http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html
Have games achieved "art" yet? No, but they're only roughly 30 years old. It's an entire medium still taking its exploratory first few steps. At the same time, they're restricted from consistent progress by the weight of having to turn a profit.
He asks rhetorically at the end why people care so much, why gamers seek validation. Well, I think part of that is because unlike his cited examples, Michael Jordan and Bobby Fischer, games are continually portrayed as rudimentary and immature toys for children. It's an uphill battle for the medium, unlike something as well established and accepted as basketball or chess. It should come as no surprise then that gamers are impatient to see the industry associated with more respectable company.
A final point, Ebert has previously argued that because players give input to the game, a proper narrative can't be constructed:
I agree with most of his points. Quite simply, games just aren't there yet. But Ebert sure takes some really cheap shots toward the end of his post. Of course most games are driven by market viability and not expression or art. And yes, that will nearly always exclude them as being art. But there are independent games being made en masse these days that are reaching for the border of what games are, with no pressures for profit.The three games she chooses as examples [Waco Resurrection, Braid, Flower] do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic. I repeat: "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."
Have games achieved "art" yet? No, but they're only roughly 30 years old. It's an entire medium still taking its exploratory first few steps. At the same time, they're restricted from consistent progress by the weight of having to turn a profit.
He asks rhetorically at the end why people care so much, why gamers seek validation. Well, I think part of that is because unlike his cited examples, Michael Jordan and Bobby Fischer, games are continually portrayed as rudimentary and immature toys for children. It's an uphill battle for the medium, unlike something as well established and accepted as basketball or chess. It should come as no surprise then that gamers are impatient to see the industry associated with more respectable company.
A final point, Ebert has previously argued that because players give input to the game, a proper narrative can't be constructed:
Yet I've had moments in gaming where the game experience was far more important than making the right choice, beating the boss, or getting the most points. Often these moments were when a game properly emulated the same sequences that allow movies to tap into an emotional vein in us. The two instances that immediately come to mind for me are in Shadow of the Colossus and Xenogears. If it becomes indistinguishable from cinema, then why are games arbitrarily excluded?"Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control."