Back when it was still a burgeoning and struggling media, film was criticized as "not being art"; it, and its somewhat-more-reserved brother photography, were called simply a mechanical process, incapable of the "representational" aspects media such as painting and drawing showed- it could only show us what was there, just like our eyes, and not impart the feelings and views of the creator.
Hell, way back in the day, another old guy was complaining about a new type of media, saying that it would ruin the memory skills of the young and that only his preferred method could maintain civilization property. The "old guy" was Socrates, the "new type of media" was writing, and the only reason we know that Socrates said that was because Plato wrote it down. And let's not even get into how much some people absolutely loathed the printing press.
Ebert's problem was that he didn't understand video games; he admitted as much not long after his famous "video games are not art" quote. But I think that this inability to understand games as an art form seeped out of a deeper bias: I believe that Ebert was of the mind that art must be engaged passively; basically, that one should sit down, shut up, and look at this thing, and maybe you'll learn something from someone smarter than you. That's pretty much the antithesis of games, where one drives the narrative by one's self (usually) and can alter at least some portion of it themselves, even if only by losing the game.
I believe that a lot of people are approaching this argument the wrong way. Instead of saying "games are art because they resemble other forms of art in ways A, B and C" (and I often feel that cutscenes and QTEs in games are lazy ways of evoking the art aspects of film in games), we should start constructing arguments along the lines of "games are art because they can do these things that no other media can" and work from there.
I will say, though, that gaming's ascension as a form of art will probably mimic that of film in one important way: It will be the independent creators, not the big companies, that will trailblaze the way towards greater quality and art. I expect that we'll see many more independent games looking to push the barrier than any big-budget AAA production.
Condensed version: We'll get there, guys. We just have to stop mimicking and start innovating, keeping an eye on what makes games different from all other media.
Hell, way back in the day, another old guy was complaining about a new type of media, saying that it would ruin the memory skills of the young and that only his preferred method could maintain civilization property. The "old guy" was Socrates, the "new type of media" was writing, and the only reason we know that Socrates said that was because Plato wrote it down. And let's not even get into how much some people absolutely loathed the printing press.
Ebert's problem was that he didn't understand video games; he admitted as much not long after his famous "video games are not art" quote. But I think that this inability to understand games as an art form seeped out of a deeper bias: I believe that Ebert was of the mind that art must be engaged passively; basically, that one should sit down, shut up, and look at this thing, and maybe you'll learn something from someone smarter than you. That's pretty much the antithesis of games, where one drives the narrative by one's self (usually) and can alter at least some portion of it themselves, even if only by losing the game.
I believe that a lot of people are approaching this argument the wrong way. Instead of saying "games are art because they resemble other forms of art in ways A, B and C" (and I often feel that cutscenes and QTEs in games are lazy ways of evoking the art aspects of film in games), we should start constructing arguments along the lines of "games are art because they can do these things that no other media can" and work from there.
I will say, though, that gaming's ascension as a form of art will probably mimic that of film in one important way: It will be the independent creators, not the big companies, that will trailblaze the way towards greater quality and art. I expect that we'll see many more independent games looking to push the barrier than any big-budget AAA production.
Condensed version: We'll get there, guys. We just have to stop mimicking and start innovating, keeping an eye on what makes games different from all other media.
