What? Like how Citizen Kane and Gone with the Wind are “mindless” drama?
My personal opinion is that video games are not on the same “level” as movies and books, because the experience is different each time you play a video game. People can get a different meaning out of a book or a movie, but they are reading the same words and seeing the same pictures. You can never play a video game the same way twice.
(I may be going off-topic here, but the Lord of the Rings story reminded me of this.) As for anecdotes regarding artificial intelligence, my personal favorite was told by Peter Molyneux in a special about video games. In Molyneux’s game Black and White, the player can train an ape-like creature to learn and live, just as a parent would train a child. The character holds the Guinness record for “Most Complex Character in a Video Game.” I can’t tell the story as well as Molynuex does, but I’ll try my best: during development of Black and White, they were training the character how to hunt for food. They had taught it to seek out and eat the most nutritious food in their surroundings- if there were two pieces of food, it would eat the one that was more beneficial to its health. While they were testing the game and teaching it how to hunt for food, they were startled when they saw the creature bend down and attempt to pick up their own leg. They realized that when they told it to find the most nutritious food, they forgot to program it to know it couldn’t eat itself!
Although I don’t think this has anything to do with AI, I’m reminded also of the humorous (albeit entirely false) story about the Australian flight simulator that attempted to recreate various perils an Australian military pilot might experience, including scaring kangaroos (and possibly blowing their cover) by flying too close. The programmers, according to the (fake) story, decided to save programming space by reusing the code for a soldier and changing the graphic to a kangaroo. When a pilot flew too close to a herd of kangaroos, the kangaroos ran away…and then fired on the pilot! AGAIN, THIS STORY IS FAKE.
Very interesting about the strategic AI. Of course, being flanked might not be such a turn-off if your character could be in command of a regiment as opposed to going it alone. Of course this would entail having NPC’s who could follow orders, either typed in or spoken into a voice-recognition system.
And that of course requires good voice-rec, as well as enough AI to respond intelligibly. And yes, that is harder than computer vision. Turing Test hard. The closest anyone’s com so far is Alicebot. She’s pretty good, possibly good enough for a simple video game with text-only dialog (until voice synthesis gets better), but to get the level of emotional involvement that would place video games on a par with other forms of entertainment, we would need to get much further.
I’ve seen a number of games in the past few years where the action is interrupted for long stretches of non-interactive expositional dialog. While this may be momentarily satisfactory to hardcore gamers who like to see their games become more like movies, it strikes me as more than a little awkward. Only when the advances I described are put together can you get toward a really involving art form.
OK, that’s cool. I didn’t know this aspect of things was this far along.
I disagree. While improvements in AI and in graphics & sound are definitely going to be tools for game developers to create great art, they’re not the target. In fact, the assumption that games are all about AI and visuals is exactly the same incorrect assumption that Ebert was using to justify his dismissal of videogames. That idea of “authorial control” is essential.
If there were absolutely no limitations on AI and visual representation, and designers could create characters and worlds as lifelike or as abstract as they wanted, with perfectly accurate physics and intelligent responses to player choices, you’d end up with a great simulation, but not necessarily great art.
As a comparison in movies: Attack of the Clones is undeniably a much, much more technically advanced movie than Star Wars, but the latter is a much better work of art. The former is an example of what happens when all your technical limitations are removed and you can show whatever you want, but don’t have much of anything to say.
Ebert (and others in this thread) assume that videogames already work completely as mindless response to a player’s actions, that they’re little more than simple simulations. But where games become art, instead of just mindless diversions, or playfields for sporting events, is when the designers use the limitations and constraints of the game to actually say something. A game that’s a perfect representation of the real world and has infinite responses to the player’s actions is no longer really a game; it’s the real world. And it would be at best performance art, or a novelty, not a real masterpiece.
And I think the two most interesting points brought up in this thread so far:
That, to me sums up why Shadow of the Colossus should be regarded as a work of art instead of “just a game.” The mechanics of it are pretty simple – it’s basically just a sequence of boss fight puzzles, with some world exploration in between. But the reason it’s more than just Super Mario World is that it takes the basic elements that other games have already done and actually says something with them.
The exploration element isn’t just world-building, but is used to create mood. Plenty of games drop you into a fantasy setting and let you wander around in it, but Shadows goes a step further and uses it to define the main character. You don’t know anything about him other than the bare minimum, but you know exactly how he feels – alone, and small, but determined.
And the boss fights aren’t just a case of figuring out how the puzzle works and doing it so that you can finish the game; there’s a real sense of moral ambiguity there. You know the main character’s agenda and his reasons for taking on the monsters, but you don’t know the bigger picture. That feeling couldn’t be conveyed by any other medium in quite the same way.
