N'Gai Croal Takes Apart Roger Ebert

With Roger Ebert back on his crusade against the labeling of any video game as "art," Newsweek's N'Gai Croal steps up to thoroughly dissect Ebert's specious, circular arguments.

What I'm trying to say is that there are many different kinds of art that don't always fit neatly into the high-low dichotomy that Ebert wields like a cudgel. Interpretation, translation, improvisation, collaboration, performance, oral storytelling--all of these are aspects of the lively arts that different games resemble at different times, or could resemble in the future. Rather than insist on exploring aspects of other art forms that videogames don't resemble, why not look for those that do? That's how someone with a genuinely curious mind would approach this. Ebert's, however, is firmly, proudly closed.

The only thing I think Croal missed is this: the fact that video games are interactive does not necessarily mean that they can lack the authorial control that Ebert asserts is vital to "high art."

Even if we accept that as a hard and fast requirement (and in so doing, tacitly grant Ebert the idea that there is such a quantifiable, absolute, discrete category called "high art", which is debatable in and of itself), video games can have rigid narratives even if players control the main characters through their journeys. Is Eternal Darkness open-ended? Is it "more like sports", as Ebert suggests?

Being able to move the main character doesn't matter much to the narrative when the game designer is guiding you through each step of the journey, and your improvisational arsenal only extends to non-narrative functions like which enemy to attack first -- things that are often left unsaid or up to the reader's imagination even in strictly linear fiction (considered "high art" by Ebert).

Croal v. Ebert v. Barker [Level Up]