Ebert admits games can be art, but not 'high art'

Filed under: Culture

In an editorial published last weekend, film critic Roger Ebert seems to renege somewhat on his previous insistence that video games, a medium he finds to be "inherently inferior to film and literature," cannot be considered a form of art. "Anything can be art," admits Ebert. "Even a can of Campbell's soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it."

The "high art" label is almost as old and heavy as most of the works one would apply it to, and expecting a medium as young as video games (never mind the superior class of film) to hold it up would surely be met with crushing disappointment. While it's not impossible for video games to eventually reach such a lofty status in our culture, Ebert's clarification is far more agreeable than his previous statements. Of course, since we can beat down the status of art with a can of soup before allowing video games (and seemingly any old thing) entry, it's not much of a change. The same problems Ebert has always had with the medium are reflected in the rest of his response to Clive Barker's recent comments on the subject.

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[via] Joystiq