Roger Ebert says video games can never be art

[JUG]

r505Matt said:

bdbdbd said:
@r505Matt: I would put it this way: You can find more efficient ways for losing weigh.
Wii Fit on daily basis is more efficient than taking a zumba or aerobics class one or two times a week, while jogging every day burns more calories.

Well frequency is important, but that's not really the point. That can be twisted in any way, and you could say "Well Wii Fit everyday is better than a 3 mile jog once a month". I think of it in terms of time-investment. 3 hours a week of an aerobics class will be better than 3 hours a week of Wii Fit. You need to have a common denominator to compare, otherwise you have varying variables (I just wanted to say/type that =P).

To the ethics thing, what has been done, or what can be done, or what might be done: none of these are the same as what should be done. Ethics are about what should be done, but there is no real way to determine the validity of ethics, as of yet at least. If you relate evolutionary psychology to ethics, then you are more talking about why someone does something, not why someone should do something.

One of the examples I remember from one of my classes is when, in a small space with say 5 soldiers, one of them jumps on a grenade so the others die. You can come up with all sorts of explanations, it's better than only 1 die, and not all 5, or that the 1 is religious and just wants to help people, or there's an evolutionary mechanism for us to try and save each other, and that 1 just reacted first/fastest. But is it something he/she should have done? How does that relate to an idea of a universal set of ethics and morals. Was it right or wrong?

There's no right answer, and you can debate as much as you want, but the point of this kind of philosophical debate is the journey itself, not reaching your destination. There are/have been cultures with different sets of morals and values. A couple of examples, murder, incest, and cannibalism. Most western culture finds those things to be wrong, but in terms of incest, just take a look at the English royal line. Murder? Or cannibalism? Is it so hard to imagine a society that has beliefs that are the opposite of, or at least different than, our own? So which is right or wrong? There's no way to determine it, and what people have done does not really relate properly to what people should do/should have done.

@tehkyle

Well, movies themselves are not an art, but some movies break beyond the "normal" movie to become a work of art. Is it so hard to imagine that possibility for games? It may not have happened yet (or it may have and some can't see it since it doesn't apply to them), but to say "games will never be art" is shortsighted at the very least. The future is so uncertain; he's a critic, not a fortune teller.

Woah woah woah, in what part of the Royal line does incest occur? Unless we're counting cousin marriages as incest now... which I suppose some people do, but that's a little harsh.

Oh, and by the way, I hate to be pedantic here, but as an Oxford Grad I feel obliged to point out that your source actually states Oxford as having the second best philosophy department in the world, with Rutgers coming in a close third. You're right about Ethics though.