Roger Ebert "Video Games Can Never Be Art" Pt 2

LobsterMobster wrote:

EDIT: Never mind, I was being too dismissive. Short version is that Ebert is a film critic and games aren't films. That doesn't mean we should dismiss his opinion out of hand but let's also not act like this guy gets to define the terms and the validity of, well, pretty much anything rests on his yay or nay.

Yeah, I think the only reason why we hold his opinion up as worthy of debate is because a lot of people (me included) have deduced that the dude is a smart, thoughtful, writer who isn't afraid to find himself out of the box of others expectations from time to time (the first half of this review is one of my favorite things I've read by him: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/...).

He's not going to say that games are art, that's true. Why do people care about what a non-gamer says on this? Because he's smart and thoughtful. Just because his opinion is different doesn't mean that his opinion is invalidated-- internet rules need not apply (you weren't saying this Lobster, tho others are).

The only way I can ever see him changing his mind is through a forum or debate. He makes good points, but there are still counter-points which could help to push the conversion forward. Considering he can't talk anymore, and he wasn't interested in a debate on this when he could, the debate is thus limited to him responding to others- without an opportunity for them to push back intellectually at his core argument.

I'd say statements about games from Ebert can be taken about as seriously as Cevat Yerli's ramblings about demos.

Thin_J wrote:

I'd say statements about games from Ebert can be taken about as seriously as Cevat Yerli's ramblings about demos.

Aiee... Don't cross the streams.

NSMike wrote:

Aiee... Don't cross the streams.

It killed the crazy stuff and saved the city in Ghostbusters. Maybe it can kill a couple of discussions about people who say ridiculous things.

demonbox wrote:

He's not going to say that games are art, that's true. Why do people care about what a non-gamer says on this? Because he's smart and thoughtful. Just because his opinion is different doesn't mean that his opinion is invalidated-- internet rules need not apply (you weren't saying this Lobster, tho others are).

The only way I can ever see him changing his mind is through a forum or debate. He makes good points, but there are still counter-points which could help to push the conversion forward. Considering he can't talk anymore, and he wasn't interested in a debate on this when he could, the debate is thus limited to him responding to others- without an opportunity for them to push back intellectually at his core argument.

I'm with you on this one. He's a non-gamer and everything he's said comes from his limited exposure of the medium. At the same time, handing him a controller and saying "Play!" will accomplish very little. What should he play to define the entire medium? Which games do gamers consider "art"? Is the steep learning curve for a new gamer going to ruin the artistic experience? I've read many of the comments and the games that are listed as art are so varied that it's not helping the argument. We also have gamers countering suggestions with "better" ones. I can't tell if those are serious suggestions or a bunch of top ten lists. There doesn't seem to be a consensus between our own to even begin to tell Mr. Ebert what he should play.

I don't agree with him but there's only so much a gamer can say to define the artistic value of video games without having him spend hours trying to figure how to move a character with one stick, aim with the other and hoping he lives long enough to experience it.

How about new Prince of Persia? No deaths there. He'll entirely miss the skills part of the experience, but then again, I don't think he's open to that kind of thing.

If the guy didn't have a couple of decades of being published in newspapers and on television under his belt, he would be labeled as an amusing troll and we'd all move on.

One thing I find interesting about the internet is how it's made it so very easy to spot when people have nothing substantial to say. So many cultural authority figures have very, very stupid things to say about many topics. The internet makes it pretty easy to spot when they're basically acting like trolls.

Kellee Santiago has responded.

Right. Moving On… [My Response to Ebert]

The title of my talk was “Video Games are Art – What’s Next” because I felt it was time to move past the discussion about whether games are an artistic medium.. Similarly, it’s time to move on from any need to be validated by old media enthusiasts. It’s good for dinner-party discussion and entertaining as an intellectual exercise, but it’s just not a serious debate anymore. As a rapidly growing medium, we game developers have so many other issues deserving of our attention.

This is so silly, as everyone here of course agrees. To me, it's so obvious that games are art. They are the art of systems and ecologies, and I would argue that sports fit into that categorization (their primary system being real physics). You wouldn't categorize sports as art before this because no one was crafting new sports. Similarly, you wouldn't call board games an art before Sid Sackson came along as a prolific boardgame designer. In my mind, sports, board, and video games are all different sub-mediums of this new exciting art form.

