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posted by [identity profile] benlehman.livejournal.com at 10:40pm on 21/04/2010
1) I dunno. If we date video games from the invention of pong, video games have been around for 38 years. Consider where film was 38 years after its invention, or photography. Also, given the way that the artistic psyche works, I'm pretty sure Ebert's statements are going to spur the development of good artistic games, rather than detract from them, becoming a self-negating prophecy.

2) The same is true of film, novels, etc, although clearly to different degrees. I don't think commercialization is an insurmountable barrier, and I'm not sure it can explain the discrepancy I'm seeing.
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posted by [identity profile] nekoewen.livejournal.com at 12:36am on 22/04/2010
I don't know that Pong is a good place to start in terms of measuring video games as an art form. I mean, video games literally can't get much simpler than Pong, and I think we had to get quite a bit later in their history than 1972 to get to a point where they game developers really had tools to express themselves except in relatively rudimentary ways. Atari 2600 cartridges topped out at around 12 kilobytes of data if I remember correctly. I would liken video games of the early 70s to the very earliest of black and white silent films, when it took people a while to realize that, unlike with a play, there was a camera that could be pointed in different directions.

Another important factor is that even today people regard video games as a kind of toy for kids. Gamers have grown up, but there's a sense that the likes of GTA are for "adult kids," with little need to aspire to be art. While there are plenty of people within the gaming industry who talk big about games as art, I think the vast majority of games released belie a "games as toys" attitude.
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posted by [identity profile] icecreamemperor.livejournal.com at 12:37am on 22/04/2010

Here is a very vague statement: It seems to me that the economic circumstances of video games' 'youth' are substantially different from film in some way that helps explain this. I feel like video games got to the 'Hollywood' (modern, derogatory Hollywood) stage a lot faster, which means you now have to wait for the post-Hollywood stage instead of getting to enjoy all that pre-/parallel-Hollywood European development which existed in film but appears remarkably absent from video game design & production.

There's also some things about the medium itself, the interactivity maybe, and the focus on competition, that seems to make it less likely to be seen as art by both creators & consumers. And since 'we think it's art' is one of the better definitions of what makes something art... I don't think very many people have tried to make art with video games, compared to the amount that tried to make art with film or photography or painting in their respective historical eras.
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