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What would Roger Ebert have thought of Journey?

M

Machina

Banned
"Video games will never be art"

Those are the immortal and infamous words of late film critic, Roger Ebert. He said them a fairly long time ago, and always stood by his sweeping statement until the end. I never knew Ebert personally nor closely followed his work, however I think it's safe to assume that 1. He, like many people his age just didn't understand the medium or its appeal and/or 2. he just didn't care.

I just finished my 2nd play through of Journey, and I honestly can't rationalize a scenario where it CAN'T be considered art. If we assume that the definition of art is to inspire emotion and reflection long after it's been experienced, how can Journey not be art? I felt more emotion playing Journey than I ever have watching any movie except the likes of Schindler's List or Forrest Gump. Films that are MEANT to do that.

What does GAF think? Was Ebert originally correct yet since his death, time has changed that truth? Or am I naive in assuming that there might be dissenting opinions on a primarily VIDEO GAME forum. Arguably the most popular one on the internet. I'm one of those who thought he was always wrong, and his opinion that was born out of mostly willful ignorance only became well known because of the gaming communities predictably savage response to it.
 
To be honest OP who cares what he thought of it. He was not a custodian of art. Games were, is and will always be an art form irrespective of Ebert's poorly thought out opinion.
 
He already backtracked:

"I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place," he admitted. "I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself."

semi back tracked

"I concluded without a definition that satisfied me," he admitted. "I had to be prepared to agree that gamers can have an experience that, for them, is Art. I don't know what they can learn about another human being that way, no matter how much they learn about Human Nature. I don't know if they can be inspired to transcend themselves. Perhaps they can. How can I say? I may be wrong. but if 'm not willing to play a video game to find that out, I should say so. I have books to read and movies to see. I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place."
 
I don't think he would have thought any more of it than any other video game. He was a great movie reviewer but completely incapable of understanding gaming medium and its potential.
 
Game is probably indistinguishable from other games to a laymen. You're controlling a character in abstract environments from a 3rd person perspective. I didn't think it was anything special when I played it this year for the first time.
 
The real question is what would he have thought of the Citizen Kane of gaming?
😏
His jaw would have dropped 😏😏😏😏😏
 
I haven't played Journey, but I tell ya, I was jumping in a corner in some other game while an NPC was telling me some sob story about his children being kidnapped or something.

I mean, art reflects life.

You know?
 
Doesn't matter. He was a student of film. His opinion on games/gameplay was always irrelevant. Or at the very least, his opinion was no more important or valuable than anyone else's.
 
If a game has to become less of a game to be considered art isn't that kind of a Pyrrhic victory? There are plenty of games that don't throw gameplay under the bus and still inspire emotion.

His whole opinion was dumb anyway. They are as much art as movies are.
 
What does GAF think? Was Ebert originally correct yet since his death, time has changed that truth?
Click to expand...

Lol no, video games have been art since they've came out.

There have been better games to showcase the power of the medium before Journey, and there will be after as well.
 
Didn't Ebert believe games weren't art due to the interactive nature of them given to the player? If that's the case, Journey wouldn't have changed his mind. Shadow of the Colossus released years earlier and makes just as strong a case as Journey does.
 
It wouldn't matter. Ebert was an expert on films only, he was no expert on games and had nothing to offer but a mainstream thumbs up.
 
Meh doubt he will look at it differently. He was a great movie critic, but not one I would look at really for opinion on gaming as a whole.
 
I don't think he would have ever played a game in the first place, or if he did, I don't think he would be willing to adapt enough to learn it.

But if the question is about him eating crow for his statements about video games in general, then A) he rescinded those comments B) unfortunately, he's dead.
 
RagnarokX said:
If a game has to become less of a game to be considered art isn't that kind of a Pyrrhic victory? There are plenty of games that don't throw gameplay under the bus and still inspire emotion.
Click to expand...

I would agree with this statement yet I dont know why I found Journey special. It was an absolute magical 'experience' ( again I hate that word usually but.. ) . Journey is absolutely phenomenal and one of the best games from last gen.
 
Are there any truly great games critics? I feel games are too often a sum of their parts, and anyone attempting to be a critic runs the risk of being someone's hack.
 
injurai said:
Are there any truly great games critics? I feel games are too often a sum of their parts, and anyone attempting to be a critic runs the risk of being someone's hack.
Click to expand...

