Sometimes, someone I know says something so unexpected that I am taken aback, momentarily literally stopped in my tracks.
We were walking downstairs to get coffee, when my co-worker Lyn says “I hate video games”. Now, she’s a smart person, and this kind of blanket statement struck me as so short-sighted and ignorant that I was momentarily stunned.
It is one thing to condemn a work, or even a theme, but to condemn an entire medium seems like an awfully broad stroke.
It frustrates me when people have a narrow view of a medium because it is “new”, treating it as special or different because it’s not exactly the same as what came before it.
Comic books/graphic novels, for example – people make assumptions like “they are just for kids” or “they are a waste of space” or “they aren’t art” just because the few they have seen are less sophisticated (if they have even seen any, many judgements of this type are based on second- or third-hand information). But if they were to read Maus, could they then say that comics were not art, and a waste of space?
Video games are now in the same spot. Recently, Roger Ebert declared “video games can never be high art”. I strongly disagree, for a number of reasons. His main arguement is that because video games are interactive, they cannot be art, because the artist doesn’t have complete control over the viewer. Does this mean that scuptures are not art, because the viewer is free to walk around and see it from any angle? Or interactive art installations are not art, because they are interactive? Saying that interaction negates art, or relegates it to “low art” seems like a very limited viewpoint.
The other part of his statement, that video games “will never be” high art, is similarly limited in vision. He is making a firm prediction for all of time. Video games are in their infancy, but even now there are games that I would say qualify as art, such as “Ico” or “Flow”. I think his exposure to video games is also pretty limited, he has seen a handful of games and is basing his views of the entire medium on that small group. That would be like seeing “Son of the Mask,” “3 Ninjas,” “Kazam,” and “Lawnmower Man 2” and declaring that movies can never be high art.
In the end, I cannot contridict the statements “I hate video games” or “I think video games will never be high art”, because they are opinions. What I can do is strongly disagree, and offer my own point of view.