Roger Ebert Comments on Video Games

In a not terribly notable blog post but one that’s so hilariously worded that it still trolls people to this day, Roger Ebert proclaimed that videogames would not be art in our lifetimes, if ever. He also claimed that people trying to debate him on this had made him weary and that he was going to make no attempt to defend his opinion, which makes people even more salty when they read it. Years after his death, lets poke at his corpse and analyze what exactly he had to say about video games as a medium.

Before anything else, here is the post.

To give you a brief rundown, Roger Ebert recently watched a TED talk from someone who was leading a company big into making ARTISTIC INDIE GAMES back when that was popular. Most people have never heard of her, however this is what the entire article is about. Ebert looks at the examples the TED speaker brings up (Braid and two other games you’ve never heard of) and then mockingly dismisses them, points out that gamers in general don’t really consider their games as art (traditional and video games), and then rests his case on her hypocritical remark where she treats the entire medium as a business at the very end anyways.

I’m going to be frank on this, I have no idea who Ebert actually is. I’ve heard his name tossed around a few times, he’s a film critic of what’s apparently very notable prestiege, and that’s why his opinion dismissing an entire medium was apparently so influential that it ended up in front of me. This was also posted in 2012, and the TED talk itself was dated somewhere in 2009, so put your mind in that timeframe.

From reading the article it should be very apparent that Ebert did not play video games, which arguably should be enough to dismiss his opinion on the topic entirely. It’s sort of like calling a movie shit before you’ve even seen it, except you do that for every movie. Ironically if Ebert met someone like that he’d probably have the same feeling on him as people have about Ebert’s opinion on video games.

But who knows maybe it’s our fault that he just wasn’t interested. An important thing to note is that video games are very young as a medium. There are people alive today that predate video games existing, and that’s not something you can say about any other medium. Ebert is one of those people, and video games were not much of a looker when they were blossoming due to technical limitations. Atari games are still some of the most hideous and annoying things in existence, to the extent that nobody even ironically has nostalgia for them.

If he knew video games that well prior to this, he probably knew these Atari games and understandably thought they were fucking garbage. That being said, seeing the newer stuff didn’t provide any real shock for him so maybe that’s not the case.

Ebert talks about the definition of art, because the TED talk started trying to define art. The most important part is that it’s pointed out that games are specifically defined differently from art. I’ve personally grown to despise this sort of discussion because it leads to hacks pushing trash as an attempt to ‘redefine’ art so I won’t touch it much.

The most notable things said are the aforementioned talk and that the speaker talks about videogames having been very primitive, comparable to cave paintings (not necessarily wrong).

The TED talks about three games. Something about Waco, Braid, and a game about flowers. A severe misstep by the speaker, these games are absolute garbage. It’s sort of like trying to get someone into painting by showing them Jackson Pollock stuff. The Waco game looks like an incredibly shitty and cheap TPS, Braid was a mediocre puzzle game for its time and only stood out because deconstructions and indie games were turning heads at the time, and the flower game looks like little more than a walking simulator.

I note this because Ebert might be under the assumption that these games are similar in notability or comparative quality to things like Citizen Kane. After all, if this is getting brought up in the middle of a TED Talk, people must’ve heard about it. It must be real big in video game circles. This is what the ‘video game crowd’ considers art! If it were me in his position I’d have ended up coming to the same conclusion on the medium.

That being said one of the things in this article that always made me laugh when I read it was Ebert mocking Braid’s time-reversal mechanic because, in Chess, that’s considered an illegal move. It’s kind of like saying Chess is garbage because in Checkers being able to move a piece like a queen is an illegal move. I’m actually baffled he’d say something like this, it’s like the concept of different games being different is foreign to him.

But yes, Ebert was pretty spot on with his critiques for the games considering he was someone who never played them. The Waco game is just a mindless shooter that has fuck all to do with the actual event, Braid is a very shallow experience that tells little with its mechanics, and the flower game is an incredibly cheap piece that’s designed to look little more than just ‘pretty’. Again, imagine showing someone Jackson Pollocks and trying to convince them painting was a medium worth caring about.

These aren’t games that utilize games as a medium to tell a story, nor are they inspirational building blocks for the developers of the future. They’re cheap experiences born from cheap people during a cheap time in video games. They don’t contain great worlds within them nor do they function to give interesting experiences, if anything Braid and that flower game were arguably born from being embarassed about the medium, the former being a deconstruction of a real building block in the history of video games and the latter being what looks like a terrible walking simulator.

Then of course after talking about the games he ends off with the speech itself talking more about money and marketing than actual artistry, ending on an incredibly self-defeating note. This TED talk was probably made specifically for the kinds of goblins in suits that care about that kind of trash, which baffles me because that means someone watched all of that and actually came under the assumption that Ebert, or anyone else who wasn’t such a goblin, would give a single fuck.

This talk was garbage. It’d fail in convincing anyone that games are art, if anything it’d completely turn them against the idea. Ebert was right in thinking it was nonsense, and would be justified in thinking games aren’t art if this was the best foot forward someone could put.

