It's fun when "establishment" institutions fight over video games. The (very polite) spat that's amusing me this morning is a dust-up between National Public Radio and the Smithsonian Institute over how the Smithsonian's recently opened "video games as art" collection was curated. In the opinion of NPR writer Harold Goldberg (who has also written for G4), the crowd-sourcing model of picking the games featured in museum resulted in a collection that "feels horribly generic."
Unlike most museum collections, the games chosen for The Art of Video Games were first picked by a committee of industry insiders, and those choices were ultimately decided upon by the public through internet-voting. That's very democratic and all, but according to Goldberg, is not a recipe for a successful examination of Gaming. In fact, in Goldberg's words, "The Smithsonian and its freelance curator screwed it all up."
I think Goldberg makes a very strong point here. The works of art included in traditional art museums are generally curated by people who have spent their lives studying Art, people with a special understanding of particular forms of expression, connoisseurs who, frankly, have better taste than other people.
Works of Art (with the capitol "A") are generally agreed upon by these people to be worthwhile beyond an initial appeal. Art (with the capitol "A") is often challenging and serious, and rewards serious contemplation with insights about what it is to be Human. These are not the kinds of things that can generally be "crowd-sourced."
The idea of an elite group of aesthetic and intellectual professionals who "know better" than the common Joe feels distinctly un-American and elitist, but, in my opinion (and NPR's) it's preferable to the alternative. Call me an elitist if you like, but letting "The People" pick the art to be featured somewhere is the perfect recipe for creating a dull, uninspiring middle-of-the-road show. Imagine a film festival programmed by the general public -- it would look a lot like the current offerings at movie theaters, or, worse yet, YouTube.
If you take everyone's opinions into account, you often end up with the most average outcome possible, a fate that Goldberg feels has befallen the Smithsonian.
"This videogame-oriented People's Choice Awards is all about the madness of too many cooks," Goldberg writes, "and it's why the exhibition, while groundbreaking because it's there at all, feels kind of horribly generic. With the exception of the inclusion of Irrational Games' BioShock, Bethesda Softworks' Fallout 3, Valve's Half-Life 2 and Clover Studio's Okami, The Art of Video Games is never boldly disruptive. It is therefore tragically disappointing – and often suspect - at its very core"
Please call me an elitist in our comment section, because I totally am.
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DarkMaster2101
What? No mention of Super Mario Bros. 3 for it's variety on limited hardware. No Act Raiser for being able to play a god? No Sonic the Hedgehog for its blend of popular culture and now generic-platforming (at the time it was unique)? No The Ooze from Sega Genesis? No almost realistic leather jacket from Max Payne mentioned in Sessler's Soapbox? No Dragon Quest for shifting its focus on story telling and not gameplay?
No Superman 64 or Shaq Fu as examples of the worst in what can and will go wrong in video game art, but are still art because of what they are missing?
No Magnavox Odyssey? No Pinball? No Japanese game where you pull a spring and launch a ball into a board?
No ljn Universal games? Do I need a reason for these?
A game doesn't have to be good to be art, nor does it have to be bad. The game has to have a focus, an idea. If the game achieves its goal then that's fantastic. If it fails to achieve it, then that's art too because we can learn from another's mistakes.
You have to ask yourself, "how much can I learn from this game? What is this game trying to teach me?" Then after you played the game, ask "why is the game teaching me these things?"
If you can answer the third question and get an answer only you can understand, then you understand why video games are art.