And that’s the other bit of “authorial control” that has the best potential to turn games into art. With a videogame, the player isn’t the author, as Ebert suggests. And in a lot of cases, he’s not even the protagonist. As with movies and literature, the player is watching the protagonist and is always privvy to more information than the characters of the story are.
Even in a first-person perspective game, the player is aware that he’s in a game, so he’s one step ahead of his avatar. Which means that in a game such as Half-Life 2, the player can be aware that there is at least one correct solution to his current situation, and his task is to figure out what it is. He’s not determining the course of action based on an infinite number of variables, but engaged in a narrative with the author to be able to continue the story.
Even in less linear games, like Civilization and The Sims, the player’s working within constraints. Those constraints are what make the game not just a simulation, but a creative work. And the potential for art, instead of just “play,” comes when game creators take those constraints and say something with them. That’s what makes The Sims not just an accurate people simulator, but a parody of consumerism and the mundanity of everyday life.
There’s a lot of good refutation of Ebert here, so I’ll just add this–if you really don’t believe a video game can be as intricate and engrossing as a good book or movie, I urge you to somehow play the Marathon Trilogy for the Macintosh. I stand by this game as the best example of videogame storytelling that I’ve ever encountered and even as one of the best sci-fi stories of all time. Browse through the archives at The Marathon Story Page --even if you haven’t played the game its engrossing.
I’m going to forward a link of this thread to Ebert’s Answer Man column (where the quotes that started this thread originated). Plenty of good arguments here for him to mull over.
Thanks all for some really interesting insights.
Inspired by this thread, I just sent this email to Roger Ebert’s Answer Man column. I doubt he’ll even read it, at this point, especially considering the length, but what the hell.
I sent Ebert a link to this thread too, actually. Maybe he’ll pay attention.
Someone mentioned Fallout and Fallout 2, but I’d like to elaborate on that as they are two of my favorite games of all time. Unlike the vast majority of games, your character’s actions can have a profound effect on the game world. Help out the local townsfolk and they will come to like you, maybe even give you new items and missions that you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Abuse them and they will eventually turn against you, literally running you out of town with farm tools (or power knives and laser pistols). If you gain enough fame or notoriety, word of your deeds will precede you to new areas and you will find whole new sets of friends and enemies. In the first game, there were 3 very different ways you could defeat the big bad guy, depending on whether your character was best at fighting, sneaking around and breaking into things, or talking. Yes, I said talking. You could in fact convince the Master that he was wrong if your character was persuasive enough.
Well, in all the flurry of e-mails, somebody should tell Ebert to get his story straight. His second “Answer Man” column sounds first all offended at all the responses he got; I’m sure that the bulk of them were the usual “no u suk games rool ur old and fat and ghey” type idiocy of the internet when combined with videogame fans.
But then he tries to sound somewhat conciliatory, acknowledge how he’s never seen an artistic videogame so that he might just not be unfamiliar with them but surely someone would have pointed out a videogame masterpiece by now if it were possible to make one.
Even though the writer of the letter named two – Rez and Shadow of the Colossus – right there in his message. But still, he’s making an effort to meet the Nintendo generation halfway, right?
You’d think so, until you read his review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In particular:
Because videogames have no purpose, shape or style. They’re all about killing Aliens, or World War II shooters, or killing Aliens.
Bleah, nothing screws up an indignant rant like a hack-job cut and paste.
My last hard-hitting argument should have read:
They’re all nothing more than killing Aliens; violent World War II shooters; or bleak, anti-social, destructive stories about hookers and gun-toting psychopaths.
Hey Sol, sorry, could you give me a link to the “answer man” column you’re referring to?
-FrL-
It’s the second quote in the OP. Here’s the whole column.
Some great responses here. I will say that I don’t think any game has hit the hights of art of the most artistic movies or music. I do believe, though, that games are an artform, albeit a very nascent one, which means much of the actual ‘art’ is, IMO, undeveloped. I think of art as something that emotionally moves the viewer/participant/customer or makes them re-evaluate their beliefs because of the power of the message. Some games do have this aspect. I’ve heard mention Planescape: Torment. Now yes, the game could be rushed through without even dealing with the storyline to a great degree, but if you immersed yourself in the storyline, the game had a wonderful ability to make you think and weigh what death actually is. It has an ability to stir the emotions and make you question your beliefs. To me, that is art. Unfortunetly most games are schlock. They are clones of a successful game or are put out simply for the cash. There are few that actually make you question things or speak to you emotionally.
I can only hope as the medium progresses we will have more games that aspire to be art. That work to try to ‘move’ the player and make the player question his closely held beliefs. I think games will get there… but, as in other mediums, we’ll have our “schlock” (think of any sports game title… great fun to play, but not art).
