I'm surprised that Ebert doesn't see the importance of whether games are defined as art, given what happened to film. In 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that films were not art, and thus not protected by the First Amendment, and therefore may be freely censored. The decision was not overturned until 1952. I don't want this to repeat with videogames. (I wrote about this in one of my own articles: http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/12/im-not-evil-i-just-play-... )

Ebert flirts with definitions of art, but never provides his own. This is the biggest problem by far with his essay. Maybe his definition really is something that flat-out can't include videogames. But when he simply says "videogames can't be art" without explaining what he means by art, we can only fill in the blanks with our own definitions. It's no wonder gamers get enraged by this. And they say, "Of course games are art, look at Bioshock/Braid/Flower/etc.!" And Ebert looks at these games not with the gamer's definition of art, but his own, and says, "Of course these are not art."

It's pointless and inflammatory and it can't possibly go anywhere constructive until Ebert defines his terms and explains just what he means when he claims videogames are not art.