Video games as concept art.
The following is a reply posted to Ebert's journal entry, "The agony of the body artist." If you are not immediately familiar with Chris Burden's performance art, specifically "Doomed," then I suggest you read the original entry first
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My theory is that the essential art of games is more closely related to sculpture, where the work simply is the story. This kind of storytelling has always been possible in theory, but too expensive to ever evolve beyond a haunted house, or Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean ride at best - until virtual realities finally busted the medium wide open. That said, linear narratives can certainly be successfully shoe-horned into a video game, sometimes with excellent results. But often I think it becomes a crutch for designers who would really rather be making movies.
My list would include Myst, Riven, PoP: Sands of Time, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, System Shock, Halo, Mass Effect, Portal, Prey... Prey is very underappreciated. It's the only FPS I know that uses a speaking protagonist to enhance the dramatic/emotional experience. Plus it pulls a Companion Cube-like stunt to provoke a vengeful rage in the player, and uses the gameplay and dialogue to sustain that rage as long as possible. That's really the clincher for me. If video games weren't art, they couldn't elicit such powerful emotional reactions from me. Prey made me mad, Sands of Time made me cry. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had me in cold sweats. Let's see Tetris do that.
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I remember playing Silent Hill for the first time, and muttering "oh my f*cking God" straight about 4 hours, and jumping at every noise in the house.
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