So Long Orson Welles

“Where is gaming’s Citizen Kane?” is a stupid question.

To me it is a question that reflects the endless insecurities that seem to plague our young media enterprise as we search for a sense of belonging among an old guard that considers us with jealous eyes and yellow teeth. As the burgeoning games industry clamors for a seat at the dusty table where the dying media empires scheme and connive, I suspect that we ought to be grateful for every second we are not counted on their ledgers.

With the toothless, worn out whore – the games as art debate – dragged again into the town square to be publicly flogged, I find myself driven to reject any response at all. To answer the question is to miss the point entirely, because any answer validates what I think is a fundamentally flawed concept, as though art were some quantifiable, describable thing. You might as well ask if games are love.

I say, in my most haughty voice possible, let high minded fools pass down their judgments on what is or is not allowed to be art. I didn’t really want to play the Mona Lisa anyway. I have a better question – Where is video gaming’s Chess?

I am not some kind of Chess snob. I enjoy the challenge of playing people who think about the game more as a passing fancy rather than as a life choice or a religion. I have no archaic knowledge of openings. I have never studied at length a king and pawn endgame. I can name at least 10 times more professional golfers than I could Chess Grandmasters.

And yet, I respect Chess in a way that I do no other game. I have no trouble recognizing the monumental genius of its construction, the staggering elegance of its craft. When I think about this game in the terms that I usually reserve for video games, I keep looking for the subtle flaw in its design that can ultimately be exploited and destroy the underlying fabric of its tenuous structure, and yet I realize that millions of man hours have been exhausted doing exactly the same with fruitless results.

That this game can be so simple — my six year old understands the rules without any difficulty — and yet so staggeringly complex at once is amazing to me. Certainly we have video games that amateurishly mimic this kind of “easy to play, impossible to master” mentality, but ultimately they require house rules, patches for refinement or the understanding that somehow one structure, one plan is slightly superior to all others if played correctly.

Chess does not appear to have any such flaw.

This isn’t an article about how awesome Chess is though. It’s more about how we perceive ourselves as gamers, and how we think about what our ideals are. I freely admit that I am at times absorbed into the siren’s song of cuddling with cinema, and when Uncharted 2 licks my eyeballs I am as seduced as the next gamer. No question there is a place for great visual storytelling in games, but when I think about the games that will last, that will be our grand paragons placed high on a gilded pedestal I find my love for games like Uncharted 2 may be much more superficial than I first suspect.

It is a date with a super model, a test drive in a Ferrari, an improptu hook-up with a visiting foreigner. It is a nice memory that is best not looked at too closely. What it is not is the game you will settle down with for years to come. And, hey I'm not denigrating the value of a flashy, if transitory, experience. If we're looking at games that way, who wants to sleep with a grumpy old man like Citizen Kane anyway? If we're going to make that the gold standard then the better question is "Where is our Avatar?"

But, when I think of the kinds of games that orbit in the distant penumbra of mastery demonstrated by Chess, that begin to approach this new vision for a perfect quality, I think games like Civilization 4, Rise of Nations, Team Fortress 2. These are games that continue to stand not only as great games for their times, but games that hold up years or potentially decades later. Cinematic experiences in games last only as long as the makeup and technology hold. I may love Wing Commander IV for what it accomplished at the time, but do I really want to go back and play it still? Does the game itself actually hold up?

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a broad spectrum of games that approach the medium from countless angles. That’s part of the flexibility of the platform, and a concept I champion, but I also think we lose too much time trying to be something we are not. The further I get from Heavy Rain, for example, the more I realize that much of what ultimately holds it back from being a good game are exactly the things for which it was so heavily lauded.

In the long run, it has always been the games that unapologetically embraced the idea of truly being a game that seemed to last. Maybe that tells us something.

Comments

Jayhawker wrote:
Redwing wrote:

So, where is gaming's Gigli?

Flower

Hey-yoh!

Ely, I agree that 'are games art' discussions almost always devolve in pissing contests between believers and non-believers, based on vague premises on what art is. These discussions are pointless, boring and worn out. Games as a medium don't need the Art Club Membership Card to have merit, games have merit on their own.

The Citizen Kane question especially is a trollish one, as it accelerates the decline to a discussion on whether games are allowed to play in the dirty sandbox of Art.

