Roger Ebert says video games can never be art

[yanamaster]

ssj12 said:
why cant a game a game be art? I dont see why they cant. The renderings of individual characters, as well as hand drawings of different scenes, characters, etc are all pieces of art so why can't the final product be considered a collective form of art bring together cinema, drawing, and graphic arts together.

because those three forms have to tied down to a control mechanism that requires someone to manage it. To allow certain things to happen in the game, you must make it happen. If you don't you don't see it.

And if you try to control art in that way it will lose its very nature: to be able to envelope people in what it is that it represents. You have a picture before you, you don't have to do anything to see the other fragments, everything is laid out to you to create perfect harmony, in music and movies you do not have to do anything to hear the next note or see the next frame, you let it envelope you in its entirety.

That's how I would see it. In individual cases, certain game fragments could be considered art, but together as a package it losses its essence.

Not to mention that gamers in general need to get off the high horse, it's still and will only ever be a game. And it's sad that people can't accept things for what they are, forget about the fish that wanted to be a bird and soar through the other blue ocean.