Just picked this up from slashdot.
I of course think they are.
The debate as well as having artistic and philosophical consequences would also designate whether games would get first amendment protection easily or not.
It is late however and I will edit and post my more in-depth thoughts on the subject when I get to digest the article. Yes, I’m going to print it out and eat it.
I just reviewed the article and it is a bit lame. I will write a better one shortly, stay tuned.
The article is well done, in the sense that it’s on Roger Ebert’s site and it’s not attacking Videogames at all. In fact he openly acknowledges all of the problems with the argument from the start. Such as: There is never a good definition of Art that everyone agrees upon.
This means that there will always be something that’s considered art by someone and not by others. The only issue here might be that he uses Pacman as an example opposite to Shadow of the Colossus as far as artistic videogames go. Pacman was made in 1980, SotC was made in 2005. That’s just a horrible comparison to begin with.
The author is very intelligent in that he references Impressionist artwork, Dada, and many other types of media that were not considered art when they first appeared. This destroys many arguments against his article as it is already clear that he knows what is going on, which usually means the acceptance of the fact that videogames -are- artwork, just many people don’t consider all games to be.
You’d be surprised how many people don’t realise that there can be good art and there can be bad art. It’s just a matter of perspective.
ART IS GOOD
QED