Games as Art on the NYT

On the tails of Ebert's blog comes a more nuanced look at the games and art debate in The New York Times. Spielberg is cited in Ebert's place, without the peculiar claims of interactivity, while a couple of good points are brought up as to the emotions that games readily evoke.

Steven Spielberg last year offered one model for the medium to follow: cinema. In an address to students learning to be game developers at the University of Southern California, Mr. Spielberg, who has since contracted to create three games, challenged the industry to improve the storytelling, character development and emotional content in the same way it has enhanced the images and action. The medium will come of age, he said, "when somebody confesses that they cried at Level 17."

But movies are just one model for games to emulate. Henry Jenkins, director of the comparative media studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggested that they are equally close to dance, as a medium of performance, or architecture, as a medium of creating unique spaces.