After an onslaught of 4,547 comments, film critic Roger Ebert conceded that he may have spoken too soon after he posted an entry on his blog video games can never be art.
Today, Ebert ate a few of his words in a new blog post where he sites the "don't knock it 'till you try it" defense as the error of his ways:
I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.
Ebert said he has not played many video games aside from "Cosmology of Kyoto" (which I'm not aware of) and the 1993 classic "Myst."
I should not have written that entry without being more familiar with the actual experience of video games.
However, he does mention that Sony Computer Entertainment's "Shadow of the Colossus" does come close to art and even admits that video games do have the potential to become art amongst some fumbling of words:
What I was saying is that video games could not in principle be Art. That was a foolish position to take, particularly as it seemed to apply to the entire unseen future of games. This was pointed out to me maybe hundreds of times. How could I disagree? It is quite possible a game could someday be great Art.
Ebert does give a clear definition of art and notes that video games could not be considered art by technicality because video games are not created primarily for their beauty or emotional power: neither are many films, nor are many Academy Award winning films.
Nevertheless, it was very nice of Mr. Ebert to concede that he could not be an accurate judge of video games since he has not played many himself. It was a stupid comment to make in the first place with a world littered with opinionated and die-hard video game fans.
The fact still remains that video games can and should be considered an art form.
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