Roger Ebert, Would You Kindly Please Come Off It?

I personally think Roger Ebert is an awesome man. I think he's a great critic, a great mind, and considering what he's been though over the past couple years, a truly remarkable individual. That said, Roger Ebert's well known animosity towards video games used to instill in me a certain animosity towards him. Then when things went south, the man didn't make any more rants about video games, so my feelings about the matter had cooled to the point that I it almost seemed like a distant memory. After a while, I was sorta hoping that the legendary movie critic would shut up about the subject until the world robs us of him, so he could die with me completely respecting him. Yet, even though the man lost his mouth, even though he faces the approach of death, Roger Ebert did not lose his remarkable and highly opinionated brain. Roger Ebert is still as sharp as ever, and quite frankly, just as much of an ass. In a good way of course, but his article brought back up the venom I have for his opinions on the subject.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html


Roger's legendary problem with games is based on perception. He usually boils games as whole down to a basic premise, winning or loosing, and then completely ignores anything else, including emotional response, theme, and artistic purpose, aka, the things that make art art. The fact you have goals in games, a win or lose proposition, disqualifies us completely.

In his simplistic rebuttal of an argument about games as art, Ebert takes down Braid. Ebert has obviously never played Braid, because he speaks about it in very general terms, and without going much into the plot. Now while I'll admit Braid isn't a perfect video game, it is worthy of the term art. Yes, I contend a puzzle game can be art. The reason that Braid wins this illusive status is because of how the games ends. At the end of the game, the player makes his way through the last level, a strange world where the time seems to be moving in reverse around the player (ie, all the enemies are walking backwards, objects “fall up.”.) This pattern continues onwards till the last room, when the player finally gets to save the princess from a burly man in a stereotypical and intentionally cliché fashion. The player and his trusty character follow the princess back to her house, as she helps him past obsticles, and it seems like he is about to rescue her...until the player is forced into one last rewind. It turns out the flow of time was reversed in that room as well. Then the player is forced into watching as the main character chases the princess, as the princess tries everything in her power to stop him, (instead of clearing traps, she's actually springing them to stop him), until the princess is saved by the aforementioned burly man. The actions of the player and character through out the game are called entirely into question, as it's clear that the character has been stalking the princess.

Basically what works here, which is something only games can do, is that the Braid emotionally manipulates the audience using the very goal systems Roger Ebert decries. The goal of the game is “obstinately” to save the princess, and fix whatever mistake that character made in the past, but in trying to do so, the game sets the player up for failure, force the player into unwittingly becoming the villain. The player IS what's putting the princess in danger, and that revelation hits the audience like a brick.

Braid isn't the only game to do this. The original Bioshock infamously used a similar tactic to fuck with the player. Bioshock was one of those games that advertised on the box, “YOU CAN BE GOOD OR EVIL, YOUR CHOICE!” Which isn't really all that new, though killing little girls is still creepy no matter how you cut it. Now, what was brilliant about Bioshock was it took its advertised premise, player freedom, and thematically turned it on it's head. The story of Bioshock sure does allow players to kill little girls or save them, but otherwise the story is a fixed path. For the first segment of the game, some guy on the radio named Atlas orders the player around, towards objectives. Mindlessly following objectives in a game supposedly based on player freedom may seem counterlogical, and it is, until you get to the middle of the game, and the player meets the supposed antagonist, Andrew Ryan. Control is stripped from the player for segment that must be seen for full impact.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bncxTilQKAs
Bioshock very clearly has something to say on player agency, ie the ability of players to actual control what happens in the game. Even more generally speaking, it takes Ayn Rand's philosophies and runs with them. When we follow orders, any order, do we still retain our humanity? Do we retain our ability to choose? And by ripping away the choice to take Ryan's life, the game very clearly makes a powerful artistic statement.

Is that not what art is supposed to do?

Even with games doing such wonderful things, Ebert would probably still ignore the possibility that games are art, because to him Braid and Bioshock are indistinguishable to chess. I make this judgment due to all the comparisons to chess he makes in his article. I can see how this strategy works for him: chess isn't art, chess is a game, so all games are not art. But the logical jumps he makes are awfully familiar, much like the famous scene in Monty Python and Holy Grail where Sir Bedevere decides that if a woman weighs as much as duck, she must therefore be a witch.

Ebert makes this logical fallacy without even playing video games. I really think that is the worst part. The insults he lobs at Braid, at Flower, he does without even playing them. It is, essentially, the equivalent of grading books by funny little pictures they put on the cover. Imagine someone making an opinion on Van Go's “Starry Night” by hearing a description of it. Imagine how ridiculous that sounds. That is exactly how ridiculous Roger Ebert's assessment of games is. But to be fair, it is only as bad as judging “A Voyage to the Moon” on a single still one saw in a film history book.

Ebert ends the article by asking why we gamers want to defend games. You see we defend games for the very same reason he defends George Melies. It isn't because we want to justify them for the sake of justifying them, it's because we see something in them worth justifying. Games give us an emotional response. In games we can find truth or beauty. Games have the ability to tell a message that no other form can tell. Because it takes talent, planning, and awesome to create a truly great game. Any asshole can create a Pong clone. A group of soulless assholes can churn out the latest Call of Duty game, but it takes true vision to create a Braid, or Bioshock.

We also defend games as art because tiny little men in ivory towers always go about deciding which things aren't art and those things are subsequently put into ghettos. How long has Science Fiction been wrongly placed in a ghetto, and judged as low minded? Animation has too long been placed in a similar ghetto: strictly for children. We have seen what such ghettos have done to both mediums. I do not want some bastard making games less sophisticated because video games are “for children” thus robbing me of titles like Braid and Bioshock and publishers thus filling the market with crap would make Barbie Horse Adventures look like Moby Dick.

So Roger, we defend games as art, because if society judges them as “not art”, we feel like will lose something precious. I really wish someone with your judgement would understand that.

PS: For those still waiting for my C2E2 write up, I'll have it up tommorow night. For now, bedtime guys. See ya later.