Switchbreak wrote:

Kellee Santiago has responded.

Right. Moving On… [My Response to Ebert]

The title of my talk was “Video Games are Art – What’s Next” because I felt it was time to move past the discussion about whether games are an artistic medium.. Similarly, it’s time to move on from any need to be validated by old media enthusiasts. It’s good for dinner-party discussion and entertaining as an intellectual exercise, but it’s just not a serious debate anymore. As a rapidly growing medium, we game developers have so many other issues deserving of our attention.

That's a great read.

While I agree that it's time to move on from the 'games as art' debate in a serious form, it remains a fubn intellectual ball to toss around.

Developers though definitely do not need to sit around agonising over whether their work is art or not.

Has anyone told all the artists in the game industry that they are not making art? Someone should really let them know. Thank goodness Roger Ebert is here to fill them in. They are not nearly as imaginative or creative as movie critics, but they still deserve to be told the truth.

Thank you Roger Ebert.

CheezePavilion wrote:

That's the thing: Ebert's statement "games are not art" does exactly that--it conflates quality with art. As he goes on to explain himself, we find that he considers very few movies to be art because he considers them to be too low in quality to be artwork even though they are part of an artform.

I firmly disagree with you here and point back to my original assertion: the aspect of games that Ebert points to that keeps them from being art (or fine art, if you prefer) is their interactivity. To whit:

Ebert & Clive Barker wrote:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/...

Barker: "I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written 'Romeo and Juliet' as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn't taken the damn poison. If only he'd have gotten there quicker."

Ebert: He is right again about me. I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. Would "Romeo and Juliet" have been better with a different ending? Rewritten versions of the play were actually produced with happy endings. "King Lear" was also subjected to rewrites; it's such a downer. At this point, taste comes into play. Which version of "Romeo and Juliet," Shakespeare's or Barker's, is superior, deeper, more moving, more "artistic"?

Barker: "We should be stretching the imaginations of our players and ourselves. Let's invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art."

Ebert: If you can go through "every emotional journey available," doesn't that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time, I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what?

According to Ebert, games cannot be art because the player is as much a creative agent as the artist or team of artists that wrote the game. According to Ebert, games, i.e., interactive entertainments are fundamentally different that art, i.e., representative work created by an artist. Because video games involve the player, they become more like sport or activities.

There must be a distinction between what is art and what is not. Otherwise, the term "art" is utterly meaningless. Ebert draws the line, or draws one of the lines, between art and not-art based on the creative vision of an artist. Games, video or otherwise, do not meet this criteria. What is happening in this conversation is, I think, that some gamers are working with a totally different definition of art, something like "Art is a creative activity of sufficient quality to be considered worthwhile." Thus, when Ebert says "games cannot be art" they hear "games are not creative activities of sufficient quality to be considered worthwhile." This is, quite clearly, putting words and ideas in Ebert's mouth that he did not write. He's not a video game guy, but the art/game distinction is based on something other than quality.

Personally, I think digital communications technology blur the lines between creator and observor, between artist and audience so much that Ebert's definition won't translate well in the future. I think the game designer's art is similar to the architect's art: they create a space in which the public can create. Game designers create an environment in which players can make their own art and ideas. This is not the same thing that film-makers and novelists do. Henry Jenkins has a body of work that points out that this kind of re-creation, fanfic, participatory fiction and the like is an emerging art form. I happen to think that his views are a LOT more useful in considering what video games mean for art than Ebert's views. However, Ebert has a point that many game fans seem to intentionally miss in their fanboy outrage. Art is NOT the set of all worthwhile activities. I do think that our idea of what art is will expand, but not so much that Super Mario Brothers will be considered the same sort of thing as Metropolis or Battleship Potemkin. GSC's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (one of the best examples of what video games can be) is not the same thing as Tarkovsky's Stalker or the Strugatsky brothers Roadside Picnic. I probably like the game better than the movie and as much as I like the story, but they are not the same kind of creative item.

With all due respect, Oso, I think your generalization of games as collaborative creative pieces is also limited. What is the sense of creative drive in ME2? You can craft the face of your character, sure, but how the character looks like tends not to be that important to the overall narrative force of the piece - Shepard is treated the same no matter how he or she looks like. In fact, some games are even more scripted than that. You don't get to choose who your Prince of Persia is, and there's only a very limited number of ways through the game.

