I posted earlier about Games as Art, a perennial topic among developers and players of games. Of course I come down on the side of the fact that games can be capital-A Art, at their best: not because I'm an artist myself, and not because I develop games, but because I know a thing or two.

Roger Ebert says I'm wrong. Clive Barker says I'm right, but really, do I want to be on Clive Barker's team? Sigh.

The trouble here is that Barker is playing on Ebert's ballfield, and he doesn't know it. And I covered this in my previous post, but I'll restate it: you have to evaluate games qua games, not games qua narrative. Games will never have a story as compelling as a movie, and that's what Ebert is arguing. Great, fine. Next, we'll discuss why tractors make lousy dragsters.

Games are about interaction, and about the aesthetic experience of a participatory decision-making process. Anything that can lead to an epiphany about the world, that surely qualifies as Art, and intense gaming experiences can bring that about. When a game can be experienced as a system, as a set of intellectual challenges that pit the player's mental acumen versus the world of the game, there is an opportunity for the player to learn something they didn't know when they started, learn something more than how shotguns are more effective than handguns on zombies.

Ebert is judging the Impressionists using the criteria of the Salon: it's his frame of reference, and I don't blame him. But the Salon des Refusés is here, and is making its mark. In thirty years, people will wonder why folks like Ebert had to have these things pointed out to them.