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It’s a debate that has only recently made its way to the mainstream, but it has done so violently.

A few months ago, movie critic Roger Ebert wrote a lengthy column titled “Video Games Can Never Be Art,” which ran in The New York Times.

As a gamer, this topic is near and dear to my heart, and his article struck a chord with me. And, I’m not alone. More than 4,600 comments follow the lengthy block of text online, most of which were arguments dethroning Ebert and his philosophical statements about video games and art in general.

A colleague of mine recently expressed his feelings on the issue.

“I can think of several games right now that I would classify as high-class, top notch examples of artful games,” he said. “Halo, however, is not one of them.”

Halo, a game set in the future, is one of the original well-known, first-person action games that pitches the player in the middle of a struggle for the survival of humanity. The story line might not be original, but is told in a creative way.

I agree with his comment to a certain extent, but I would classify Halo as art.

I replied, “It tells a story and creates an entire universe full of characters, all of whom have different paths. To me, Halo is a collection of incredible visuals and audio clips (that are similar to a film) — an artistic expression of a collective group of people. It just happens to be in a form where I take control of the main character and get to blow up aliens while I witness the story.”

Part of my reasoning also comes from my definition of art, which I developed in college while taking an introduction to the philosophy of art course.

An artifact is something created by humans. Art, then, can be considered something created by humans that has additional qualifications, including the ability to make a person think or feel certain thoughts or emotions.

By that definition, which is the one we created as a philosophy of art class, including the professor, a video game is a piece of art.

Though, I believe there are some limitations to which games can be considered art, and this includes the intent of the player.

If a gamer is firing up a console purely for the sake of competitive online game play, it’s merely a game, no different than chess or football. It’s the same if a gamer neglects to pay attention to the story, sacrificing the game’s true value for a thrill.

But, if the player makes a valid effort to play through the story, some of which can last up to 40 hours, a gamer can walk away with insights into life, death and everything in between. It’s these games, with those “wow” moments, that garner hardly any attention from the mainstream.

In Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, the game designers made a conscious effort to give the characters personalities. In the same way characters in a movie can make you laugh, cry or even get angry, a character in a video game can play with your emotions, too. Why? Because it’s based on what we as human beings experience every day.

This is especially true when their lives are in your hands. Imagine the scene from Saving Private Ryan when Tom Hanks sends his men up a hill to silence a machine gun encampment. He had to make that decision, but it cost him the life of one of his men — something Hanks’ character elaborates on later in the movie, revealing the toll one sacrifice after another has taken on his personality.

Now, imagine yourself in Hanks’ role, having to make the choice. Those are the types of intense scenes players get to experience in a video game, and many would be surprised to learn how many games have been built based on true events like those in World War II, especially.

Art is subjective, though. Consider a painting. A masterpiece to one viewer could be, as my colleague said, a bunch of squiggly lines to the next viewer.

With this in mind, it’s blatantly ignorant to say “video games can never be art,” especially if he has never taken the time to play one himself. Maybe the more accurate statement would be, “Ebert won’t give video games a chance to be art.”

Ebert wrote his article based on a speech given by Kellee Santiago, a designer and producer of video games. In her 15-minute argument, she made several points in defense of video games as an art form.

“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,” Ebert wrote, admitting his lack of experience with any video game. “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.’”

Ebert is, unfortunately, of the mind-set that video games are still in the era of being gimmicky toys with no value beyond entertainment. The movie critic, who truly has no place making a statement about video games to begin with, needs to open his eyes and realize we’ve come a long way from Pong and Pac-Man.

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