Obviously, you have never experienced the horror of your hand-picked crack commando squad in X-Com being anihilated by an alien blaster rocket while disembarking from their drop ship.
I think to adequately convey the horrors of war as well as Saving Private Ryan, it would take more than just graphic violence. GTA has that and I could care less about killing a hundred people because they are just anonymous automatons.
The game would require you to build an emotional connection to the characters. X-COM, for example, was very effective at this. You named them. They looked distinctive. They had unique skills and abilities and grew over time so they became more valuable. You always have a few “favorites”. The loss of a higher ranking commando could demoralize and panic the squad causing you to lose the ability to command them. You really got a sense that a mission is going to shit as you’re trying to get a wounded trooper back to the ship while half your squad loses their shit and is firing blindly at shadows. A wounded soldier was out of commission for a length of time too.
The true horror of war is loss - friends, family, loved ones, innocence - not the dramatic images of exotic machinery dispensing gore and distruction. To achieve SPR levels of horror, a videogame would need to make your feel the loss of a member of your team. The characters should be distinctive enough that you can identify individuals. When you lose one of your commandos, the team should feel the loss - moral, effectiveness on the battlefield.
If you lose one of your “favorites”, there’s no getting him back without reloading a saved game. And you won’t always be able to bring all of them through each mission no matter how many restarts you do.
As for narratives, I have to say that Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Halflife 2, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas certainly tell as good a story and create as effective a mood as any Jerry Bruckheimer produced Michael Bay or Tony Scott film.
What is a narrative? It’s basically telling a story. The problem with video games as a narrative is that they basically consist of a number of fixed cut scenes that tell you why you are there and what you are doing. And then you go do whatever you want within the confines of the game. It’s like watching a movie and taking a break every few minutes to act out something in the movie.
I think to effectively tell a story, a videogames action and narrative segments need to be more integrated.
This is pretty much what I was very clumsily trying to say, but I was emphasizing the technological advances that will be necessary to bring that about.
is reduced to a ball huddled on the floor, sobbing
Haha, yes, I have lived through that terror. Thankfully, that game always had older saves you could fall back on. (And the odd “killed while disembarking” scenario notwithstanding, it is possible to keep all your favorites alive, provided you have squad mates with high psi-ratings or, alternatively, you’re willing to bring along a couple “red shirts” to scout ahead.) 
Getting back on topic, I want to thank you, Pochacco, for answering my original question, and doing so quite thoroughly. It was definitely good food for thought.
Also, msmith537, I agree with you that it’ll take more than all the fancy graphics in the world to build a truly affecting story in the Saving Private Ryan vein. And while you went with X-Com, I’m going to go with a different old-school title: Wing Commander. Not to spoil the story for anyone here (the game’s ~20 years old, so I figure anyone who would play it has already) there were at least one or two places in the story where one of your crew mates died. (Note that these deaths were not during missions you were on, IIRC, and were therefore out of your hands to prevent.) I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but these deaths actually made me sad.
The character interaction you had with your fellow pilots was more than just cockpit chatter while you were on missions (though there certainly was that). In between missions you talked to them, learned their history, their aspirations, etc. There was a kill board, and you competed with them. You developed friendships with them, sometimes consoled them when they were down…then they were gone.
If I were to go back and play those games, I’d probably find that the interface and the scripts were almost painfully cheesy (I was maybe 9 or 10 at the time, and easily messed with), but I think it does show that the potential for a truly moving work is there. From what I hear of Final Fantasy 7, there were events in that game that were similarly stirring, emotionally. (Also, I think the creators of each FF game do their damnedest to create art, whether they succeed or not.)
Of course one of the questions that needs to be asked WRT the topic at hand is: What is art?
I think everyone’s answer will be subtly different, as I think everyone looks for and/or gets something slightly different out of experiencing art. Is it something that makes you think, or something that evokes an emotional response, or something that is simply pleasing to the eye and mind? Regardless of what combination of these factors (and more) defines art for people, I’m willing to bet there is a video game out there that engages on that level. Such games may not do so well, but even if they do them poorly, it’s a sign, IMHO, of the possibility of it being done well and games someday rising to “art” status.
Personally, with the slow but steady integration of game-design classes into the colleges and universities across the world, I think we’ll see more interdisciplinary-minded art/film/creative-writing students getting into the video-game industry, and I think that that may very well result in some of the most imaginative and “artistic” games we’ve seen yet.
No, they don’t. Not inherrantly, anyway. It all depends on the story, the game, and the effect you want to create.
You’re making the same mistake that Ebert is - attempting to shoehorn things into a singular mold. (Albiet a different mold.)