Yeah, I don't really believe this is real for one second. A) Why would Microsoft and Sony let this happen? Wouldn't this constitute a MAJOR share of their profits. B) I don't believe they can do this lag-free C) just seems fake. From the fact that the images of the controllers are not all the same, to "More Beauty Shots" it just all seems like a joke.

So really I think there are a few different arguments that are all getting confused with the question "Are Video Games Art?" Firstly, there is the question of "Can one product of a medium not be art while another is?" That is to say, is it possible for "Citizen Kane" to be Art while "Jackass the Movie" is not. This would imply that Art Forms come as mere potential and not as absolutes. Painting would not be an Art Form, merely a medium for Art Possibility. If this were true then Video Games NECESSARILY could generate art as the infinite possibilities contained within the medium have the potential and therefore it would be impossible to argue that they couldn't even if it were the case that a piece of Art were never generated by it. I tend to think to think in this way. I believe that more than anything "Art" is a status less than a solid idea. Therefore, it really is meaningless. Another argument is that "Do Video Games contain the potential for artistic expression?" Again, here I say that if a movie can be considered Art then it seems impossible for Video Games to not have the potential. This is because a video game could simply BE a movie. Think about this, the only thing that truly separates the two mediums in a technical sense is the interactivity aspect. but considering that in-action can effect the game, one could create a game that required in-action as a command and in doing so could simply be watched. Imagine if during the Godfather if you hit a button at just the right time something changed, but you didn't press it... it would still be a game technically, but it would be the IDENTICAL experience to simply watching the movie which is considered Art. This to me demonstrates the potential for Gaming art even by a definition that Ebert would have to respect. Unfortunately I thought about this more deeply and I realized that Video Games necessarily CANNOT be considered an Art Form. This may seem a bit convoluted but I actually think that this is really cool. Consider this, an individual painting is static, you see the same thing that someone else sees. You may have completely different reactions to it, but the physical matter on the canvas is the same. THE PAINTING is the piece of art, PAINTING as an activity is the Art Form or medium. Now think about these same building blocks in terms of a game. It can't be that the Game is the painting. If the game were the painting then it would be static, it would be the thing you see, but it ISN'T. It is your playing the game that is the Painting. The way you interact with the game is like an individual painting each time you play it. Your reactions, your feelings, you judgments are based NOT on the game but your interactions with the game, therefore the "Art" is the individual interaction, not the games. To use an actual game as an example think about say... GTA. You boot up the game, you play a few minutes, you get certain reactions based on how you played. However, someone somewhere else plays the game differently and must react to completely different happenings. In this sense person A and person B are essentially looking at different paintings. Then if we go up one block, each individual game is its own unique Art Form. The games provide the potential for an artistic interaction much in the same way that paint provides the potential for an artistic painting. Therefore, Video Games as a whole cannot be an Art Form, they are a Meta Art Form. This also means that every time we play we are creating art and every time it is different. I think that is pretty cool! As a side note, I'm completely shocked that I didn't see the quote about games as an art form from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy author. He helped on some writing for assorted games and noted that he didn't believe that Games were Art. However, he believed that this was a good thing because Art carries too much baggage and Video Games have a freedom that many other mediums do not. I don't agree at all, but it was easily worth noting as a popular argument stated much earlier than the Ebert comment.