Infinite Lives: Ebert on games pt. 1

Have I mentioned that I saw the Doom movie? It's weird; I keep forgetting I've seen it. Every time I remind myself I did indeed sit in a theatre and watch it, some other, higher-priority memory -- a funny thing my cat did; the price of canned organic navy beans at Save-On; the name of my cousin's dog -- moves in and nudges Doom out my ear and into the gutter. The process started about ten seconds after the end credits; walking out into the lobby, the film was already indistinct... something about a martian super-race and the "soul chromosome", zombies trapped in walls, the Rock turning into a crazy mutant... something something something... I dunno; it's almost all gone. The worst was two days after the screening, when I turned to my buddy Steve and said, brightly, "Hey! We should go see Doom!" He just stared at me with this look of crushed despair. It was a real Flowers For Algernon kind of scene.

It's axiomatic that movies based on game franchises suck ass, hard. The only good game movie -- I'm taking back my self-hypnosis-induced enthusiasm for Resident Evil; sorry, everybody -- was (maybe) Mortal Kombat, and that only because of that one song about Sub Zero (Whooooa / Chinese ninja warrior / with your heart so cold...). Game movies are so terrible that even people who like terrible things -- and judging from sales figures and box-office receipts, that's most gamers and moviegoers -- can't stand them. They're so terrible they make games themselves seem worse than they are. That must be part of what happened in the mind of Hollywood Tastemaker Roger Ebert. Check it out; it started with his review of Doom, when he thumbed that piece of shit down so hard a tiny little smidgen of feces flew off across the boundaries between media: "The movie," Ebert wrote, "has been 'inspired by' the famous video game. No, I haven't played it, and I never will, but I know how it feels not to play it, because I've seen the movie. Doom is like some kid came over and is using your computer and won't let you play."

"I haven't played it, and I never will" is a pretty standard critical pooh-pooh phrase: it's no doubt factual, and it's not really malicious, but it's hard to read it without hearing an accent of snobbishness and condescension. That hint of snobbery is enough to punch the buttons of gamers who, like every variety of nerd, are touchy little princesses. Defensive emails began to flow into his mailbox, and in his "Answer man" column, Ebert clarified his position on videogames:

"I believe books and films are better mediums, and better uses of my time. But how can I say that when I admit I am unfamiliar with video games? Because I have recently seen classic films by Fassbinder, Ozu, Herzog, Scorsese and Kurosawa, and have recently read novels by Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Bellow, Nabokov and Hugo, and if there were video games in the same league, someone somewhere who was familiar with the best work in all three mediums would have made a
convincing argument in their defense."

Now, that's some weak shit... games are inferior to books and movies because he doesn't know of any great games. How could a "convincing argument" for the greatness of a game be framed in such a way as to be persuasive to him? Great movies argue themselves when you watch them, great books argue themselves when you read them... how could a great game argue itself to Ebert, who will not play it -- probably cannot play it, since full participation in all but the simplest of games requires a more elaborate set of basic physical and mental skills than does viewing a movie, a skill set Ebert (stereotypically, for one of his generation) lacks and does not care to gain?

Arrgh... anyway, Ebert's statement was less an argument than a challenge, a challenge the gamer community took up with enthusiasm in message boards and blog postings, throwing up names like Shigeru Miyamoto and Will Wright as counterparts to Nabokov and Scorsese, titles like "Full Throttle" and "Final Fantasy" as analogues of "Ran" and "Little Dorrit". Wankjob listmaking, a nerd specialty; also, it was firmly established that Roger Ebert was in fact stupid, fat, old and probably a fag. If you know how gamers write, you can imagine the subliterate screeds Ebert's email drones had to wade through to find something printable to respond to. And in that response, Ebert took the fight to the level he should have taken it to from the beginning:

"Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

"I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art."

Ah. Now Ebert's tossed a few good sticks of dry birch onto the smouldering debate over whether or not video games can be considered art. The answer, to a flexible-minded person, is an obvious "yes"; Ebert's reasoning here shows where he's hung up. The problem is a fixation on narrative; Ebert can't see games as art because he can't get his head around the idea that a work having a different ending, a different middle, and quite possibly a different beginning for each participant can be coherent to the degree a novel can. He can't understand that authorial control in games extends beyond "telling a story" and into the art of creating play experiences -- a very young art form, and one he and many others cannot fully appreciate, but valid.

That said, most video games -- like most movies and most books -- stink on ice. The games industry, like the movie industry and the publishing industry, relies on safe formulae and lowest-common-denominator pandering to keep the black ink flowing. And it's all getting worse, not better, and... and we're outta time. Let's pick this up in two weeks, kids.