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I’m Not Giving Up The Ebert Debate: Why It Matters to Diversity in Games that Video Games are Art
The Joel funko pop should have been the first to go on Ebert’s grave, and the Ellie funko pop should show that, at least for now, video games have shown the possibility of surpassing cinema.
When film critic Roger Ebert said in 2005 that video games couldn’t be art, video gamers were offended. In retrospect it can be hard to really understand the reason for the strength of the umbrage and backlash to which Ebert was subjected— he was, after all, a film critic, and was hardly “in touch” with the tastes of the masses 15 years ago, much less 5 years later in 2010 when he clarified that while video games could be visually impressive, they were mostly a waste of time. He said he was unaware of a game that could be compared to any of the greats of the “canon” in literature, film, music, etc. These comments took on a memetic power in the discourse around video games; just searching video game related keywords and “Ebert” turns up high profile results to this day in active discussion on Twitter. For instance, El Rey Network’s Hector Navarro had this to say, citing the famous PlayStation 2 game Shadow of the Colossus as proof of Ebert’s folly:
