The Last Candle

An admission: I have tried earnestly tonight to resist bleating out another post and use the time instead for other projects, but the past month of almost constant updates has changed the updates habits far along from the previous state of posting only “once in a while.” I would call that some kind of success. <p/> Tonight’s another brief post, and a highlighting a stance famed critic Roger Ebert has recently outspoken regarding video games compared to books or movies — that is, that Ebert thinks that video games are “inherently inferior to film and literature.” <p/> While the question presented to him (third down on the Answerman page — author Andrew Davis) is a response to his previous comments on the matter, Ebert’s reply here clearly enunciates the reasons for his belief in games’ comparitive inferiority; his argument is intelligent and certainly befits someone of his high critical prowess — even if he sounds fairly misinformed on the video game side of things. Not suprisingly, I don’t agree with Ebert in at least part of his argument, and most specifically the following section:

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art.

To begin, an insolent little list:

• Roger Ebert is Aware of the Following Games:
  • The Sims
  • Doom 3, Halo
  • Tony Hawk [Pro Skater, Underground, 1337 S8ter]
• Roger Ebert is Likely Not Aware of the Following Games:
  • The Longest Journey
  • Silent Hill 2
  • Shadow of the Colossus (of course)

I realize that’s a very polar way of making my argument (and vague, too, if you haven’t heard of any of those games), giving it some inherent flaws in the gray parts of the discussion, but like I said, I hope to delve further into the subject later this week.