This will be my first and last word on this subject. God forgive me if I spend any time trying to convince people they are wrong

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After years of avoiding it–not for any particular reason, mind you–I have finally gotten around to reading Roger Ebert’s essay about why video games “can never be art.”

I have always respected Ebert as a media critic. As a lifelong fan of cinema, I was aware of him from a very young age, which is reflective of his place within the institution of cinema. I have not always agreed with his opinions on various works, but I have always viewed them as generally intelligent and well-reasoned, if a bit snobbish at times. It is for these reasons that I was so incredibly disappointed with the man’s arguments about video games’ validity as art, which are, for lack of a better term, utterly idiotic.

Ebert’s essay flounders about his point, which is spoken with such conviction as to make anyone inexperienced with games, already biased against them, or with a tendency to submit to authority (more on this later), to agree with him. One major distinction between games and Art, according to Ebert, is that games can be won. In a later essay where he threw his hands up and surrendered the whole debate, Ebert would circle back to this point, positing that video games are not prized primarily for their beauty and emotional power, but rather for their interactivity, their promise of an intrinsic reward.

I take umbrage with the assumption that the potential for a victory state, and by extension, the very nature of player agency, precludes something from being art. This would be a fine point to debate, but Ebert proposes his side of the argument as a given: he doesn’t attempt to explain why interactivity should represent an impassible barrier for something to be considered art. I would submit that interactivity is yet another tool in the artist’s kit, another artistic device, no different from editing or sound design in film, that can be leveraged to convey meaning.

A very simple but easy to understand example of interactivity as a narrative device can be seen in the Dark Souls series. The protagonists of these games, naturally, are the players’ windows into their apocalyptic and distressing worlds, and there is no better way to communicate the sense of danger and hopelessness in these settings than by making the protagonist weak. In a film, this might be conveyed by hiring a meek-looking actor, or by presenting antagonists at a low camera angle to make them appear more menacing. In gaming, it is conveyed through brutally difficult gameplay. The player’s agency, shaped by the game design, is how the story is told.

A less grimdark, but no less poignant, example is God of War. In early God of War games, the protagonist, Kratos, is rage-fueled and vengeful, with little care for the destruction he leaves in his wake. He is representative of so many young men in this way, though elevated by his godly power. His combat has been described by Santa Monica developers as being a “ballet of fire,” as he dances across battlefields with deadly elegance, destroying everything in his path.

In later games, he is much older, more methodical, and more concerned with protecting his family. Thus, he is slower, hits harder, and is more conservative with his movement. In a word, he “feels” radically different to play in these later games. This feeling, which cannot be conveyed without interactivity, deepens the narrative, communicating the character’s growth in the same way that a wardrobe change or soundtrack might communicate character growth in a film.

Maybe Ebert would have been able to counter these points, but I doubt this. This is because, per his own admission, he had virtually no experience with video games, and never planned to get any. Of course, there’s no problem with this–I have no desire to gain more knowledge about the craft of ballet, for instance. Then again, I have never made the argument that ballet shouldn’t be called art.

I suppose that my greatest problem with Ebert’s essay, the reason why I think about it more than I would any other piece that I disagree with, is that it’s emblematic of a greater trend of intellectual laziness that I have a great distaste for. Too often, people look for an authority figure, usually for security and purpose, say, in a workplace setting, but also when it comes to the consumption of art. My mind goes to those that posit, almost always with an air of satisfied superiority, that rap music is not art–not like classical music, whose status as art is not even up for debate. Or perhaps those who would argue that science-fiction cannot be considered true literature–not like the works of Tolstoy or Hemingway, who were undeniable artists.

This tendency to revere the old and despise the new isn’t a matter of older generations being out of touch–I know plenty of people my own age and younger that would agree with the above claims. Rather, these brainless and unsubstantiated arguments stem from a view of art as an institution: art must be validated by authority figures, the way that classic literature and music have been preserved in libraries, through biopic films, and in history books. For many people, looking toward the future, or being in the present, is an unsafe psychological proposition. It’s much easier to be told what is art and what isn’t, which will groom you to become an eventual gatekeeper of art, spouting regurgitated definitions as though they are gospel. Indeed, those that tend toward this authority-based view of art often find any other definitions of the concept laughable, unaware that their own definitions are vaporous and sometimes hypocritical.

Those who disqualify video games as being art are, as far as I’m concerned, no better than the book-burners or censors that the grossly literate members of high society view as regressive. In fact, they are worse in some ways, as they use art as a tool to reinforce social hierarchy. They may not view it as a tool for delving into the unknown, for exploring new psychic frontiers, or for conveying what plain speech cannot. If you try to declare something as “not art,” then you have already fallen prey to this form of closed-minded thinking.

Ebert, in his less-infamous follow-up essay, concedes that video games could one day become art. I suppose he still viewed games as yet to cross that mysterious boundary into the realm of art, being too young to be sufficiently sophisticated (a claim that I’m sure he would not level against early, archaic feature films, but I digress). I must counter that video games are art, have always been art, and will continue to be art.

I’ll finish by answering a question Ebert posed in his follow-up essay: “are works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power?” For the type of player who views them only as playthings, like the film-goer who only views films as cheap entertainment, perhaps not. But for me, they damn well are.