I'm sure many of you have heard of Roger Ebert's latest offering in the games-as-art debate. If not, please read up now... I'll wait.

*humming, soft sounds of items being idly moved around*

Ready? OK, so I could just start asking pointed questions about which games Mr. Ebert has played (himself, to completion) on which to base his sweeping comments about the medium as a whole (I'm betting that it would be a short list and end in "-tris"), but I'm not going to do that. Instead, I did a little digging and found another expert with views Mr. Ebert may find interesting:

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Hello, I'm Rob Egert, well-known video game reviewer. Although I have never watched an entire movie, have never paid attention when someone tells me about a movie they've seen, I've decided that movies are not art. They're just popular entertainment, incapable of doing more than giving us something to look at while we eat popcorn. Movies can never aspire to the artistic heights of Rez or Okami, never write as compelling a script as Soul Reaver or The Longest Journey, never exhibit such moral dichotomy as Knights of the Old Republic.

Many people--so called "moviegoers" or "cinema buffs"--disagree with me about the non-art status of movies, but they're all wrong. I know this because I am regarded as an expert in a completely different field, while anyone who watches movies is obviously a witless teenage layabout. I can now prove my detractors wrong, though.

I recently played a game based on a movie, thus giving me vast insight into every movie ever produced. The game I played is called Catwoman, based on the movie of the same name. The game, developed by EA Games, was inspired by a high-profile movie and serves as an excellent illustration of my conviction that movies will never become an art form -- never, at least, until they morph into something else or more. Since this particular game based on this particular movie was poor, logic necessitates that all movies are therefore pointless and will not become art until they are more like a medium I personally see value in, such as video games.

I'm glad to have been able to settle this issue for everyone, and expect you all to discontinue any association you have with this artless medium of "cinema".

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There, using the foolproof theory that one individual game or movie based on the other medium is indicative of every game or movie ever produced, Messrs. Ebert and Egert have proven that neither video games nor movies are art. ...Unless, I suppose, it were possible that not all movies are the same and not all games are the same, that some may be made with more care than others. But nah... that wouldn't make any sense.