Some games create a space for gamers to create ideas. Some games are sporting events. But some games are narrative pieces, using the interactive elements of game to drive home a point more forcefully than passive transfer of information.

Where exactly Ebert draws the line is of no concern to me. What is of concern to me is that in his argument, he makes points about games not being art that are not true of all games. They are not all scripted by many (even though great films sometimes are), they are not all sporting activities, and they are not all freeform ventures that allow the user to create.

When I say he doesn't know what he's talking about, I'm not saying that from a position of outrage or disgust or anything of the sort. I'm merely stating a fact - he doesn't seem to know what he's talking about, probably because he hasn't played all that many games to begin with.

I think games can be criticized for being a weak medium for storytelling. You can tell a good story in a game, but they will never have the storytelling muscles that a movie or a book has. In terms of art though, it seems so obvious that games are art, just on purely visual level alone, that arguing about it is just splitting hairs really.

What's funny is that if Ebert thought videogames were the next great art form, and talked about how important they were, people here would think he is great. But his opinion would still be just as irrelevant as it is now. Reading some of the reactions to him, you would think he was trying to ban videogames.

I still like his movie reviews, and enjoy his take on the movie industry. He could tell me that baseball sucks, and I still wouldn't care.

LarryC wrote:

With all due respect, Oso, I think your generalization of games as collaborative creative pieces is also limited.

I absolutely agree that I'm making a limited generalization. This is because if we do not limit our definition of a term, it becomes too general to be useful. A urinal hanging in MOMA is art. The urinal at the Horse Brass pub is not art. Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade is art, Raglan's charge of the light brigade in the Crimean war is not art. In order for "video game" to be a meaningful definition, there must be a way of distinguishing what is a video game and what is not. The same is true with art. To say something is artistic is not the same thing as saying it is art. The distinction is important.

Here is the key to why Ebert says video games are not art: "I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist." Games are not art (according to Ebert's standards) because the "art" in it is not fixed to a particular artist's creative vision. David Mamet could play WoW, and that would not be art (according to Ebert's standards). However, if he recorded it and posted it as a machinima: it does become art (according to Ebert's standards). This is not because it suddenly has a change in quality, but because it is a tangible artist's vision. For another example, consider the master ballet dancer Ninjinsky and his fondness for playing tennis. Him playing a game of tennis is not art (according to Ebert's standards). However, a photograph of him in a tennis outfit is art (according to Ebert's standards). It is even art that questions the distinction between game and art. Under Ebert's definition, I think the way a genius player solves a game could be considered art, but the player would be the artist and the game the canvas.

I do believe that the definition of art will change, mostly because artists like to f*ck with boundaries and definitions. However, Ebert understands more than you give him credit for. This isn't about understanding games, it is about understanding genre and categories. When a person is playing a video game, who is the artist? Is it the game designer, the art lead, or the player making her choices? When you have games that approach art, I believe we discover that they become unlike games. The best example of this is the boardgame Train. Because Train is much more about the vision of the artist, Brenda Brathwaite, and where she wants the players to go than it is about the players and their choices, it isn't as much of a game as something like Ticket to Ride. It succeeds at being art because it fails at being a game.

I'm sure very smart and creative people will come up with ways to blur the lines further. I'm looking forward to it.

Here is the key to why Ebert says video games are not art: "I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist."

...

However, Ebert understands more than you give him credit for. This isn't about understanding games, it is about understanding genre and categories. When a person is playing a video game, who is the artist? Is it the game designer, the art lead, or the player making her choices?

Maybe he understands, but if so he's also adopting a critical stance to which there's been significant opposition for more than 30 years. (see also)

juv3nal wrote:
Maybe he understands, but if so he's also adopting a critical stance to which there's been significant opposition for more than 30 years. (see also)

This is quite distinct from author intent theory. It isn't about the author controlling or owning meaning of a work, but it is about labeling a particular kind of work. The artist doesn't get to decide what his or her creation is about, but anything that is a work of art must have an artist.

