE]
Yahtzee doesn't really do reviews. He injects his thoughts about a game into a short observational comedy routine.
[QUOTE=Zeke129;41443378]Gaming doesn't need a Roger Ebert because nothing needs a Roger Ebert anymore. The internet makes it simple to aggregate thousands of opinions instantly, what use is there for a lone critic?[/QUOTE]
the only way to "aggregate" reviews is to aggregate scores and assigning points is an awful way to go about the process of critique
I read his blog and reviews regularly because he, as a lone critic, had more meaningful things to say about movies than "it's good" or "it's bad"; his insight oftentimes helped me to understand/enjoy something more or understand feelings of my own that I had difficulty expressing.
[QUOTE=SigmaLambda;41444743]the only way to "aggregate" reviews is to aggregate scores and assigning points is an awful way to go about the process of critique
I read his blog and reviews regularly because he, as a lone critic, had more meaningful things to say about movies than "it's good" or "it's bad"; his insight oftentimes helped me to understand/enjoy something more or understand feelings of my own that I had difficulty expressing.[/QUOTE]
There's value in a single well-written review but you don't need to be a famous critic to be a good writer
[B]TL:DR - Don't be Shallow, Games are equal "art" as anything else is.[/B]
Aren't games already art? Maybe its because I'm so passionate about them, but they don't have to have grand "meaningful" stories and deep symbolism or social messages to be art, they don't have to have some kind of "greater" meaning or commentary, because that isn't what art is.
I'm not here to be pretentious and argue what art is, but to me, there is two levels of art, a literal artistic quality of lets say drawing a tree = art, and than a meaningful insight level of art. Now don't analyze this too closely, because the reality is, I'm summing it up for the sake of my argument.
Art is not only the artist's intention, but what we also make of it and what we get from it, and no one has any say to what that is or isn't. If something is reflective to me, despite being "shallow"? Than so be it, because it means something to me and has ascended a higher form for me. I could list on and on the games I played as a child, grew up with, and ones I still play today and how I reflect on them and how they changed me or inspired me. No one can take that away from me, and to me that is art at its truest sense and truest core. It is not "meaning" or "commentary" it is the insightful meaning and messages it sparks within you throughout that journey.
Art on a literal visual level too, games already succeed at, if the Mona Lisa is a beautiful piece of art, of a man's passion and skill and dedication, thousands of colors and shades swirling into one, are games not that? I'd argue they are, but they're much more, they're not just the swirling of colors like a painting, nor the stone masonry of modelling to give things shape, its more than just the melody of a song and the emotion it floods and they're more than thoughtful words and writing which we reflect, they are more than the brain and life a coder breaths in.
They are the sum of it all, they are the sum of everything, the sum of someone, or a group's passion and love for what they create. Something like Grand Theft Auto 3 might seem so shallow and so simple to a lot of people, and I'm sure to a lot here on this website, but to me? That is a great example, it's a living breathing world, a world full of people, actions, and reactions. If one man's passionate piece of art, nothing but colors on paper is a beautiful visual art, than surely an entire world that hundreds have created, is just as qualifying, if not more so?
To put it short, the answer is not games being shallow, it is gamers being shallow, we take what we have for granted and feel the need to give it false shallow and inflated "meaning". The only true meaning to the media we view, is the value and meaning we give to it, and I can say that many games, many books, and many movies, have left a beautiful impression on me.
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;41444389]do you know how pretentious it is to say that[/QUOTE]
After playing wannabe artist crap like Fez and Dear Esther, and seeing people turn snippets of near-meaningless, vague monologue from Braid and hold it up as pure art, I agree with him 100%. Most of the games that are trying to be art are trying and failing along the way.
[QUOTE=New Cidem;41443950][img]http://d1vr6n66ssr06c.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/AdamSessler.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
I believe that Sessler is one of the most eloquent people in gaming journalism. He thinks his opinions through carefully and I'm always interested in what he has to say, even when I disagree with him. Same for Total Biscuit.
[QUOTE=catbarf;41444889]After playing wannabe artist crap like Fez and Dear Esther, and seeing people turn snippets of near-meaningless, vague monologue from Braid and hold it up as pure art, I agree with him 100%. Most of the games that are trying to be art are trying and failing along the way.[/QUOTE]
Braid is successful as art because it manages to express it's thematic content mechanically; it doesn't just have a story about wanting to go back in time, it actually makes that desire something mechanical which the player interacts with in a meaningful way. Even if it's a really obvious way to express story through play, it's a million times more than what most man-shooting games do.
[QUOTE=catbarf;41444889]After playing wannabe artist crap like Fez and Dear Esther, and seeing people turn snippets of near-meaningless, vague monologue from Braid and hold it up as pure art, I agree with him 100%. Most of the games that are trying to be art are trying and failing along the way.[/QUOTE]
I think another part of it is that "art" is a very malleable term, especially when it comes to mixed media such as video games. Like film, video games are an amalgamation of many different types of art and I think the issue should be less "Which games are art" and more "Which games are GOOD art."
Of course, that alone is a totally subjective thing, hence why there's really no universal metric to it. Personally, I think a game is 'good art' if it is well presented (audiovisual, polished), mechanically solid/strong, and takes advantage of the medium in a way that likely couldn't be done (or at the least, couldn't be done [I]better[/I]) in any other medium. Then again, that leads to conundrums like Bioshock Infinite which, though I consider it a great piece of art, could have been done just as well in film or even a novel.
It's easy to see why this whole "Games as Art" thing is so convoluted.
[QUOTE=catbarf;41444889]After playing wannabe artist crap like Fez and Dear Esther, and seeing people turn snippets of near-meaningless, vague monologue from Braid and hold it up as pure art, I agree with him 100%. Most of the games that are trying to be art are trying and failing along the way.[/QUOTE]
fez has an incredibly well handled core game mechanic, with numerous mechanics built off it and actually challenging puzzles. i dont know what more you could want or why you're passing it off as "wannabe artist crap" like a fool but im guessing you just dont like phil fish
I believe that the Binding of Issac is a good example of an artistic game. It's a game about "[url=http://www.twinfinite.net/blog/2012/10/01/big-sloppy-slomper-chompers/]Kids with shitty lives [that] make up fake, creative worlds that they can get forever trapped in.[/url]" It's a deceptively simple game, yet opens up the doors for tons of deeper analysis and debate.
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