Legendary film critic Roger Ebert has re-affirmed his long-held opinion that video games, unlike film, don't constitute an art form. His commentary has inspired passionate debate online.
In an extended essay that attracted nearly 2,000 comments for the Chicago Sun Times, Ebert wrote "video games cannot be art."
The statement hasn't come without criticism. The video game industry pulled in close to $42 billion last year, compared with the Hollywood box office which set a record in 2009 with $10 billion in the U.S. and Canada.
Ebert's primary argument is that art, its definition lying primarily in the eyes of the beholder, cannot be achieved through the playing of a game bound by rules, points, objectives and achievements.
"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 wrote.
"Chess, football, baseball, and even mah jong cannot be art, however elegant their rules."
Ebert argues that when rules and objectives are eliminated, "it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them."
But regardless of Ebert's personal convictions, his final question to gamers is why they seem to require validation that their pastime of choice constitutes art.
"Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?" he writes. "Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never said they thought their games were an art form. Nor did Shi Hua Chen, winner of the $500,000 World Series of Mah Jong in 2009. Why aren't gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves?"
The extensive comment string on the blog post is equally divided between agreements and condemnations.
"One of my favorite Ebert pieces of recent memory," wrote one commentator.
"Not because I agree, but because even the master sometimes proves that, his best words and intellect at this disposal, he is ultimately fallible."
"Any anthropologist would define games as art," wrote another. "Here's what Ebert really means: Games are not 'great' art. I wish he'd define his terms better."
