The thing that has always troubled me about Ebert's argument is that its strength seems to depend greatly on the kinds of games you present in rebuttal. Take b

The thing that has always troubled me about Ebert's argument is that its strength seems to depend greatly on the kinds of games you present in rebuttal. Take board games or sports games, for example. They've been around since the earliest years of civilization. We have played them all that time, but never drew a comparison between them and art like what a painter or musician would produce. Yet, suddenly it became a debate when we got to video games because we could start inserting all the other art mediums as desired, while still retaining the interactive, unpredictable nature of previous games. And so we go out on this mindless quest to find the most moving games we have ever played and show them to the critics. I think that what this suggests is that we have to either expand our definition of art to include all the interactive forms(including toys, board games, and sports) or define two kinds of art - the interactive, and the authorial - and view them as complements to each other.