Games are mechanisms for play. Play is not art. Play is dynamic, art is static. Play engages, art coerces.
I think Ebert is mostly right, but we shouldn't give much serious attention to someone who has had so little experience with games. That's like arguing about Hermann Hesse with someone who staunchly refuses to read anything longer than a road sign. We should be proud of the distinction between play and art. If we're going to argue at all, our position should be that play is potentially as important as art, if not more so.
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(Emphasis on "potentially". Game developers still have a lot of ground to cover. The linked article was praising games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect as positive examples of storytelling in games. Yikes.)
BioWare has got lost in the dense tangle of what it was trying to
accomplish. It hasn't been able to see the wood for the trees. It
has summoned an entire world into existence in the most meticulous
detail, but failed to give it an identity beyond the blandest
cliché. It has created living characters that respond like humans,
but speak like dictionaries and move like mannequins. It has
engineered solidly absorbing RPG gameplay and character progression
and stranded them in a succession of hackneyed and hide-bound
scenarios.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dragon-age-origins-review
I think Ebert is mostly right, but we shouldn't give much serious attention to someone who has had so little experience with games. That's like arguing about Hermann Hesse with someone who staunchly refuses to read anything longer than a road sign. We should be proud of the distinction between play and art. If we're going to argue at all, our position should be that play is potentially as important as art, if not more so.
---
(Emphasis on "potentially". Game developers still have a lot of ground to cover. The linked article was praising games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect as positive examples of storytelling in games. Yikes.)