A few years back, film critic Roger Ebert wrote an article in which he claimed that video games could never be art. Understandably, this caused a bit of commotion among gamers. He didn't help matters by saying that he had never played a video game and didn't really ever care to either. Was he trying to irritate these people? The point raised by all this is a valid one, however. I just think he went about it all the wrong way.
First of all, I think it was a mistake to narrow the scope of the argument exclusively to video games. To me, the real issue is whether any games can be considered art. Ebert does make a side note about this in a follow up article, but yet I still have to wonder why the focus was on video games to begin with. The primary arguments that he makes against video games being art, such as their goal oriented strategies and so forth, are points that could be raised about any game from chess to baseball. You're left with the sense that he wasn't really all that interested in a philosophical exploration of exactly what art is and whether games fall under that definition. It feels more like he had a personal grudge to pick with video games themselves, and he was trying to cast his contempt for them in intellectual terms. Rather than just calling them trash, he said instead, "This can never be art."
Maybe I'm not being entirely fair, but yet it certainly does seem that video games have hit a personal nerve with him. Again, there are really no abstract points that he makes about what does and does not constitute art that necessarily apply exclusively to video games. What he does specifically say about video games relates mostly to their quality. In principle, that's irrelevant to the issue at hand. The question of whether something is qualitatively a "work of art" and whether a medium itself is an art-form are two separate matters entirely. A slasher movie might not be a work of art, but piling on example after example of such movies does nothing to help decide whether film itself is an art-form. It's a mistake to confuse the difference between whether something has the quality to be considered great art and whether something is categorically art. By making this mistake, Ebert creates the impression that he's simply being dismissive of a medium he doesn't like or understand.
Over recent years video games have evolved into something almost cinematic. More and more they have come to incorporate complex characters and narratives. Maybe Ebert sees them as rivals to movies. Maybe he feels that the relatively passive experience of movies will eventually be threatened by the interactive experience of video games. I can sympathize with that point of view. I love movies myself, and I don't think that video games would ever be an adequate substitute. Ultimately, I think this is what Ebert is trying to say.
However, he hurts his argument by approaching it in such a haphazard way. If he wants to make the case that the very structure and nature of games is at odds with the definition of art, if he wants to argue that the interactivity of video games undermines the dramatic effect that movies rely on, that's fine. I would probably agree, and I'm sure others would as well. But when he complains that most games just involve shooting at things or quotes, " No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.", he's running off on a tangent about the quality of the games. Pointing out the fact that most video games are presently at the level of B-Grade action and horror movies does nothing to help determine their potential as art.
It's quite possible, in fact it's practically inevitable, that one day someone will design a game with a narrative as intricate and deep as Citizen Kane. Certainly there are game designers out there who don't feel the same disdain for video games that Roger Ebert does and wouldn't feel that such an undertaking was a wasted effort. A game like that would take the issue of quality off the table. The question would then become whether a game like that could be as profound and as meaningful as Citizen Kane or whether its very nature as a game still makes it impossible to achieve the status of true art.
This, I think, is the real issue.
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