Oso wrote:
CheezePavilion wrote:

That's the thing: Ebert's statement "games are not art" does exactly that--it conflates quality with art. As he goes on to explain himself, we find that he considers very few movies to be art because he considers them to be too low in quality to be artwork even though they are part of an artform.

I firmly disagree with you here and point back to my original assertion: the aspect of games that Ebert points to that keeps them from being art (or fine art, if you prefer) is their interactivity.

Sure Ebert points to that, but he *also* points to this:

+++++
By Alex Black on April 17, 2010 1:50 PM

Game designer Ron Gilbert comments:

http://grumpygamer.com/7961508

The problem is Roger has not played the right games, or any games. Roger is a master at understanding movies and there is no person I respect more than him when it comes to understanding film and it's importance.

But games? Not so much.

Here is my challenge to Roger: Why is Monkey Island not art, yet, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie is art?

I will hold the story and characters of Monkey Island up to the Pirates of the Caribbean movie any day. The story in Monkey Island 1 and 2 is as deep and complex and interesting as that of Pirates of the Caribbean. The characters are as living and real and developed as you'll find in any film, I'd even argue more so since you can have conversations with them and explore the nooks and crannies of their stories in a way a movie or book cannot.

So, Roger, play Monkey Island. Really play it. Don't have someone that has played it tell you about it. Don't get someone to play it for you. Don't read about it on Wikipedia. Play it and let it swallow you and then tell me it's not art.

Ebert: Ah..."Pirates of the Caribbean" is not art..

+++++

Like I said: "his problem is that he goes back and forth and is inconsistent with his usage of words and concepts. Like, you know: 99% of the internet anytime they try and engage in debate." Right now he seems to be pushing this idea of all video games being too pathetic to be art, to being at best the equivalent of something like Pirates of the Caribbean.

He may have said back in 2007 something about interactivity, and he does mention that in the article, but in the comments he is making *right now* to people like me in response to criticism of his positions, his ultimate fallback position is that games are an artform but none of them are artworks.

Here is a quote of his from the article:

I wouldn't define bad movies as art. Hardly any movies are art. Film is however an art form.

To which I responded:

So are you saying games are an art form, even if none of the extant products are art? If so, you're not really defending your statement that games are not art, you are instead adopting a radical definition of art.

You say: "But when I say McCarthy is "better" than Sparks and that his novels are artworks, that is a subjective judgment, made on the basis of my taste (which I would argue is better than the taste of anyone who prefers Sparks)."

That's a radical definition of art that you're embracing here: that an attempt within an art form can contain sufficient elements to be a valid member of that art form, yet not be an *artwork*.

The issue here isn't that you disagree with people who say 'games are art'; the issue here is that you disagree with people on which games are art. Considering you also disagree with people on what movies/books/music/buildings/etc. are art, I think you should be clear about how radical and alternative your definition of 'art' is in the first place.

I'm sure your comments would generate far less controversy if you did!

to which he responded:

Ebert: Within an art form, there can be good and bad art. That's a matter of opinion, of course. It all comes down to taste. I would not personally find it fruitful to discuss novels with someone who prefers Sparks to McCarthy, however enlightening that might be.

If I had to synthesize everything he has said on the topic, I would come up with the following: he does not believe any game to be at the level of an artwork even if video games are an art form. His *explanation* is that interactivity hamstrings the efforts of any video game author to the degree that the work will never rise to the quality of art.

My reply of course is that while there's no denying that his explanation is a fact--that games are interactive--I can certainly deny that the fact we agree on it being the fact that provides the explanation: the fact I believe to the the explanation is that his ability to appreciate video games is lacking in the same way someone who can't tell the literary difference between Sparks and McCarthy is lacking in their ability to appreciate writing.

edit:

What is happening in this conversation is, I think, that some gamers are working with a totally different definition of art, something like "Art is a creative activity of sufficient quality to be considered worthwhile." Thus, when Ebert says "games cannot be art" they hear "games are not creative activities of sufficient quality to be considered worthwhile." This is, quite clearly, putting words and ideas in Ebert's mouth that he did not write.

Well, he did write these words:

The three games she chooses as examples 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.

so I wouldn't say anyone's putting words in his mouth.