I believe however that the 'are games art' question in itself remains interesting. But only when it starts from a rational definition of art AND only if the participants do not desperately try to define their medium's qualities through it.

Oh how I hate this pointless discussion. Anyway:
IMAGE(http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/842982636_LwDfj-L.jpg)

Larry wrote:

[b]BTW is that you in the picture?-?- 'cause I am a little out of date in pop culture and I have no idea who that is, so I am mentally registering that as Elysium.

[/b]

'Nuff said.

dejanzie wrote:

Ely, I agree that 'are games art' discussions almost always devolve in pissing contests between believers and non-believers, based on vague premises on what art is. These discussions are pointless, boring and worn out. Games as a medium don't need the Art Club Membership Card to have merit, games have merit on their own.

Yeah, this.

I never understood the outrage at Ebert, unless you need to confer an air of legitimacy to playing computer games. The argument is even more pointless because everyone has their own definition of art. Games may or may not be art, but so what? They're still fun. I don't need everything I do to be considered "art" to enjoy it.

On another note:

Jonman wrote:

How many of today's moviegoers have seen Citizen Kane? In fact, how many of the great unwashed cinema-going masses have even heard of Citizen Kane? It may have been a landmark piece of film, but it's ancient history, and outside of the niche of the 'hardcore' movie enthusiast, it's largely been forgotten.

That says a lot more about the average moviegoer than it does about Citizen Kane.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

The only reason I can think of for so many people to vehemently insist games are Art is so they can tell their parents that some ascetic chain smoker in a black turtleneck sitting in a french cafe says that their hobby is mature and grownup.

This! Interesting how much the "art" debate is really a "we need/don't need external validation" debate. This whole topic is so thick with buried assumptions, expectations and insecurities on both sides that it's become more a psychological/anthropological study than anything.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

I still eat ice cream and candy too, but I don't try to justify it to anyone by writing lengthy essays extolling the transcendental brilliance of nougat.

Let me be the first to say that this is a damn shame. I'd really like to see that. Especially because I have no idea what nougat is.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Someone is always wrong on the internet, and yet the world keeps turning.

WHAT

BTW is that you in the picture?-?- 'cause I am a little out of date in pop culture and I have no idea who that is, so I am mentally registering that as Elysium.

That is the actor who plays Kane in the Command and Conquer games.

boogle wrote:

I quote a twitter collaboration of Wordsmythe and myself.

This has become a klein-bottle ouroboros of navel gazing

Help! I've been misinterpreted!

Boogle suggested that GWJ was a navel-gazing ouroboros. I said it could be worse--we could be a Klein-bottle ouroboros.

Those words are all too big for me to understand anyway. I assume it generally means that I am awesome.

Elysium wrote:

Those words are all too big for me to understand anyway. I assume it generally means that I am awesome.

If you get compared to a klein bottle, then sir you are topologically awesome.

edosan wrote:
Jonman wrote:

How many of today's moviegoers have seen Citizen Kane? In fact, how many of the great unwashed cinema-going masses have even heard of Citizen Kane? It may have been a landmark piece of film, but it's ancient history, and outside of the niche of the 'hardcore' movie enthusiast, it's largely been forgotten.

That says a lot more about the average moviegoer than it does about Citizen Kane.

Exactly my point. Using CK as a jumping off point about whether a medium is art or not is irrelevant today when the general populace who consume that media are ignorant of it.

I'll say it again, if you think "where is gaming's Citizen Kane?" is a question about whether or not gaming is art then you've fundamentally misunderstood the question. The question is asking whether or not gaming has produced a cultural artefact of the the importance and impact of Citizen Kane. And that's to say nothing of the fact that even asking that question is tacitly accepting the notion that computer gaming is an art form.

I want to know where videogame's King King (1933) is.

Jayhawker wrote:

I want to know where videogame's King King (1933) is.

Donkey Kong?

DanB wrote:

I'll say it again, if you think "where is gaming's Citizen Kane?" is a question about whether or not gaming is art then you've fundamentally misunderstood the question. The question is asking whether or not gaming has produced a cultural artefact of the the importance and impact of Citizen Kane. And that's to say nothing of the fact that even asking that question is tacitly accepting the notion that computer gaming is an art form.

Please refer to my previous comments in this thread.

I think there's a very good reason why people who play video games wish to see them accepted as art, or perhaps accepted as a sport, or even accepted as a game on par with something like chess, or go, or poker.

