LMAO...oh gawd. I'd love to see him at an Art College. I'm a Game Design major, and as much as he may try and criticize games as not being art, he's using Cinema as a standing point for that comparison, and Video Games and Movies are worlds apart.
To add more than a spark to my argument I'll run this by you. How many arts are actually a part of gaming in the 8th generation? Can only think of a few? I'll break it down. Almost every mainstream form of art is in Game development.
Sound Designers and SFX majors work on musical scores and effects to help raise immersion and give the game a sense of depth early on.
Music is one of the oldest arts on the planet
Concept Artists, Landscape Artists, and Animators, draw, story board, and render characters and environments within the games universe.
Drawing is one of the oldest and most predominant arts on the planet.
Cinematographers/Videographers work on Pre-rendered cut-scenes, and a plethora of the non playable visual aspect of games.
Cinema is the last big hit that became an art within this century.
So tell me, what do you think Video games are? They are the exact same concept as Film in a different direction. Film isn't just captured footage, there is an art to putting together scenes,music and effects to create a story, and game design has done that but taken it to another level. Not only do games convey a narrative, effects, music, arts like animation and drawing, but they make Story telling Interactive, which is what Film will never be able to fully do. I believe Ebert probably realized that after stating games wouldn't be art before. Games are incorporating the arts more so every generation then the last, so how can you tell me a medium, built on the oldest arts in the world isn't an art itself?