However, Ebert has a point that many game fans seem to intentionally miss in their fanboy outrage. Art is NOT the set of all worthwhile activities. I do think that our idea of what art is will expand, but not so much that Super Mario Brothers will be considered the same sort of thing as Metropolis or Battleship Potemkin. GSC's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (one of the best examples of what video games can be) is not the same thing as Tarkovsky's Stalker or the Strugatsky brothers Roadside Picnic. I probably like the game better than the movie and as much as I like the story, but they are not the same kind of creative item.

I've actually pointed that idea out to him with my comparison of games to fine cuisine, but he published it without a response. I'm sure he's just swamped by this point.

Heh, someone dug up an old review of his on The Good, The Bad and the Ugly:

I saw it sitting in the front row of the balcony of the Oriental Theatre, whose vast wide screen was ideal for Leone's operatic compositions. I responded strongly, but had been a movie critic less than a year, and did not always have the wisdom to value instinct over prudence. Looking up my old review, I see I described a four-star movie but only gave it three stars, perhaps because it was a "spaghetti Western" and so could not be art.

But art it is, summoned out of the imagination of Leone and painted on the wide screen so vividly that we forget what marginal productions these films were--that Clint Eastwood was a Hollywood reject, that budgetary restraints ($200,000 for "Fistful") caused gaping continuity errors, that there wasn't a lot of dialogue because it was easier to shoot silent and fill the soundtrack with music and effects

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/...

But as one of the few critics to favorably review Bonnie and Clyde back in 67, he still gets cred from me.

That's one hell of a quote, Cheeze. I love it.

Eh, the more I read the clearer it becomes that Ebert means "fine art" when he says art, based on his own definition of "fine art." His weird issue with players influencing the game strikes me as bizarre. Is architecture not art because you might have a different experience from someone else while in the same space?

Switchbreak wrote:

That's one hell of a quote, Cheeze. I love it.

Heh, I got to give credit where it's due: some person named j. allen found it. S/he wrote in addition to that quote:

You old fart! Look at all these comments! I think you just like the attention.

CheezePavilion wrote:

If I had to synthesize everything he has said on the topic, I would come up with the following: he does not believe any game to be at the level of an artwork even if video games are an art form. His *explanation* is that interactivity hamstrings the efforts of any video game author to the degree that the work will never rise to the quality of art.

My reply of course is that while there's no denying that his explanation is a fact--that games are interactive--I can certainly deny that the fact we agree on it being the fact that provides the explanation: the fact I believe to the the explanation is that his ability to appreciate video games is lacking in the same way someone who can't tell the literary difference between Sparks and McCarthy is lacking in their ability to appreciate writing.

This is a really tight analysis. It's very well done.

I'm still willing to give Ebert some slack,due to the respect that he's earned, but you've convinced me that there is a qualitative judgement he's making that didn't credit earlier.

Ultimately, I think our idea of what art is will expand to encompass whatever the hell is going on with digital interactive entertainments. Games aren't just novels with pictures and they aren't just movies you can control. Some really smart people are creating a medium that scholarship and criticism haven't caught up with yet. (See the conversation on games criticism versus reviews that pops up at least as often as "are games art?".) So I don't take umbrage at Ebert's criticism. There isn't yet a critical mass of games scholarship to help clue people like him in. We know where the gems are, but imagine you'd never played a game before and your exploration of video games was limited to the Blockbuster rental selection and Xbox Live public servers. Games as art is a hard sell, and the really good examples are self-referential or require an indoctrination into the rhetoric of video games to understand.

I think games can be criticized for being a weak medium for storytelling. You can tell a good story in a game, but they will never have the storytelling muscles that a movie or a book has.

But the superior story telling medium, books, didn't prevent movies from being considered art. And that is assuming that I agree that movies are a better story telling medium than games, which I don't.

I wonder if someone demonstrated Zbrush for him it would open his eyes a bit. The shear amount of skill and patience exhibited by these digital sculptors is breath taking. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that he will change his mind but if he is worth his salt in anything, he would show more appreciation for the work that goes into the art of games.

I am LTTP, and have read some but not all of the previous discussion.

As a response to the TED USC talk by Kellee Santiago, I think Ebert makes some very valid points. As a response to Ebert's comments that video games are not art, I find Kellee Santiago's talk a less compelling argument, especially if Ebert is the desired audience. Market and finance does not define art, but she used this as a focal point of the latter half of her talk.

