Hello, I’m Tesh, and I’m an artist.
I make art, and I’ve managed to find a way to get people to pay me for it. I work in the game industry. Some would argue that I’m actually not an artist unless I’m a starving hedonist, working purely to sate my muse’s lust for counterculture contrivances, but these are more enlightened times. These days, we simply let the self-appointed czars of taste and fashion tell us poor little proletariat sheep what to think and buy because we want to be connoisseurs of “art”, but don’t want to be embarrassed by getting it wrong.
Jason’s Games as Art article has a nice roundup of some of the most recent “but, but, Ebert needs page hits!” kerfluffle, and I spouted off there as well. I also like The Ancient Gaming Noob’s take on it and Toldain’s similar sentiment. Mr. Grumpy has a good article up too. I’ve been through my fair share of pretentious blowhard art “debate” in my years as an artist and art student. (My BFA is in Computer Animation, and I’m trained to make Pixar-level films. I’m intimately familiar with both the film industry and the game industry.)
It’s all nonsense, something that serves best as fodder for Calvin’s snowmen sculptures and deliciously cutting commentary on the sheer audacity of “art critics”. (And how, like politicians, once someone actually calls them on their BS, their whole argument falls apart… though most people are content to just nod their heads and pretend that the emperor has clothes.)
The question of “what is art” isn’t something that we should leave up to critics. Art is something that affects people in different ways, and that is the important part. It’s personal, it’s subjective, and it only matters inasmuch as it changes the way we live as individuals. Instead of arguing endlessly in intellectual circles about the what the definition of the word “is” is, we should be asking if the things we’re debating actually matter.
Ebert’s opinion on what “art” is serves him well to drum up attention, but it doesn’t actually do anything useful for making games better for people who play them or who might play them. Labeling and judging things based on preconceived notions, ignorance and self-serving intentional blindness is never constructive. Martin Luther King Jr. understood that, asking us to judge based on content of character more than superficial labels affixed by the priests of popular opinion.
Anton Ego’s review of Remy’s cooking is relevant here, and I can’t recommend it enough:
*ahem*
Actually, I’m not all that riled up about this. It’s all pretty silly. It’s just easy to complain about things… that’s sort of the point. What good is Ebert’s argument serving? None, methinketh. The question we should be asking isn’t “what does Ebert think”, but rather, “what do I think about this game and my experience with it?”
If beauty (or lack thereof) is a significant component of an aesthetic experience (and I argue that it is), it’s not a far leap to suggest that “art is in the eye of the beholder”. If playing a game has helped or moved you in some way, don’t worry about someone else arguing that you were doing it wrong. It’s their loss, and it’s not worth letting it be yours as well.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
I’ve ignored Ebert for a while because I see him as purely trolling. Best way to deal with a troll is to ignore it; unfortunately, few other people are following this advice.
While I agree that Ebert is not exactly qualified to be a game critic, seeing has how he can’t even be bothered to play games, the problem here is that his opinion has a lot of impact. Other uninformed people will see his opinion and, given that he’s a respected movie critic, put weight behind his words. It doesn’t help that movies and games are closely related in many people’s minds (especially some game developers who are probably wannabe movie directors).
This ties back to the issue of legitimacy I’ve written about before. Ebert saying games aren’t really art hurts the industry as we struggle to be taken seriously. Games being art or not may not affect how we play them or how developers like us make games, but it certainly impacts how much other people view our work, particularly politicians who like to score cheap points trying to “protect the children”.
I was hoping you’d chime in, Brian. 😉
Agreed, and thanks for the link to your article. I actually wrote some pithy comments about the Jack Thompsons of the world, but it came across as more… bitter and unconstructive than I’d intended. I have little use for politicians in general. There’s a definite set of concerns there, though, especially given the implications for First Amendment wrangling.
Art is a funny thing… very few people seem capable of creating it yet everyone seems determined to critique it. I just don’t listen to anyone else any more and just follow my own instincts and interpretations about what I like or don’t like. For instance, I know I’m going to funny looks at work when I order my Rothko print but screw ’em, I think it’s beautiful.
I think art should probably be treated more like a verb than a noun – rather than “I made art” more like “I am arting you” or “I am attempting to art you”. A bit like “I am pushing you” or “I am attempting to push you”
While asking ‘What is art?’ is a bit like asking ‘What is push?’.
I don’t see legitimacy as a strength. While Tesh is right that art isn’t bohemian in itself, it almost always is underground, hidden or countervailing to the legitimate view. That’s why people like Ebert rail at it, because games are some of those, and they are effective: more people will be touched by GTA than The Hurt Locker, and people remember their consoles rather than the Oscar winner of 1984.
I don’t worry too much though, what is art changes so much over time definitions are silly.
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