Roger Ebert says video games can never be art

[Metallicube]

Khuutra said:

Metallicube said:

Like I said, there could be art IN games, but the games themselves are not art. It is never the primary focus of games. Games are related more closely to math and physics than art, in that they are based around rules and specific mechanics. The "art" in games is just the exterior. Monopoly may have an artistic message as you say, but it is not the central focus of the game. People play monopoly to have fun and use their mind to make decisions themselves, not to be moved emotionally or get political messages.

Art and games serve different purposes. Art is meant to "do all the work" for the person experiencing it so to speak. It is meant to move people emotionally, to send a message, comment on society, or wow people visually. Games are meant to entertain people through interaction, and to make the user be maker of the outcome. They give the user an array of options and let the user logically and strategically select from these options what they think is the best outcome to "win" the game. You cannot "win" art.

In a sense, games are really the anti art. Games give an array of options and lets the user provide their own course and experience, art provides it for them.

Art need not be the primary focus of a work for that work to be art, sir. I would argue that Miyamoto creates art all the time, but he intends nothing of the sort at any point, ever.

The problem is that you think of games as jus being sets of rules like perspective and the ability to move and speed and laws put in place, but it's the crafting and application of these laws that make games fun, and fun is one of those experience that can make a game into art if it is very well-made.

Art is not meant to be passive. Not at all. That's needlessly restrictive and too reductive to be representative of the artistic scene on the whole. Interactivity does not preclude art.

Whether or not it is intened to be the primary focus, I think many devs get the impression that it should be. This is why I think it is so important to establish that games are NOT art, because then you get these game developers who get the idea in their head that put the art before the gameplay and making the gameplay suffer as a result of focusing too much on the exterior. 

I don't think people played Pacman and pong because they were art, and I don't think anything has changed since then. Just the technology has changed. But art should be timeless shouldn't it? So how could games be art NOW, but not in the days of Pacman?