From the definition that Santiago takes of art, as something that is made to appeal to our senses and emotions, video games fit. I can say that I have been emotionally impacted by games, and most on this forum would probably agree. She does, however, pick horrible examples, especially if Ebert is the intended audience. Choosing "Waco Resurrection" as her first example is akin to trying to convince somebody film is art by showing a slasher flick. It is not a good place to start a "this is art" argument.

Braid is a slightly better example, but I think it is only a game that you can truly appreciate if you've been a gamer. The core gameplay element of time manipulation only evokes a high quality response if you are accustomed to standard platformers. I am guessing Ebert is not fond of games in general, and probably wasn't that into Super Mario Bros. I can't say that I disagree with Ebert's depiction of the game's writing "which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie". Although this does not say that the writing in the game isn't art, but only that Ebert doesn't like it. I am sure that there are many works of art that Ebert thinks are "on the level of a wordy fortune cookie".

Flower is probably the best example if we order them by how likely they are to convince Roger Ebert. It shows wind flowing through beautiful landscapes that evokes the same emotional response of some scenes in action flicks that have horrible stories (eg. Star Wars Episode I or Avatar). The control you have over the wind gives only enhances the experience. Ebert seems to dismiss this as not being a videogame because there are not clearly defined objectives.

Roger Ebert is not going to be easily convinced that games are art. Although the article doesn't give Ebert's definition of art, it seems that his could be characterized as "I'll know it when I see it." We see it. He doesn't. Most people in this world probably can't appreciate art at the level of Roger Ebert, and the fact that there is a new outlet for art emerging under his nose that he can't see makes me sad. Perhaps he shouldn't hold his nose so high.

For people who say games can't be art due to their interactive nature I offer this.

Games are an art form where player agency defines the art, much like interactive installations. Art is ultimately a useless term because it is so subjective and weighted. And as soon as you start getting into 'High,' 'fine' or 'low' art you get into the sort of exclusionary mindset that has led to the slow death of many galleries around the world.

And the works that today are considered great works of the Renaissance were pure commercial drek in their day. In an earlier discussion I pointed out the Michelangelo painted ceiling and made lawn ornaments, Da Vinci pinted portraits and murals, both were largely unappreciated in their day. They were commercial artists whose work has come to be seen as special.

Oso wrote:

This is quite distinct from author intent theory. It isn't about the author controlling or owning meaning of a work, but it is about labeling a particular kind of work. The artist doesn't get to decide what his or her creation is about, but anything that is a work of art must have an artist.

Not really, from the article:

My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision.

If that's not privileging an authorial position, I don't know what is.

Besides which, he's a total troll.

Yeah, that latest comment, if true, clearly labels him as a troll of some variety. I second Kellee - we need to get moving beyond guys like this.

Oso wrote:
Here is the key to why Ebert says video games are not art: "I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist." Games are not art (according to Ebert's standards) because the "art" in it is not fixed to a particular artist's creative vision. David Mamet could play WoW, and that would not be art (according to Ebert's standards). However, if he recorded it and posted it as a machinima: it does become art (according to Ebert's standards). This is not because it suddenly has a change in quality, but because it is a tangible artist's vision. For another example, consider the master ballet dancer Ninjinsky and his fondness for playing tennis. Him playing a game of tennis is not art (according to Ebert's standards). However, a photograph of him in a tennis outfit is art (according to Ebert's standards). It is even art that questions the distinction between game and art. Under Ebert's definition, I think the way a genius player solves a game could be considered art, but the player would be the artist and the game the canvas.

And again, he is wrong. Games are created by game developers, and we move through the worlds and see the things they want us to see. We do not change it so much as experience its many facets. I do not change the code of Mass Effect 2 when I play it. I simply experience what it has to offer, which may not all be available even in 100 hours of play.

Tennis is not art, but WoW, viewed holistically, could be. Flower is definitely a moving piece of experience, but I'm not sure Mr. Ebert played enough of it, or understood enough of it to really glom on to what's going on. He assumes it's because there's nothing there, whereas it is, in fact, that he's not schooled enough in game experience to have the same view as many other gamers who've played it. In that sense, it is a referential piece of work.

The Starcraft 2 competitive game is not art, but the Wings of Liberty campaign could be. Analogously, paint is not art, but a painting could be.