Roger Ebert will never understand art-games

Roger Ebert has finally elaborated on his ill-informed and myopic statement that games cannot be art: http://bit.ly/dqMP32

So what does he add to the conversation?

Well, nothing. He picks apart a TED speech that gives three mediocre examples. He criticizes the speaker for not giving a good definition of art, and then fails to give anything even remotely coherent for a definition, nor anything that would exclude games on principle. He also criticizes (rightly) her examples of what is or is not art, and proceeds to respond with his own, presumably better examples.

So pornography can be art, and sloppily made science-fiction films can be art, but not games?

I also take issue with his assertion that Waiting for Godot and The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock don't mean anything. Of course they do, that's why they are so powerful. They convey something that is beyond explaining, that is why they are important.

I'm maybe being a little harsh. Many of his points are valid: the writing in most games is pretty awful, and the industry is geared more toward making a quick million than making a quality product. But even if he is right on every point, he will never know that, because he refuses to actually play these games.

You cannot make a sweeping generalization from one game to all games, nor can you understand a game from its trailer, especially if you are not familiar with the medium to begin with. In this article, Ebert makes it clear that he does not understand the first thing about games, and that he is completely unwilling to learn.

Twice he employs the notion that a game must have a win condition, or at least a score, in order to be a game. In my view that's a pretty uselessly limiting definition of "game": it even excludes Tag, let alone such things like Passage and Photopia.

If Ebert actually sat down and played Passage, would he say that it was interactive art? Would he have anything worthwhile to say about it at all? I'm not even asking that it be positive; one of the better criticisms of the game I've heard was a friend who said he'd already dealt with the issues it raises, so it was just kind of depressing to no purpose.

But as long as he does not give the idea a try, he will never know whether or not games can be art.

For my own purposes, here and elsewhere, I will rely mostly on the following two definitions:

Art: Any work that conveys an idea that cannot be conveyed through ordinary expository writing, or an idea that can be explained simply, but cannot be understood via such an explanation.

Examples:
Passage is art because it conveys the weight of mortality in a way that statements like "everyone dies" cannot.
Everyday Shooter is art because it conveys the aesthetic ideals of its creator, which cannot be meaningfully described.

Game: A specific collection of interrelated rules created for their aesthetically pleasing properties.

Examples:
"Tag" is a game because the rules governing how "it" and "not-it" behave, and the rules for how one becomes "it" or "not-it", interrelate to create an exciting atmosphere.
"Passage" is a game because the rules governing movement, score, and the progressive change in the graphics interrelate to create an often moving image of the role of mortality in life.

Wherever I use an alternate definition I will say so, and give that definition.