It's clear that Ebert is never going to respect games, or gamers, no matter how many intelligent ones he encounters. For whatever reason, this is one subject that he's not willing to discuss in good faith. But you've made a really important point: gamers need to have a coherent theory of art before they go making any grandiose proclamations. One positive thing that has come out of this most recent kerfuffle is that I've gone back to reading about aesthetics to see if I could make such an argument. I can't recommend enough that anyone who wants to be part of this debate go read some books on the philosophy of art. The more articulate we are, the better.

As for TED, I've watched a few of their lectures, and I'm never particularly impressed by them. It seems like they want people to discuss really grandiose ideas, but within a 20 minute time limit. The last one I watched was Sam Harris's talk on the relationship between science and ethics, and it left a lot more questions than answers. I'm just not a big fan of the format.

Nice piece Dennis. I totally agree with you when you see that Kellee Santiago (and us "academic gamers") should really take this opportunity to have a discussion with someone on the other side of the fence. Gamers are often scared of debate, mostly because a lot of them probably can't form good arguments against a man whose job is to argument his views on movies and has been doing it for years. It's not that beating Ebert and turning him into one of us will magically make the medium evolve and gain legitimacy, it's just that it forces us to stop talking amongst ourselves and start making new arguments to defend the legitimacy of our medium of choice. Now the other issue is all those teenagers that are flooding his blog's comment section with insults in hope that this will somehow help "the cause", or just post on forums that "who is this and why should I care?" (really kids, you don't know who Ebert is?).

I was studying for my History of Photography exam today and it hit me; it took over 100 years for photography to be considered as an art. So yeah, maybe we video games academics need to work on our argumentation to defend video games as art. I mean, we have an occasion to have an actual debate about the merits of video games as art, let's not leave it in the hands of teenagers that never opened a book (game's user manuals doesn't count) to defend it by resorting to name calling and blanket statements (like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"). And this pretty much aligns with what Cameron was saying, let's look outside of the video game world to touch up on interesting notions and theories.

While studying, again, for my exam, I fell on this quote by French artist Christian Boltanski. I think it applies well to the situation of video games: (this is my very crappy translation of the original french quote) " I am an extremely traditional painter. i work to bring emotions to the spectator, like every artists. I work to make the world cry or laugh; I'm a preacher. I did books, inventories, photographs and movies, but it's all the same. I don't think that there is a difference between the medium. You have an idea and you look for the best way to express it, the best way at a given time. I don't think that any form have priority. I think painters always kind of had the same thing to say, the same desire to capture reality, but expressing it every time in slightly different ways. It's not because we'll use video that we will change anything." (taken from Qu'est-ce que l'art moderne? by Denys Riout, 2000)

It's about using a medium to express something, not what medium you are using.

I liked this so much that I logged in just to say so. Your mention of Molyneux is especially telling--that guy knows how to engage an audience of gamers about gaming as art.  And, like any true artist, he knows that our errors as artists help define our ambition and our expansion as artists.

I could go on about this, but I mainly wanted to send praise--although I have to admit that I still compare Ebert to a racist grandpa on this issue. He shouldn't get a pass just because he doesn't know about gaming. In fact, I'd say that makes him incredibly unqualified to talk about gaming.  He also doesn't seem to have a great grasp on art as a social construct defined by someone other than the last generation's artists.  Let alone the last generation's art critics.

Wow, that's a great quotation, Bruno. Really insightful comment, and I agree.

I also agree that Santiago's talk wasn't the greatest, although to be fair to her I only "watched" it through Ebert's deconstruction of it -- which was pretty well argued. The games she used as examples I thought were poor choices.

One point about Cameron's criticism of TED: I think it's a success that these 20 minutes talks "left a lot more questions than answers." Their purpose is often more to stimulate than to definitively argue, and I think it's great that such a brief discussion can engage so many people on such diverse issues as video games, or education policy, or our space probes' recent trips to Saturn. (A great one by the way.)

I have to disagree about one thing: Heavy Rain is definitely NOT the game to prove that video games are art. Why would you choose a game that is essentially an interactive movie, with some pointless waggling thrown in? That would be like trying to prove that movies are a valid art form, so you show a movie of someone reading a book. Let video games do what they do best, not emulate movies.

Note that I did not say Heavy Rain would be the game to use to make the argument that games are art, Andy. I suggested that Heavy Rain would be the game to use to get Roger Ebert actually playing video games. That should be the goal, IMHO - to get people like Ebert actually gaming, because the only way one can comprehend video games as a medium is to actually interact with them. Gaming isn't a physically passive activity like watching a movie where you sit down in the theater, the lights dim, the movie plays, and then the movie ends and you leave.

That's the excellent point that Kellee in her Kotaku response, and Brian Crecente in his Kotaku piece, and me and almost everyone else commenting on the story has hit on - someone who doesn't play video games can't intelligently opine on them. Someone else, I wish I could credit them, suggested that Ebert dismissing video games on the basis of watching some streaming video of three games is like you or I dismissing an entire genre of film based on three short streaming video clips of movies from that genre. We have to have experience the genre in a substantive way before we can make any intelligent observations about that genre.

Likewise, we need to get Roger Ebert playing video games before we can truly engage in a discourse with him - and precisely *because* Heavy Rain is an interactive movie, it's a perfect starting place. It's not intended as an end in itself, however. Perhaps a next step could be an RPG with light combat elements, for example?

Many thanks for the compliments, those who gave them. It's encouraging to get a piece on the front page with my third submission - but the praise from readers carries just as much, if not more, weight. I hope I can come up with some more good stuff for you. :)

I think everybody has said it all, great article.

PS: just give TED a chance, Andrew is right its a great place for new and great ideas and for this ideas to create discussions around them. Personally I recommend: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

and if you like Will Wright

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/will_wright_makes_toys_that_make_worlds.html

I enjoyed Kellee's talk, and mostly agree with her. I have my own point to add. The difference between "art" and video games is that "art" has a body of published critism which imparts a gravitas that video game criticism does not. When video games are criticized, they are solely criticized for how fun they are and rarely the meaning of the content. Maybe someone should write a critical piece on whether Bioshock's Randian distopia has any lesson for modern life or is it complete crap. This kind of article seems to be what defines "art" from non-"art". I have seen this happen to Hip-Hop, Graffitti, etc. It's only a nuisance until someone with a Ph.D. and the ability to write decides to elevate  it to something greater.

Well Courtney, it's not like I can disagree with you. Critics have an immense power to influence how an art will evolve. Bazin and kids like Truffaut and Godard created Les Cahiers du Cinéma and raised directors like Welles, Hawk and Hitchcock to the level of author, true artists of their craft. Most of those critic would also end up forming the French New-Wave in cinema.

But I do think that there are true video game critics around the web. The issue is that they are not writing for those big bucks websites like Gamespot and IGN, they are mostly going around the blog circuit, kind of hidden from the mainstream. A good place to start looking for them is at http://www.critical-distance.com/  , and of course here on BitMob.

And here is a nice analysis of Bioshock if that tickles your fancy: http://my.opera.com/noisewar/blog/2007/09/01/bioshock-explained