Some of you may have noticed the Games Can Never Be Art article by film critic Roger Ebert. Suffice it to say, it was amusing to see fans extolling the beauty of Planescape: Torment to him afterward on Twitter, to which he admitted he'd never played it.

Joystick Division has a response to said article at the source, and it's pretty good. Short version: we're different breeds, Ebert and ourselves, but the important thing is to remember this is all about our love of good work, and wanting to share that.

Videogames, though, they're ours. That's why Ebert can't hang with them. He's a videogame illiterate, an Old Dog much too set in his ways to ever learn how to play an FPS, or crawl a dungeon or build a Sim City. That's a shame.

Because he's got to spend the rest of his life wondering what the *bleep* is wrong with the rest of us. Why aren't we enamored with the art of the past like his, obviously smarter and more cultured, generation was? Why are we so happy to sit with vacant stares and thumb controllers all day when flagging artists like Martin Scorsese or whatever foreign fancy-pants the Academy will nominate but not award this year flog the dying horse of cinema?

Those are questions Ebert will never know the answer to. And that's a bummer. Because what this debate is all about, really, is our desire to share our love for videogames with the rest of the world.

Those of use who love this silly stuff just want others to fell the thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of a win, the senses of fear and wonder and boredom and delicious tedium that videogames can instill. We want non-gamers to get that games aren't just games -- they're an amalgam of a half-dozen different modern forms of communication leveraged to create magic, to transport and tell stories and to stimulate the mind, heart and guts.

chautemoc via joystickdivision.com »