American film critic Roger Ebert recently caused a stir among a few gaming communities, with some provocative comments about videogames, and the interactive medium as an artform.

Here's a collection of what he had to say:

"...I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control."

"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 my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic."

"I believe books and films are better media, and better uses of my time. How can I say that when I admit I am unfamiliar with video games? Because I have recently seen classic films by Fassbinder, Ozu, Herzog, Scorsese and Kurosawa, and have recently read novels by Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Bellow, Nabokov and Hugo, and if there were video games in the same league, someone somewhere who was familiar with the best work in all three media would have made a convincing argument in their defense."

For many a passionate gamer, this can be construed as fighting talk; but maybe it's the kind of criticism games could do with right now. It's easy to dismiss him as wrong for attacking our beloved games - without explaining why we are right - but whether we agree with them or not, his points are worth thinking about.

Of course, the videogames-as-art debate is a touchy one. The two-tiered problem is that not only do people endlessly disagree on what art is, or what it is supposed to do, but there is hardly any universal understanding of what videogames are, either. Some level of mutual agreement is always necessary if a debate is to reach any kind of definitive answer, but unfortunately, we don't have much of it here.

Without that basic level of agreement, making objective sense of things becomes very difficult, and typically, everything crumbles into a useless semantic mess. There's a whole lot of clarification that needs to be made, both in terms of the nature of what we're debating, and exactly what Ebert is saying about games.

To get things started, consider the bigger picture of art in all its forms - as opposed to simply film and literature. The likes of sculpture, music and poetry are all well established and accepted as artforms, with their own classic work, but what kind of logic could tell us how they compare to each other? Is film "inherently" better than painting, or vice versa? Perhaps they're all about as good as each other, and therefore equal in their superiority to videogames?

Needless to say, these kinds of questions lead to all kinds of theoretical minefields, that demand to be tread through carefully. We'll begin by drawing a distinction between the two general approaches to comparing creative media, which are:

1.
Compare the best work in medium A, with the best from medium B - therefore defining media by what artists have achieved on them so far.

2.
Compare the two media in terms of their fundamental nature, and how they can work to achieve artistic ends - therefore defining media by their theoretical potential.

Note that these two methods lead to conclusions that say very different things. In his comments, Ebert has criticised games on both accounts - saying that not only are today's games inferior to the best of film and literature, but also that the apparent nature of interactivity prevents that from ever changing.

Here's what he had to say on the nature of the medium again:

"...I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control."

With this I firmly disagree, for two reasons:

Secondly, it should be understood that in designing an interactive experience, we do still exercise authorial control. All videogames, like any kind of game, can be boiled down to a system of rules that govern how everything works, therefore pointing to a theoretically limited world of experience [often referred to as the "possibility space"].

The real difference between games and the more conventional forms is; whereas a musician ponders what to play to an audience, or a novelist what to tell them, the challenge for an interactive designer is primarily concerned with what they allow players to do. And if an audience can be emotionally affected and made more empathetic by something they watched on a screen, read in a book or heard through a set of speakers, then how could we not say the same for something they have potentially watched, read, heard and experienced as a result of their own actions?

On this fundamental level, I see no reason why the interactive medium is "inherently inferior" at all. However, it is in his reference to classic film and literature - i.e. comparing the media by their best work - that Ebert's comments are trickier to refute.

As much as I would love to praise the likes of "Shadow of the Colossus", the "Metal Gear Solid" trilogy and "Ikaruga" as significant works of art - profoundly so in the context of their own medium - I'm more than willing to concede that they are not as refined or profound as the work of Kurosawa or Dickens. Indeed, it's interesting to observe how some of the more accomplished games often reference and borrow from great films and novels, as a way of elevating their own artistic depth.

Landmark FPS title "Half Life 2" for example, not only takes place in a society that echoes the dystopian themes of the novel "1984", but some of its opening chapter is also subtly remniscent of early scenes in the film "Schindler's List", in which jews are hunted out of their homes and forced into capture by the Nazi regime. It's by drawing on such imagery from a film so closely tied to real historical suffering, and a book whose bleak ideas are so timelessly relevent to the present day, that our sympathetic bond with the oppressed citizenship of City 17 is given a frame of reference, and made stronger.

