I will not talk about computer games as art ever again

What happened: Roger Ebert wrote an article saying “video games can never be art”, dissecting Kellee Santiago’s TEDxUSC speech about games as art (and beyond). She answered.

And it totally exploded on the internet in one day. It’s weird because I’m following a bunch of game developers on Twitter and there’s no discussion between us. Except when a dude who doesn’t play games and doesn’t want to, is writing some stupid shit about our medium. Then almost everybody has to say something about it.

I think it proves the point that we are immature and unconfident about games (and yeah it doesn’t help I’m writing this article and it annoys me but I want to be definitive on the subject). If we were mature and confident about our medium we would be busy and someone would at some point turn around to Roger, like that:

C’mon Roger

And that would be all he would get. But from veteran like Ron Gilbert to young Indie people, everybody went apeshit on this subject. I’d rather have a collective discussion about what subjects/themes computer games could and should approach instead of crying about how games are art, or not. I don’t give a shit about this fake intellectual brainstorm because:

-Games can be art. Period. When someone who doesn’t play computer games, doesn’t have the game culture, have the movie culture in his fucking head while saying that games aren’t art, I DONT GIVE A SHIT. And you shouldn’t either. Because it’s simply pointless. Why?

-Because everything can be art. I don’t get how people miss this reality so often. If anything can be art therefore you don’t have to think about it!! Just fucking do, craft your thing and let time, people, generations, individuals appreciate it or not. Some might call it art, some might call it a big turd. Two seconds after or two hundred years later. It doesn’t matter. Jane Pinckard had the final words a few years ago (yes, about the same Roger Ebert) she said:

It seems to me that the whole notion of trying to define "art" is, first of all, utterly irrelevant in our age. When vulgar homes display those ubiquitous prints of Monet’s waterlilies, when insipid pop songs can be desconstructed, when the face of the Mona Lisa is used on keychains sold to tourists, when collectors pay thousands of dollars for the scribblings of a madman who has "found art" – it’s a circus. It’s like trying to define what "food" is when we have everything from seaweed extract to Velveeta.

There’s no "art" anymore. Just categories of creation. And you can either enjoy it, or not. Just as food is simply something you eat. And let’s be clear, there is good food and bad, horrible, awful, nearly inedible food.

Scott McCloud (thanks @InfiniteAmmo) wrote about that too yesterday:

If you’re asking if videogames are art, I think you’re asking the wrong question. I don’t think art is an either/or proposition. Any medium can accommodate it, and there can be at least a little art in nearly everything we do.

Once in a while, someone makes a work in their chosen medium so driven by aesthetic concerns and so removed from any other consideration that we trot out the A-word, but even then it’s a matter of degrees, and for most creative endeavors you can find a full spectrum from the sublime to the mundane.

The idea that for the lack of a single brush stroke or word balloon or camera angle, we could consign something as complex as a painting or a graphic novel or a motion picture to the art equivalent of Heaven or Hell does a disservice to the depth and breadth of those forms. There’s no hard dividing line, no thumbs up or thumbs down for these things.

Why would we use so much energy to prove an irrelevant point? It is irrelevant and useless to answer a film critic stupid claim that is “computer games cannot be art”. Game developers should just say with one voice: WE DONT CARE NOW PLAY OUR EXPERIENCES AND/OR STFU. We have the craziest medium ever, touching hundreds of millions of people in less than half a century. Game development is a goddamn complex and lightning fast world. As game developers we should collectively focus on and talk about where to go, what to do. Debate on that kind of stuff. Of course, nearly nobody does.

I will not talk about computer games as art ever again.