isn’t reserved to film buffs. His death is being noted by the
video game
press, thanks to some comments by the movie critic that
inspired defensiveness among gamers but also introspection within
the industry.
Ebert famously (among gamers anyway) declared “Video games can
never be art,” subsequently explaining and defending his position
in a
blog post at the Chicago Sun-Times in 2010. He
grappled with the always elusive definition of art and what has
become these days an elusive definition of what constitutes a
“game.” He concluded:
Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be
defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never
said they thought their games were an art form. Nor did Shi Hua
Chen, winner of the $500,000 World Series of Mah Jong in 2009. Why
aren't gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy
themselves? They have my blessing, not that they care.Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against
parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics,
do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain,
"I'm studying a great form of art?" Then let them say it, if it
makes them happy.
His attitude didn’t resolve the debate. That one blog post
garnered nearly 5,000 comments. A couple months later he
addressed the matter again, admitting that it was unfair of him
to judge a medium in part because he personally was not interested
in engaging in it. He preferred books and movies. He didn’t want to
play video games.
And yet, despite his lack of interest in the medium, the medium
was still very interested in his thoughts. Ebert’s comments
inspired a session at the annual Game Developers Conference in
2011. “Are video games art?” and “Can video games be art?”
are topics endlessly debated among gaming enthusiasts and
creators.
Ebert ultimately, accidentally, symbolized the engagement gap
between Baby Boomers and younger generations in the role of video
games in culture. It’s a fascinating rift because, really, Baby
Boomers invented video games. But very few early video
games ever aspired to anything as fancy as being “art.” Until the
development of the adventure game genre they hardly even had what
could be called a story.
Ebert could be excused for his ignorance of what has come since
then in much the same way as a young millennial could be oblivious
to the role of Motown on the development of the popular music we
still listen to today. The expansion of video games from a hobby to
a subculture to simply part of our culture — like every other
form of entertainment — happened through Generation X and is now
being passed along to subsequent generations. Baby Boomers just
weren’t culturally connected to it. Ebert couldn’t include video
games as art because video games didn’t include him and thus it
inspires no connection. It’s nobody’s fault. Definitions of art are
not timeless and rigid. Ebert himself acknowledged it and struggled
to come up with a definition that would explain why video games
should be omitted, but not other artistic endeavors, like
music.
What’s happening now is that the children who grew up on video
games are now the ones running the industry and have a cultural
interest in creating a lasting legacy. Ebert’s observations were a
challenge to them, whether he realized it or not. Generation X is
defined in part by video games. Games have as much meaning to many
of them as rock music and Motown did for Baby Boomers. The
defensiveness and insistence of gamers and the gaming industry
about elevating this culture into an art form may well be
subconsciously based on the knowledge that games are what Gen. X
will be primarily remembered for years down the line.
