Roger Ebert apparently thinks that videogames aren’t art. Well… not like movies anyway. Or those metal beams welded together at haphazard angles. No-sir.

Say it with me folks, “anything can be art”. Even if it’s not what you’re into. Now, coming from Ebert I’m assuming it’s not art because it threatens his precious movie nitch. See… games are getting to be pretty close to cinema these days.

And hey, some of them even have better content. Baldur’s Gate II, for instance, has a better plotline than a good portion of this years movies.

But even if that didn’t qualify it, it’s still got, literally, art. That’s right. The painted stuff comprises most every image on the screen. Newer games might have totally rendered-on-the-fly images, but those old school top-down RPGs had painstakingly painted scenery and characters for a while there.

And no. I don’t care that it was a digital canvas. It’s traditional artwork.

In the end games are as much art as that other upstart, movies.