In 2012, Roger Ebert wrote, “I stay satisfied that in precept, video video games can’t be artwork.” The query of what’s or isn’t artwork feels drained in 2025, however the ever-shifting defenses of why can nonetheless be intriguing. On this interview excerpt, sport designer Sam Barlow and podcaster Justin McElroy discover Ebert’s reasoning for saying that video video games couldn’t be artwork: the truth that video video games are, to a point, mutable.
This interview was completed in September 2024 as a part of the discharge of our documentary The Nice Sport: The Making of Spycraft, about probably the most bold FMV video games of the ’90s. You possibly can watch the total interview above.
Sam Barlow: There was a interval the place, if I had a free night and my household have been out or one thing, and I acquired to decide on what was on TV, I’d be like, OK, Daddy’s going to look at one thing cool on the tv. And I’d sit down, and 45 minutes later, I’m nonetheless paging via Netflix, trying on the stuff, seeing the algorithmic decisions. So that they’ve completed a very good job of creating the “shopping the shelf” expertise really feel very interactive. It’s customized, proper? I get totally different reveals pushed to me. Not solely do I get totally different reveals, I get totally different thumbnails. The humorous factor of, like — you get the stuff, proper, the place it’s like, the thumbnail says Godfather, after which it’s an image of one of many feminine characters from The Godfather that doesn’t also have a talking line, as a result of the algorithm has determined, Oh, you want issues with girls in them; we have to push that on you.
So that they’ve completed all that stuff, and clearly the rationale that motion pictures and tv are mounted — it’s not 100% as a result of that’s how they work; it’s partly know-how. When you have been going to distribute a film, it wanted to be printed, and also you wanted a single grasp copy that was going to be printed a number of occasions, after which put in a van and pushed to a movie show, and you then’d watch it. And the construction, it was such that, nicely, individuals want to take a seat in a room, and the size of a film’s form of baked round, What number of screenings can we get within the day? What’s the scale of the human bladder? How uncomfortable do I really feel if I’m sat in a chair for too lengthy?
However now that every part we’re watching is being streamed on to us, saved on a pc someplace, issues don’t need to be that manner. […] I’m free-associating right here, however the well-known line that we acquired from Roger Ebert of why video video games couldn’t be artwork was this concept that artwork is mounted, and is an authorial selection — and in case you can change the ending, and so on., it’s not artwork, proper, was his studying of what a online game is.
My instant dismissal of that’s: Come on, Roger, you understand how motion pictures are made! You recognize that when Spielberg wrote this script, the ending was totally different, and you already know that this scene wasn’t within the unique script. After which once they went and filmed it, the actor confirmed up and improvised and tweaked it. After which you already know that once they acquired to the modifying room, choices have been made. You recognize {that a} fashionable, costly film is screened to a number of audiences, totally different cuts, after which they go and make modifications. There’s a fluidity within the kind that — it already exists within the course of. And we all know that in case you’re making a $200 million Marvel film, you must hit the “four-quadrant” viewers; you’ve acquired to please all people. So that you’re not going to kill the canine. […] There’s a conceit that if this medium was delivered one-to-one, to me as a person, even with out interactivity there could be a manner of it being extra calibrated.
After I was doing Telling Lies, Breaking Dangerous was the large present. And on the time, there was this loopy discourse round the truth that, right here was a present which typically was going with the opinion that Walter White was not one of the best dude. And it did have its cake and eat it a bit of bit. However you then had the bizarre Breaking Dangerous fanboys who have been identical to, “Walter White rocks!!! He’s so cool! He’s the person who knocks!” And also you had the bizarre factor the place they have been hating on the character of Skyler, saying, “She sucks! She’s a nasty character! Ugh, we hate her!” That’s form of a product of how TV reveals work. You want an A personality and also you want a B character, and the B character is there to supply the friction; the A personality is the one whose story we’re linked to.
So if we have been chopping a model of Breaking Dangerous for a person viewers member, and also you wished them to get the purpose they have been lacking, you may reduce a model which tried to make it clear to this different viewers that Walter White was a nasty man. […] All of these items are unimaginable to do in case you’re making a single, mounted piece of community tv. However in case you knew who you have been addressing, and also you had a bit extra freedom due to the best way that digital works, you may do one thing attention-grabbing there. And so I’d like to have extra fluidity to how we eat our digital video. I believe that’s a factor that may be actually attention-grabbing — have issues that lean into that subjectivity.
That is an instance I all the time use that was actually attention-grabbing to see. […] After they confirmed the film The Pocket book […] on Netflix in Europe, they put a reduce of the film that nobody realized even existed, reside on the service. And also you had all these individuals type of live-tweeting watching it who have been all followers of The Pocket book and — I’ve by no means really seen The Pocket book, however I consider it has a really […] shifting, unhappy, double-hanky ending. Someway that they had uploaded a reduce which really had a contented ending, and also you all of a sudden had all these individuals in actual time being like, Is that this a — oh, what’s the genie film that doesn’t exist?
Sam Barlow: Kazaam. Yeah, they have been like, Is that this a Kazaam factor? Have I Kazaam’d myself? Did I bear in mind a unique ending to this film? Am I hallucinating? Am I having a coronary heart assault? What’s taking place? And also you had this actually attention-grabbing, form of, visceral response based mostly on simply the idea that video is mounted and immutable.
We’ll be working extra excerpts from this dialog between Sam Barlow and Justin McElroy every weekend. Just lately, they mentioned the usefulness of “FMV” as a label for video games, and following that, whether or not watching movie can really feel extra intimate than enjoying a sport.
The Nice Sport: The Making of Spycraft not too long ago gained the New York Videogame Critics Circle’s New York Sport Award for Greatest Video games Journalism.