Escapist on Roger Ebert

More or less.

Roger Ebert was quoted some time back as saying:

”[T]he nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship [however elegant or sophisticated] to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers…. for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.”

This is almost like telling people who read books that their imagination can never meet the expectations of an artist and his brush. Their mind is incapable of reaching a level of understanding of the medium and the subject matter.

Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.

Here's the thing: Game programmers have to think of everything a user might do to accomplish a set of tasks. Multiple branching story lines. Dialogue. Consequences and reactions. Does a book's author get that much authorial control?

Nope.

This is a scenario that is more like comparing a paper encyclopedia to Wikipedia.com. A paperist would assume that being printed and bound and published makes the work more whole and valuable, where as an internetist would propose that the intellegence of the planet is more valuable than static research and that a book with as much information would break any civilized book shelf.

And I absolutely cannot stand the argument that video games are equated to wasted time. Some of our greatest books are banned from school library shelves. We sanctify books as something that furthers our culture, yet we deny children the right to read the text and gain a better understand of our history, our sexuality, and our relationships. We ban ideas in books. Things that "actually" happen. But I shouldn't argue that point. We try to ban video games that explore things that would never in a million years happen. Like a guy shooting 30 police officers and not being taken down all because he walked into a blue, spinning star.

Saying that any creative output medium isn't as good as another, simply and completely defies the meaning of art. The fact that the pixels have gathered in various ways should be enough to state the point. When you start arguing that video games are below the artistic horizon or that the movement controlled by anyone other than the creator flaws the meaning, you should really consider whether or not critiquing movies is a real job.

Remember, Roger Ebert does not speak for you.