In a similar vein, "Ico" - renowned for both its arresting visual quality, and the unspoken emotional relationship it creates between the player and secondary character Yorda - pays a fitting homage to greek-italian painter Giorgio De Chirico, with its cover artwork:

[Note that Ico's American release saw an altogether less interesting and more generic image being used, apparently due to release date and marketing pressures.]

    

Left: boxart for the European and Japanese release of Ico.

Right: "Nostalgia of the Infinite" - Giorgio De Chirico, 1913.

Openly mimicking De Chirico's depiction of a lonely, deserted world of intimidating architecture, the image was painted Fumito Ueda - the game's lead designer and art director - who came into the games industry with a background in fine art. The style was chosen, he says, because "the surrealistic world of de Chirico matched the allegoric world of Ico". Fans of the game will recognise the relevence of such an image as they explore the game's brilliantly realised world, and their understanding of Yorda's situation develops.

However, this kind of tributary reference to other media leads to the question; will filmmakers, writers or painters ever hold an interactive experience in such high regard? Are we waiting for some kind of cultural breakthrough to change the way we see games?

It's both significant and unfortunate that "Pong", arguably the first genuinely popular videogame, was an arcade machine. A masterpiece in elegant, accessible and addictive design, it also represents gaming's first seed to grow as something designed to make money.

Videogames were born into being products, and in stark contrast to the likes of literature and music, became established as a technology and business-oriented industry before the notion of a new creative medium even occurred to anyone. Needless to say, art's relationship with business and technology has always been a patchy one, at best.

One of the consequences of the arcade machine's success is a lingering misconception of videogames in general - that they exist solely to entertain; and be addictive and "fun", while more intellectual or emotionally involved content can be dismissed as a nice extra, but superfluous to what games are "really about". Unfortunately this is a view still shared by many gamers, critics and developers alike.

If the interactive medium is to evolve as an artform - alongside expanding as a form of entertainment - then the games industry must continue to diversify, and work hard to snap out of its own single-minded image.

To illustrate the stifling influence a pervasive stereotype can have, we need only look to the cultural identities of western comic books and animation, compared to that of Japanese manga and anime. Here in the west, there is a common perception of hand-drawn animation as "cartoons", and comic books as mere kids' entertainment. In Japan, the acceptance of these media is relatively devoid of such social stigma, and rightly so. This has led to the Japanese producing a much more diverse and critically acclaimed body of work, ranging from surrealist adventure "Spirited Away", to thought provoking, speculative science-fiction such as "Ghost in the Shell", to name popular examples. Western comics and animation do have their share of richer, more mature work, but such examples remain fewer and far between, and largely unappreciated in wider circles.

Cultural acceptance, or the general lack of it, has always cast a shadow over new artforms in their rise to prominence. As Steven Poole notes in his seminal book on videogame culture, "Trigger Happy", the now revered medium of film was once slated by Georges Duhamel, a notable french novelist in the 30s, who deemed it so:

"...a pastime of illiterate, wretched creatures who are stupefied by their daily jobs; a machine of mindlessness and dissolution".

Today, the benefit of hindsight tells us that such a view was closed to the true potential of film, and that poor Georges simply didn't see the future coming. While Ebert makes his criticisms much more intelligently - explaining his opinions, and contributing to the debate instead of simply dismissing it - it can be argued that a similar situation remains.

That said, it is totally understandable that a current generation, or one so used to different means of artistic expression, might not yet appreciate this new medium of electronic interaction. The games industry itself is still in the process of exploring and understanding the nature of its own unique canvas, after all.

Most importantly, it is making progress. Games have come a long way since their relatively recent birth, in many different directions, and will continue to do so. We can be confident that in the time to come, we're going to enjoy, learn from and think about all kinds of interactive experiences that we can only imagine now - and perhaps more to the point, plenty that we can't, too.

Just as history has shown us with every other medium out there, the best of those who believe in the interactive form will go on to produce innovative work, that among other things, will make us more cultured, civilized and empathetic.