Bloodthr0e
People at an art exhibit couldn't even put together a good exhibit depicting video games as art. What does that say about video games?
khorne494
my list of games that would be considered art are
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Uncharted 2
MGS4
Riven/Myst
Tetris
Sim city, the sims, Sim earth, pretty much any sim type game
Little Big Planet
Okami
Fatal Frames
khorne494
my list of games that would be considered art are
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Uncharted 2
MGS4
Riven/Myst
Tetris
Sim city, the sims, Sim earth, pretty much any sim type game
Little Big Planet
Okami
Fatal Frames
ApolloStarIV
elitist ha
but seriously thats a good point, it like saying, just because someone reads a book doesnt mean they understood it, or for that matter have the knowledge to really compare it against the competition. deciding the exhibit like that leads to nothing but an army of fan boys voting for their favorite games and just because you enjoyed them doesnt make them art. in actuality some of the most artistic games in my opinion werent very popular and some just werent that good period in a sense of gameplay, but the gameplay is not the art, the story, the characters, the feeling you get from whats happening, that makes it art. i think they should get a committee with some real knowledge(perhaps some G4 reps(i.e. adam sesler) and other popular gaming critics such as ign and gameinformer) should gather and decide what would be eligible for the exhibit.
oh.. and mass effect should be included.. beginning to end its pure art, even with a depressing endin(which i actually think adds to its artistic standpoint in the sense that it reflects a truth that there is no fair, in this world or the one just a relay jump away).
amelexiam
There is a certain criteria necessary in order to qualify in calling one's self an "expert" in judging any art form. First you must be familiar with the history. It is necessary to where it derived from in order to compare the modern works of today. Secondly you must have some sort of first had experience in creating the art form in order to truly judge what skill is involved in its creation. Lastly, you must have true appreciation of "all" forms of the art. This is why a poll doesn't work. 99.9 percent of the people who voted are in the last of these criteria and consider themselves a self proclaimed judge just because they love video games.
For this exhibit it you be helpful if the judges had experience will all kinds of games from the atari 2600 to the WiiU, to have played all games from Pokemon to Katherine. They should have programming experience story writing experience and enjoy playing games, but thats just this man's opinion.
geomancer21
The big thing with this is, the items that one could point to as being unquestionably artistic, the games that really stand out, are, generally speaking, the games most people haven't played or even heard of.
superhappyfunshow
First of all, Mr. Elitist, you made a syntax mistake by using the spelling "capitol" instead of "capital." Who's the elitist now!?
Secondly, what does the idea of curation even mean to this Smithsonian team? More to the point, what does it mean to younger generations? Digital culture has given Gen-Y the opportunity to curate their own lives, identity, and experiences. Faced with dwindling membership and patronage, museums are attempting to adapt to this new paradigm around the world. Well-known, previously heralded museums like the Guggenheim and Smithsonian Institute are struggling to maintain authority in our new world of everyday & infinite curators. It may be unpopular with "elitists," but crowdsourcing is winning out more and more these days, simply because everyone considers him/herself an expert whose POV should be taken into acocunt. The days of being told what is good and bad, what one should appreciate and what one should not appreciate are coming to a close...regardless of how cool the art design for lesser-known titles, like...I dunno...spit balling here... El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron may be.
Finally, just because the most hardcore of video game enthusiasts might disagree with the selection of titles for the exhibit doesn't mean the exhibit is itself a failure. The people who actually go see exhibits in the Smithsonian are, generally speaking, not the same people who voted on the titles for the exhibit in the first place. I'm sure the Smithsonian's patrons will all learn a great deal about video games as Art, regardless of the chosen titles.
Gumburculeez
Stephen Johnson is aloof, arrogant, condescending, egotistic, elitist , haughty, high-and-mighty, high-flown, high-hat, ostentatious, overbearing, patronizing, persnickety*, pompous, pretentious, putting on airs, remote, sniffy, snippy, snobby, snooty, snotty, supercilious, superior, swanky, tony and uppity.
(Thank you online thesaurus)
Spybreak
Agreed, pity they couldn't show where gaming came from and where it is today based off of design standards and curriculum.
agchrist
Stephen Johnson is a man's man!
He's also right. I voted for the Smithsonian exhibits and in a way was disappointed with the somewhat fan service that it ended up with.
TKEmysterio
Makes sense to me. When that survey came out I thought the same thing based on the choices we were given.
Why not just have a "History of Video Games" exhibit and chronicle the highs and lows of the industry??
Godsen002
what an elitist
megamanxzxz
Stephen Johnson is an elitist!!!!!!
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