We're tired of those eloquent looks from non-players that say, "You're still playing with baby toys?"

Hans

I am too cool and independent to care about mainstream acceptance!

I loved the read and it's also something that I've been thinking a lot about recently. I love video games because they are games. It seems that in the last 5 years with the advance of technology that game makers seem obsessed with aping cinema and creating experiences. And while I do enjoy those experiences, my favorite video games will always be actual games. Starcraft, Civilization, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Street Fighter etc. What makes me keep coming back to those games are the game elements; they don't have to mask weak X's and O's with Hollywood voice acting or a dramatic plot. I'm always down for new experiences and stretching mediums but I will never stop loving games that embrace the fact that they are games and not interactive stories.

grobstein wrote:

I am too cool and independent to care about mainstream acceptance!

I am too mainstream and accepting to care about cool independence!

hidannik wrote:

We're tired of those eloquent looks from non-players that say, "You're still playing with baby toys?"

Hans

If they're eloquent, I suppose that explains why someone like me would respond to such a look as if it were a challenge.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
grobstein wrote:

I am too cool and independent to care about mainstream acceptance!

I am too mainstream and accepting to care about cool independence!

I am what I don't even

I don't want to play games that aspire to be art. I want to play games that aspire to be Milgram experiments. But then again, I am a sociopath.

BNice wrote:

It seems that in the last 5 years with the advance of technology that game makers seem obsessed with aping cinema and creating experiences. And while I do enjoy those experiences, my favorite video games will always be actual games... ...I'm always down for new experiences and stretching mediums but I will never stop loving games that embrace the fact that they are games and not interactive stories.

I could not agree more. Ok, maybe I'd have said 10 years

Jonman wrote:
edosan wrote:
Jonman wrote:

How many of today's moviegoers have seen Citizen Kane? In fact, how many of the great unwashed cinema-going masses have even heard of Citizen Kane? It may have been a landmark piece of film, but it's ancient history, and outside of the niche of the 'hardcore' movie enthusiast, it's largely been forgotten.

That says a lot more about the average moviegoer than it does about Citizen Kane.

Exactly my point. Using CK as a jumping off point about whether a medium is art or not is irrelevant today when the general populace who consume that media are ignorant of it.

I'd argue that Citizen Kane's influence on modern film should be measured not by how many of your average moviegoers have seen it, but how many of the people making modern films have seen it.

You're using an old standard. I thought Magic: the Gathering was the new chess!

My thoughts on "Where's Video Gaming's Chess?". Chess=Tetris.

Both have been copied and varied until you can barely recognize it. However, the best is still the original and this fact is well known. We have both games on every platform imaginable and even those that do not like to play it can recognize it and it's rule set. Both require forward thought and planning with the ability to change your plans on the fly as an unexpected variable enters the foray. The primary difference to me is that Tetris would only work on video gaming, as flesh-world falling tiles would frighten me. Especially when a complete row disappears violating the law of Conservation of Matter.

Just my .02.

Video games are awesome, and basically the best thing ever. The end.

burntham77 wrote:

Video games are awesome, and basically the best thing ever. The end.

Yes, but are they ART?

Just something I came across right now that I found interesting, Clink Hocking made a recent post on his blog where he mentions a New York Times Magazine article about games as art and he says something that I feel to be very pertinent.

I'm sure a lot of people will roll their eyes and say 'games and art again - isn't this discussion over?'. I suppose it is over for us (developers, I mean) as we all know that games are indeed an art form but that just like painting, literature, or music, games can also be just simple entertainment and there is nothing wrong with that. In other words, for those 'in the know' - a game can be a work of art. Full stop.

That said, I am not convinced that the 'real' population of the world is aware of this yet. An article in New York Times Magazine that talks about it is thus very welcome. I don't mean it is welcome because it is a validation for those of us who stood up and said 'of course games are art', but simply because it means that the 'real' population are now about to step into a world that - for the first time in a century or so - has an entirely new art form in it. That's amazing and wonderful. And even though the article does not represent some giant breaker being flipped in the cultural consciousness, it is one of the more significant bitflips in the grand scheme of games' general acceptance as an important form of art and an important contribution to human culture.

It's why I think the 'Games as Art' discussion, especially in mainstream media and by mainstream commentators like Roger Ebert, is important and worthy.

Then again, DeVil, Clint posted that in November.