Video Games Can Never Be Art Analysis

Roger Ebert was a famous movie critic from the later twentieth century and early twenty-first century. According to www.thefamouspeople.com, Ebert started his career with Chicago Sun-Times Newspaper and worked there until death. In his time he was a writer, Ebert wrote the article, “Video Games Can Never Be Art,” in which he gives us the basic response to questions asked to him early on that video games are childish and simply cannot be considered art. While many may agree with Ebert, his argument is invalid. Video games, to me, should be considered art because they introduced me to the art of graphics at a young age, they are an artform in the eyes of the law, and have been displayed in an actual art museum in the United States.
At a very

Presented in an actual art exhibit, video games must have some artistic place in the world if they are put into the the renowned Smithsonian Art Museum in the United States. As a public coordinator for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Laurel Fehrenbach interviews composer Austin Wintory in the article, “The Art of Video Games: The Music.” According to Wintory, who composed the video games Journey and flOw, “Scenes can be built around it (music) and it can add subtext through means only accessible to music.” By this, Austin tells us that much of a video game can revolve around the music and how it adds to the overall mood of the person playing the game. For instance, if the game being played is a creepy or eerie type, the kind of music that should be played should be lower noted strings with a dark sound to it. Getting to how easy it is to put a sound to a game in the twenty first century, music in the gaming industry has come a long way from what it was twenty years ago. Mentioned by Wintory, instead of the chopped sound of the 80s, today’s games can include very sophisticated composed works that require a professional musician, like orchestra pieces. The art in a video game is very important, even more than the music. One gaming company tells how ideas come together as art in a video game in the article, “The People Behind the Video

The question if video games are art or not is put into the legal system and is summarized by Adam Liptak, a writer for The New York Times. He explains in his article, “Justices Reject Ban on Violent Video Games for Children,” how it is an individual families’ choice to decide what video games their children should play, not the government’s. Liptak, quoting the U.S. Justice, Antonin Scalia, informs us about the first amendment right the people have in the United States by including, “Depictions of violence, Justice Scalia added, have never been subject to government regulation. ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed,’ he wrote, recounting the gory plots of ‘Snow White,’ ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel.’” Scalia, quoted in Liptak’s article tells, “No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm, but that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.” Since in America, the people are free to have rights, the government should not be able to tell it’s people what they can or cannot play related to video games unless it’s a threat to the country itself. Closely related to Liptak’s article, Seth Schiesel, a The New York Times author, composed, “Supreme Court Has Ruled; Now Games Have a Duty,” which gives us a legal view of the question if video games are an art form. Schiesel wrote, “It is now