In other news from the week, I beat Plants vs Zombies on the iPad. I read Roger Ebert's claim that video games can never be art. I played some Fallen London. I read A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz speech where he describes Farmville as more a social obligation than a social game. I played a little Wordscraper and a little Scrabble on Facebook this week. I watched a video a friend from Everquest 2 posted on Facebook, some world-first-avatar-kill-raid-thingy that I didn't even recognize, and it made me feel so out-of-touch with MMOs, so not a gamer. But nevertheless all week, I thought about gaming.

Gaming isn't Art: When I saw Ebert tweet that he'd blogged about video games as (not) art, I was pretty intrigued. I'd even say my hackles were up. I'm pretty quick to defend video games as a valid past-time, and I guess I'd say, as a valid outlet for interaction and expression. But I haven't really thought much about games as art -- or as Art or as not-art -- although I daresay I have seen some beautiful graphics in games and I have been part of some pretty beautiful moments. (Have you ever felt the bliss of watching the end cinematics because you've just beaten a game? Have you ever been a raider? Well, then. Don't judge.)

Ebert's article opens with picture of a grimacing child. This poor boy looks almost physically ill. Perhaps it's because he doesn't have a wireless controller. That was my first thought at least, and you never know. Or perhaps it's because he had to sit through Kellee Santiago's TED talk, the basis for Ebert's article and argument. I think I made a similar face when I watched it. (I'm sorry. I'm mean.)

Apparently Ebert's thought "Nope, not art" for a long time, and watching Santiago's video made him compelled to write this essay so he can restate, "I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art." Ebert's essay is a close reading of Santiago's 2009 TED talk "Are Video Games Art?" which seems a bit odd and a bit unfair (in part because the talk is really not that good).

I mean, Santiago uses the Wikipedia definition of art, for crying out loud, and I know! I know! I know! Wikipedia can be a valid source blah blah blah but we're talking here about art and aesthetics, some of the richest topics for poets and philosophers. And you're gonna cite Wikipedia?! I immediately wondered what Ebert would say of video games as art by way of Walter Benjamine's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," but I'm nerdy that way, I guess.

Honestly I'm not sure that even if Santiago had cited Benjamin or Plato or Schopenhauer, she could have pulled off her argument. She uses a video game where you play as David Koresh one of her examples (WTF. Seriously.). And while I think that an argument in favor of video games as art could probably be traced through the history of theatre and cinema, both Santiago and Ebert seem to emphasize play as a game rather than play as an imaginative expression.

In his essay, Ebert asks how we know what's considered a masterpiece, how we distinguish great art from crap. "How do we tell the difference? We know. It is a matter, yes, of taste." I guess Ebert is accustomed to having his taste dictate what's considered a good movie. But I don't think he's really proved here he can the arbiter of what's considered art.

Gaming isn't Gaming: While Ebert argues gaming isn't art, A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz argues social gaming isn't really gaming. It's a brilliant essay. Read it.

Drawing on Aristotle (not Wikipedia! Yay!), Liszkiewicz argues that leisure time spent gaming can be "in fact essential to citizenship: [games] allow us to refresh and renew ourselves, help to socialize us, and afford us opportunities to cultivate our imaginations and reasoning skills." But Liszkiewicz argues that Farmville fails to meet any of the criteria Roger Caillois established in Man, Play, and Games: games must be "free from obligation, separate from ‘real life,' uncertain in outcome, an unproductive activity, governed by rules, and make-believe."

We don't play Farmville because it's a good game (it's not). We play Farmville because we feel obligated to do so by the network of friends on Facebook. While that social obligation can be a good thing -- these are the bonds, in part, of citizenry -- Liszkiewicz warns of allowing Zynga to be the major force that dictates how we feel responsible to one another. "there is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop."