Oh god games as art again. For all of the screaming and monkey shit throwing I've seen over this topic I've seen a shocking lack of any real structure to any of the arguments. Thankfully it's not a hopeless argument because there's at least 2,500 years of writing on this topic. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered and established before you can go calling games art.
The most important question, obviously:
What is art?
I've yet to see this answered in a satisfactory way by anyone arguing about games being art, and probably why Ebert intellectually curbstomps the video game camp soundly every time it's brought up to him.
For the record I agree with Ebert, games are not art. I just disagree with the rest of his argument. I think games are technique in the same way being a chef is technique. Again, this boils down to how I define art and a major element of it is that art doesn't appeal to our appetites, it's an aesthetic appeal to our uniquely human nature.
So again, before you can get ANYWHERE in this argument besides monkey shit throwing you have to answer the question "What is art?" or it's completely pointless to even bother with the topic.
3rd Party Wall of Shame
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=30478.msg581036#msg581036