There's plenty of people who considered Ebert a hack, so that doesn't really matter.
 
“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”
― Confucius

Seriously, stop seeking validation from outside. Journey would not have been a less of a game if some film critic disliked it, just as Jodie Holmes is not a better character because she's played by a 'real actor'.
 
injurai said:
Are there any truly great games critics? I feel games are too often a sum of their parts, and anyone attempting to be a critic runs the risk of being someone's hack.
Click to expand...

Films, at the end of the day are moving pictures on a screen. Everyone experiences the same thing at the end of the day, they just interpret it differently. Games can be completely unique experiences from each other across genres, so that can be a powder keg for tribalism over what makes the best TYPE of game.
 
RagnarokX said:
If a game has to become less of a game to be considered art isn't that kind of a Pyrrhic victory? There are plenty of games that don't throw gameplay under the bus and still inspire emotion.

His whole opinion was dumb anyway. They are as much art as movies are.
Click to expand...

A game with a different style of gameplay isn't less of a game.
 
Pinko Marx said:
The real question is what would he have thought of the Citizen Kane of gaming?
😏
His jaw would have dropped 😏😏😏😏😏
Click to expand...

He had plenty of time to play Ultima 7 and never said anything so I doubt even that masterpiece would have changed his mind.
 
injurai said:
Are there any truly great games critics? I feel games are too often a sum of their parts, and anyone attempting to be a critic runs the risk of being someone's hack.
Click to expand...
We're a young medium. Game critic is still an evolving thing. I don't know that there's anyone truly great yet, but it might take some hindsight down the road.
Fat4all said:
There's plenty of people who considered Ebert a hack, so that doesn't really matter.
Click to expand...
Lawl.
 
This question is pointless. He was a film critic who wasn't appreciative of video games because of the generation gap. There's no need to speculate whether he would have tipped his hat out of respect or not.
 
I don't think games are "art".
I think games are a form of entertainment media that can, in rare cases, be used to express some kinda art but I wouldn't call "games" art.


My thoughts on it are more along the lines of Miyamoto on this topic.
 
To appreciate Journey, you also gotta appreciate the experience of playing a game. He was likely never going to give it that kind of shot.

And tbh it really doesn't matter.
 
Fat4all said:
There's plenty of people who considered Ebert a hack, so that doesn't really matter.
Click to expand...
This. He made enough shaky reviews(Garfield) plus backtracked on old opinions only after popular opinon and the test of time proved him wrong ( especially horror with his initial dismissal of both TCM and NOTLD but then years later retracting his opinions after they were proven classics) for me to take him seriously in his chosen field, never mind games which he dismissed without thought.
 
Game4life said:
I would agree with this statement yet I dont know why I found Journey special. It was an absolute magical 'experience' ( again I hate that word usually but.. ) . Journey is absolutely phenomenal and one of the best games from last gen.
Click to expand...

Don't get me wrong. I thought it was beautiful. I didn't have an intense emotional reaction like some people on GAF did, but it was a nice experience. But Journey was barely there on the game aspect. Absolute bare minimum. Walkiest of the walking simulators.

You know recently I played TriForce Heroes, and while it had a wacky plot played for laughs, I couldn't help but notice that it has a lot of similarities with Journey. The main thing people love Journey for is how they formed an emotional connection to their partners through use of a single non-verbal communication button. However communication is completely pointless in Journey since you never have to do anything the requires more than one person. TriForce Heroes has 8 symbolic buttons for communication, and I felt using those to communicate with strangers on very complex and challenging tasks was far more interesting and effective in establishing feelings towards those strangers, positive or negative.
 
He wasn't even a particularly good movie critic and I don't know why the gaming community had a collective freakout about the opinion of a dude who would openly admit to giving a shitty movie a good review just because he's got a hard-on for Angelina Jolie.

Ebert, with his collections of bad reviews sold for profit and "it's fun to hate movies!" attitude basically ruined a generation of analysis. If it weren't for him we wouldn't have to suffer Nostalgia Critic.
 
These who cares responses are pathetic. OP simply asked a hypothetical question and wanted to generate discussion. Would Journey have changed his mind? Was there something specific about the game that may have?

He's not seeking validation, just a thought exercise. The echo chamber of "who cares" stinks of "we actually care".
 
