It’s ok, I’ve never heard of him either, but apparently he’s a popular movie critic for the Chicago Times. And he doesn’t think much of videogames.
”Perhaps it is foolish of me to say ‘never’,” he goes on to say.
”Because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.”
”One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.”
”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,” argues Ebert. ”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.’”
As a journalist, I hold to the principle that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I also hold that everyone has the potential to be wrong. Answers on a post card people, let’s get arty!
