- Jun 10, 2017
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I Don't think I targeted him more than his statement itself ; if I did, it was an error. I don't find him moderate, but neither absolutist globally speaking.
He stand on the same side than you, so you probably tend to interpret what he said accordingly to your own opinion. This while he stand on the opposite side than me, what surely make me exaggerate his intent. Fucking psychological biases, they are everywhere.
It happen that video games are Painting, with the loading screens, main menu screen, and all. They are Cinema, with the cutscenes. By themselves they also are Performance, as in interactive art. They also have Music, and a, more or less interactive, story with dialog, what make them also look on the side of Literature.
They are the sum of five of the seven arts. Not that this make them art, but it raise questions.
If you take Picasso for the screens, Balzac for the story and dialogs, Kurosawa for the cutscenes, and Mozart for the music (and a time traveling machine to have them). What do you get ? Each screen and cutscene will be a piece of art, served by the piece of art that the music will be. And all this will exist to serve the piece of art that will be the story.
That doesn't mean that the result will also be one, but should we deny their status to the individual parts ? After all, they come from brains that are genius and tormented enough.
Look at any ceremony regarding Cinema. They don't limit to the movies as a whole. The scenarist can be an artist, and the movie something deceiving. The filmmaker can be a genius who's movie have been killed by the comedians. And so on. The profession don't look at its art simply as a unique piece, but also as the sum of different talents that, for some of them, come from the other arts.
But at the end, will come the moment where the public will know what movie deserve to be seen as a piece of art itself, either because it was the best sum of pieces of art, or the best compromise between all the competences needed.
And, as implied above, in their making process video games aren't different. What, once again, don't mean that video games are necessarily arts. Just that, at one time in the future, the question will need to have a more "serious" (because looking at more than just the wholeness) answer than Ebert's one.
This said, I agree with you, this time is not come yet. It's our children that will have to find it, not us. But like there's amazing painters and writers who started by some collaboration with obscure magazines, while the next Mozart (I exaggerate, I know) is actually writing song for advertisements, there's some future artists that are now working in the video game industry.
But what about the opposite, movies trying to be a more interactive experience ? It sound interesting for me, but yet it have to be done by an artist at first, in order to be done well.
3D movies aren't something new. The first one I heard about in my life time was in the 80's, some horror movies on the TV. But it's only when Avatar came, with its visual delight, that it became more than anecdotal. Simply because suddenly it revealed its whole potential.
One day, the same will happen with artistic video games
Honestly you can pass. The first was amazing, the second less, and the third... I almost regret having played it. To win it, you'll need to use tricks in order to pass the online mandatory part, since there's surely nothing on the other side nowadays ; perhaps not with the remake. All this to have giant final battle, followed by an anti-climatic end (the "you made it, dot." kind), while being lectured if you don't choose the outcome they expected.
It's like reading a thriller started by Tolstoy, who would somehow pass the pen to Mao, and would have as very last sentences : "The culprit is him ! Why have you chose Capitalism, communism is the only possible way."
Or, for readers less interested by Literature, it's the final of Game of Thrones. But instead of going back to the Wall, John Snow will look at you in the eyes and explain you why the North deserved to be the only winner.