The only way I could’ve imagined Ebert would’ve ever changed his mind on video games is… actually sitting down and playing some. Good ones. Ones that aren’t garbage made by people with brain damage. You could imagine any variety of games Ebert could’ve played, but if there are any that’d make an impact the most profound would be games that simply focus on being games and aren’t trying too hard to be giant narratives unfocused on interactive elements.

He could maybe come to understand, at the very least, a potential for advanced storytelling and heightened emotional interest on the interactive angle of games, assuming he would never be convinced that games as they are now would ever qualify as art.

Then again, I seriously doubt it. No matter what efforts you’d put in, Ebert’d have thought games weren’t art until the day he died. He’d balk the moment he’d have to play them. People like this get very stuck in their ways which is a serious problem because video games demand effort on the player’s part to actually see their value. The greatest games of all time will seem like shit to people who never even press the start button, or constantly fuck up in the first 5 seconds. Imagine playing any Mario game and just never pressing the jump button. All you’d see are the first 5 seconds of the game.

It begs the question of why Ebert’s opinion on videogames is held so high. Perhaps it’s a mix of his supposed prestiege, the incredibly inflammatory way he introduces the article (attribute that as a quote to any random celebrity and watch as people get butthurt), and the desperation of people like the TED speaker to have the medium be seen as art.

You could splinter off the article from here, maybe it’s worth talking about how a lot of the companies making games these days fail to treat their own works in an artistic light and constantly defile them, or you could talk about whether or not it’d even be ideal for games to be considered art since the term “art” has sounded more and more disgusting to people as the 2010s progressed.

I’d say there’s a value in understanding the deeper connection people can have with video games, because otherwise you’d believe the only purpose of these works is to make your brain release feel good chemicals which becomes depressing overtime and inspires exsistential crisises that make people treat playing games like a drug addiction. You can only be “based” for so long.

That’s why I’ve already written a lot about exploring videogames unique traits in making these deeper connections. We’ve past the point that video games can do this decades ago, and the only people still arguing with Ebert’s corpse are probably dipshit videogame journalists writing terrible articles. Like this one. Dear God.

I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that I see his own profession of professional critique as as much of an unfathomable waste of time as he saw videogames, which is why I’m pretty aloof on his opinions and don’t see why people hold them in such high regard. Maybe like he never played a game that resonated with him, I’ve just never seen good professional critics.

Gaming changed a lot since Ebert died. So did a lot of things, really. I genuinely think if he was still around he’d have been a dipshit who’d have said TLOU is great or something. Imagine how far Sony would take that compliment.

In spite of this, people still summon Ebert’s ghost to get into a slapfight with it. It’s partially because in Ebert’s arguments there’s a number of absolutely irreconcilable ideas, like what the definition of art really even is, whether or not it’d even be good for games to meet this definition, how corporatized videogames or any other mediums have become…

If there is some sort of light at the end of the tunnel to any of these discussions, it certainly wouldn’t lie in anything Ebert ever said. It’s probably why he regret bringing the whole thing up to begin with. He can’t make or expand upon the majority of his arguments, and he doesn’t, but people treat him like an idol and are desperate to prove him wrong or go more in depth on why exactly he seemed to hate games. It’s sort of like he’s the messiah of his own religion.

I can’t tell you what art is. I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I know what art isn’t, it’s not something that has to justify its existence to others. No one would ever say films of great artistic achievement should’ve added elements specifically to make people like them more, nor would they say that about any other medium.

If games are art, then there’s no need to care for a single second about Ebert’s opinion on them. If games aren’t art, then I guess it’s not off the table to dig up his grave and try to convince him that they are. Considering how many people do the latter I guess that settles that.

So in spite of being dismissive of him, why’d I spend so much time writing about him? I don’t even really think I disagreed with him much. The games were shitty. They definetly lacked deeper qualities. If this was a representation of the medium, I’d also say that videogames wouldn’t be art for another thousands of years, if ever. Imagine setting a medium back so far that you basically devolved it to being one of its ancestor’s sperms.

It’s a mix of things, really. I love the inflammatory way it starts, like it’s immediately trying to get people upset. I love his clumsy scientific way of attempting to ‘define’ art by looking it up in an encyclopedia. I love that out of every game he could’ve possibly seen, the ones introduced in this TED talk were of such low quality that in a vacuum it proves any point he’d be making. I love that he basically admitted he had no idea how game design worked with his goofy comment about illegal moves in chess. I enjoy that in spite of all of this just the idea that this random old guy doesn’t like video games pissed off an entire industry so hard that they’re still talking about it to this day.

Aside from that humorous angle, there’s nothing unique you can gleam from this article other than an old film critic didn’t like video games. Ebert isn’t constructive or helpful in any of his game-related critique, he can’t be because he denied the entire medium. If you disagree with Ebert, the only thing this article can really leave you with is either a feeling of apathy or anger. If you agree, it’s just something to throw around for your smug superiority. He didn’t make any terribly profound statements or convincing arguments. You can only go so far in talking on such a broad topic that you care nothing about.

If more people actually read the article they’d understand that. But they don’t. They just see “Ebert hates videogames” and start strangling a strawman with Ebert’s face on it. Oh well.

Speaking of reading do people actually read my rambling? I haven’t gotten any guestbook comments since the layout reveal :( Maybe if I spent time actually revising drafts instead of just posting the first thing that came to my head I’d have better responses.