Review: "Deus Ex"

Recently, Roger Ebert made waves when he argued on his website that not only were video games not art, they never could be art.  This provoked a lot of rage in the video game community, although Ebert himself graciously lied that he received "no more than a dozen ... cretinous comments from gamers."  As someone who admires Ebert's reviews and essays, I found his attitude disappointing and bizarre.  Fortunately, Ebert gracefully gave up his position, writing:

I was a fool for mentioning video games in the first place. I would never express an opinion on a movie I hadn't seen. Yet I declared as an axiom that video games can never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself.

Thanks Roger.  But, seriously - of course video games are art.  It is just common sense that if all that weird crap you find in galleries these days is "art" than the bar for what it takes to make "art", at least conceptually, is pretty darn low.  Basically, if it's art when Marcel Duchamp puts a snow shovel in a gallery then video games can be art.  As the boys at Penny Arcade asked, how can a hundred artists create art for a year but the result not be art?  When I doodle on the blackboard at Smoke's drunk at 3 a.m. in the morning, that's art.  It just might not be very good.

And that, to me, is the more interesting question.  Are video games good art?  Sure, you and I like to play Super Mario Galaxy.  But I mean - is it good art?