It’s been floating around for a while, but I finally got around to reading Roger Ebert’s argument for why “Video games can never be art” and I have to admit: I’m stunned by just how resolutely bad his arguments are.

Here is a man who can’t be bothered to even attempt to play any of these games but still finds it within himself to say things like this:

These days, she says, “grown-up gamers” hope for games that reach higher levels of “joy, or of ecstasy….catharsis.” These games (which she believes are already being made) “are being rewarded by audiences by high sales figures.” The only way I could experience joy or ecstasy from her games would be through profit participation.

The three games she chooses as examples do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic. I repeat: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”

Kellee Santiago, who gave the original talk which Ebert is referring to in this article, wrote a response to his response.

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Richard Clark

Richard Clark is the Founding Editor of Christ and Pop Culture. He is also the managing editor of Gamechurch and a freelance writer for Unwinnable, Paste, and other outlets. He lives with his wife in Louisville, KY and has a MA in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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1 Comment

  1. No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.

    With the exception of poets (which were inexplicably mentioned twice), he’s right. Despite the awesomeness of games, there has yet to be a game as compelling as the greatest films and novels. But we should expect this. It’s a burgeoning medium that for the great length of its existence has suffered for technological inadequacy (what with being a technologically driven medium). Reasonably, we should be able to expect greater and greater works as interactive storytelling practices continue to evolve.

    It’s like with comics. Until the twenty-first century, there really wasn’t anything worthy of comparison with the great films and novels. That is something that is just now beginning to change. Videogames are fraught with potential, but they aren’t there yet.

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