Black-Wind said:
I don't think games are "art".
I think games are a form of entertainment media that can, in rare cases, be used to express some kinda art but I wouldn't call "games" art.


My thoughts on it are more along the lines of Miyamoto on this topic.
Click to expand...

No medium is, in its totality, "art". Written word, video, etc. They are not art by nature of existing. If I write a textbook, or an introductory video to hazardous waste for factory workers, I'm not making art. Therefore, obviously "games" as a whole are not art. Individual works can be. What we do with them as participators can be.

That's why Ebert sounded foolish from the get go. He made a sweeping comment about an entire medium without putting any effort into understanding it.

Quonny said:
These who cares responses are pathetic. OP simply asked a hypothetical question and wanted to generate discussion. Would Journey have changed his mind? Was there something specific about the game that may have?

He's not seeking validation, just a thought exercise. The echo chamber of "who cares" stinks of "we actually care".
Click to expand...

The answer is no. A great and mighty change would have had to sweep over Ebert in order for him to attempt to engage with a game for long enough to actually form a relevant opinion on it. And he was pretty clear that wasn't going to happen. So no, Journey would not have changed his mind. Just as Shadow of the Colossus before it would not have. Just as speedruns of Mario 64 before that. Just as Earthbound before that. Games, developers, and players have been expressing themselves via the art of gameplay and interaction for much longer than Journey. He never bothered to learn that, and would not have.
 
Ekai said:
A game with a different style of gameplay isn't less of a game.
Click to expand...

No. Gameplay just being different isn't a problem. Gameplay not challenging the player and being extremely limited in interactivity, the things that make games different from other forms of media, does. My point is if games have to become more like other forms of media and less like games to win over people like Ebert isn't it also a loss?
 
I don't know, because I don't know Ebert, but if I were to hazard a guess he probably wouldn't have cared much for it. Ebert's passion for artistic mediums fixated heavily on film. To my knowledge he had no inherent interest in interactive works, and in his age and given his deeply rooted aforementioned interests would probably be hard to shake from those roots.

The iffy thing when discussing video games and art is the whimsical lack of definition that both encompass along with unfair connotations. In all seriousness; what is art? How do we define art? Who bestows the title of "art" on a piece of work and what does that mean? There's no real consensus on the term, and instead what we talk about is the experience we take from said work and what artistic merits it might have. "Art" really isn't a definition, it's more of a catalyst for discussion and emotional resonance. In the same breath, "video games" isn't really accurate. "Game" is a title loaded with connotations, but the interactive digital medium encompasses so many different things that surely not all fit the standard criteria and connotations implied by "game".

So really, we're stuck in a very difficult position of trying to define what is and isn't a "video game", whether or not the title "video game" is applicable at all, how we define "art", and what the actual merits of that title are. The only conclusion I can come up with is that when discussing forms of creative expression and in conjunction potential artistic merits we can never resort to blanket statements and generalisations. There's no weight or value in the statement "video games are/aren't art". It means nothing, implies nothing, and has no consensus of definition. What we do have is richer discussion and debate on individual works, a per-work basis, and what we've taken from that creative expression.

In all seriousness;

blame space said:
The game ebert really would have appreciated is the Stanley parable.
Click to expand...

This is probably not far from the truth. Due to his resilience and general disinterest towards video games he may have found genuine stimulation in an interactive title like The Stanley Parable due to it's fourth wall breaking introspective commentary on the medium itself.
 
RagnarokX said:
No. Gameplay just being different isn't a problem. Gameplay not challenging the player and being extremely limited in interactivity, the things that make games different from other forms of media, does. My point is if games have to become more like other forms of media and less like games to win over people like Ebert isn't it also a loss?
Click to expand...

I don't see how different gameplay is worse gameplay.

How can challenge be quantified in this case?
 
I mean, there are people on NeoGAF who think games aren't art. Most young adults don't think games are art, even though they all grew up playing them. Why would a senior-aged man who doesn't play video games think so? And if I remember correctly, a central part of Ebert's argument was that games remove artistic intent by handing control to the player; ergo they can't be art. No, Journey would not have changed Ebert's mind.

I think games are art, but I can't blame people for not thinking so. Most of the truly great games of all time are silly and playful, because that's what games do best. But I'm not going to try convincing my dad (or my girlfriend, or really anyone else who doesn't frequent gaming message boards) that Super Mario Galaxy is a work of art.
 
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