2012, in 2012, Roger Ebert wrote“I am still convinced that video games in principle cannot be art.” The question of what art is tired in 2025, but the constantly changing defense of Why can still be fascinating. In this interview statement, the game designer Sam Barlow and the Podcaster Justin Mcelroy Ebert's argument research that video games could not be art: the fact that video games are changeable to a certain extent.
This interview was carried out in September 2024 as part of the publication of Our documentary The great game: the production of SpycraftAbout one of the most ambitious FMV games of the 90s. You can see the full interview above.
Sam Barlow: There was a time when I had a free evening and my family, or something, and I had to choose what was on TV. Ok, Papa will see something cool on TV. And I would sit down and 45 minutes later I still snap through Netflix, look at the stuff and see the algorithmic decisions. So you did a really good job if you make it very interactive to browse the “browsing on the shelf”. It's personalized, right? I get different shows that are pushed for me. I not only get different shows, but also different thumbnails. The funny thing of how – you get the stuff, right where it is, says the miniature view GodfatherAnd then it is a picture of one of the female characters of The Godfather This doesn't even have a speech line because the algorithm decided, Oh, you like things with women in them; We have to push that to you.
So they did all of the stuff, and obviously the reason why films and television are repaired – it is not 100%because they work like this; It is sometimes technology. If they were distributed a film, it had to be printed and they needed a single master specimen that should be printed several times and then driven into a van in a cinema, and then they would look at it. And the structure was such that people have to sit in a room and the length of the type of film is baked around, How many demonstrations can we get a day? How big is the human bubble? How uncomfortable do I feel when I was sitting in a chair for too long?
But now that everything we see is streamed directly on ourselves and stored somewhere on a computer, things don't have to be that way. […] I am free here, but the famous line we got from Roger Ebert, why video games couldn't be art. It is not art, right, his reading was what a video game is.
My immediate release of it is: Come on, Roger, you know how films are made! They know when Spielberg wrote this script, the end was different and they know that this scene was not in the original script. And when they went and it filmed, the actor appeared and improvised and optimized it. And then you know that decisions were made when they arrived in the editing room. You know that a modern, expensive film is shown on several target groups, different cuts, and then make changes. There is fluidity in the form that already exists. And we know that you have to hit the “four-quadrant” audience if you make a 200 million dollar Marvel film. You have to please everyone. So you won't kill the dog. […] There is an imagination that if this medium was delivered one -to -one for me as an individual, even without interactivity would give a way to be more calibrated.
When I did Tell liesPresent breaking Bad Was the big show. And at that time there was this crazy discourse that there was a show that generally thought that Walter White was not the best type. And it had its cake and ate it a little. But then you had the strange one breaking Bad Fanboys who like: “Walter White Rocks !!! He's so cool! He is the man who knocks! “And you had the strange thing where they hated the character of Skyler and said:” She is shit! She is a bad character! Ugh, we hate it! “This is a kind of product how television programs work. -Character and you need a B character, and the B character is there to deliver the friction.
So if we cut a version of cutting breaking Bad For a single audience, and they wanted them to get the point where they were missing, you could cut a version that tried to make it clear to this other audience that Walter White was a bad guy. […] All of these things are impossible to do if you create a single, firm piece of network television. But if you knew who you addressed and you had a little more freedom because of the way digitally, you could do something interesting there. And so I would like to have more fluid for how we consume our digital video. I think that would be really interesting – have things that support themselves in this subjectivity.
This is an example that I always use that was really interesting. […] When they showed the film The notebook […] On Netflix in Europe, they put a cut of the film that nobody recognized and live on duty. And they had all these people live tweetend who were all fans The notebook And – I've never seen before The notebookBut I think it has a very […] Moving, sad, double end. Somehow they had uploaded a cut that actually had a happy ending, and suddenly they had all these people in real time like, how, Is that a – Oh, what is the genius film that doesn't exist?
Sam Barlow: hobby. Yes, they were like Is that a hobby Thing? I have hobby'D yourself? Did I remember another end of this film? Do I hallucine? Do I have a heart attack? What happens? And they had this really interesting, visceral reaction based on the assumption that the video is firm and unchangeable.
Every weekend we will carry out more excerpts from this conversation between Sam Barlow and Justin Mcelroy. They recently discussed the usefulness of “FMV” as a label for games and after that they can feel more intimate when playing a game.
The great game: the production of Spycraft recently The New York Game Award of the New York video game Circle for the best player journalism.
