To answer this question, I refer you to another author of another medium that is about as misunderstood.

In the above book, McCloud talks about a phenomenon in our society that is actually quite common: something new comes along, but it is unfortunately judged based on the standards of the old.

But let's look at comics for a moment. One might argue that comics actually originate from ancient cave art, as old paintings are essentially images drawn in deliberate sequence, like today's modern comics. But comics as we know them were perhaps invented with the printing press, and made popular by newspapers. How long has it taken for them to become an accepted form of art? Some still suggest that they aren't.

Another good medium to look at is film. Indeed, much of what people consider to be artistic about video games is actually borrowed from film (namely, in-game scripting and storytelling), just as old talkies essentially borrowed from a medium that came before them--theater. The oldest and most basic talkies aren't really films, they're more like "filmed plays." They don't take advantage of what truly makes film unique--the fact that story can be told not only through sound and dialogue, but also through pictures and images. Syd Field, just about every screen writer's teacher, even defines film as, "a story told through pictures and sounds." Like comics, the origin of film is an area of controversy. As early as the 1860's a device called a zeotrope captured images and animated them to create a moving picture, but it's not really "film." Many regard the French Lumiere brothers as being the fathers of modern cinema, but they were hardly the first, as Thomas Edison had developed similar techniques.

Think video games are unable to generate an emotional response in its audience? Take this famous scene from Final Fantasy VII: Main baddy Sephiroth runs Aerith through with a sword. Though crude by today's standards, for its time this event was monumental. I've heard stories of people who cried when it happened, others actually started the game over because they thought they'd done something wrong only to discover that yes, this is scripted in the game's story.

Regardless, movies didn't really come into the spotlight until the 1890s, and it was around the 1920s that films started to become experimental, and as a result, controversy arose as to whether or not film is a legitimate form of art.

Sound familiar? The origin of video games has a similar story. Was it invented by Ralph Baer, or Nolan Bushnell? One might say Baer invented home video games while Bushnell invented arcade video games, although the first game to receive widespread recognition was Spacewar! developed by Steve Russell at the Massachussettes Institute of Technology in 1961.

Basically, games were invented in the 60s and 70s, and continue on to today where they are becoming extremely experiemental. Games like Crush and Super Paper Mario play with how their audience manipulates the space (by swapping between 2D and 3D), while games like Portal and Super Mario Galaxy experiment with how audiences navigate 3D space, particualry in how the former has no "ground level" and gravity is almost never the same in two seperate places.

The point is this: in about the same amount of time it took for films to become accepted forms of art, is roughly the same amount of time it's taking video games to do the same thing. Now is when games are becoming experimental, and really, we've just barely discovered the tip of the iceberg. There's still a ways to go.

But let me go back to McCloud for a moment. For the two definitions of art I've cited already, none are really quite as broad as McCloud's. He argues that art is any human activity that is not directly related to survival or reproduction. In other words, art is everything we do when we're bored. Under such a universal definition, just about everything is art. Things as simple as sitting and watching TV, to things a bit more complex like cooking or singing or dancing.

Clearly, under McCloud's definition, video games are a form of art.

However, just as film has developed a method of storytelling that is unique to it, so to are video games. Roger Ebert has mentioned that games will never become a form of art unless they become something more.

Guess what? They are.

I've said that the key differentiating factor that makes a video game a video game is interactivity and role-playing. But how are games evolving to something more?

Enter Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid, both released in the same year (1998), both offered unique experiences in storytelling. Metal Gear Solid took the more obvious approach in the form of in-game cutscenes, mini movies, if you will, that show the audience what's going on. With Metal Gear, however, cutscenes interupt gameplay and force the audience to stop playing. This method is more movie-like than game-like, which is understandable since any sophistication in video game storytelling is still experimental.

Half-Life, however, presents its story a bit differently. All scripting and storytelling take place during gameplay, never interupting, never boring the player and causing them to hit the Start button to skip the scene. In both games, these scenes feature full voiceover acting with good writing and good performances. When it comes to creating an alternate reality, this type of storytelling has no equal. With Half-Life especially (and those that have borrowed its technique, like the aforementioned Bioshock), no other medium can equal this method of drama. In film, we often forget the that the frame is there. Sometimes we become so attached to the world of the film, that it becomes our world. But never in any film can the audience actually participate with that world, or interact with it on the same level as a video game.

Games have stories that we care about. They have characters we love, and these characters are believable individuals--people who might occur in real life. And in the case of Half-Life, a game in which the main character never speaks and has little in the way of personality, well, remember what makes a video game what it is. Role-playing. Freeman is not the protagonist of Half-Life. You are. The player. And I challenge anyone to claim that supporting character Alyx Vance is flat or unrealistic.

The basic message to all other media and artforms is this: anything you can do we can do, and probably better.

On to page three...