Should Video Games Be Art?

Back in April this year, film critic Roger Ebert decided to handle the topic of the cultural importance of video games from the perspective of whether they could ever be regarded as art. Clearly, Ebert     1     (convince) that no game so far could even dream of being considered as coming close to a work of art.

In today’s post, Ebert returns to the topic to put an end to the debate that has been going on ever since: though he stands by     2     he believes in — namely that, at least in theory and principle, video games will never be art — he can now admit that he shouldn’t have expressed his opinion without knowing what he was talking about. And that is his biggest mistake, as far as he is concerned,     3     he expressed a judgment on a public forum（论坛）without having played a single video game — and all the while     4     (insist) that was the last thing on his wish list. He approached the matter strictly from a theoretical point of view and that’s not fair     5     the gaming industry — or the gamers who took offense, for that matter.

“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 have declared that video games     6     never be Art. I still believe this, but I should never have said so. Some opinions are best kept to yourself. So far, 4,547 comments     7     (rain) down upon me for that blog entry. Perhaps 300 supported my position. The rest were united in opposition. What you see now posted are almost all of the comments     8     (send) in. They are mostly intelligent, well-written, and right about one thing in particular: I should not have written that entry without being more familiar with the actual experience of video games,” Ebert writes about the very post     9     started the debate.

Most posters pointed to him that he was also doing so without as much as offering a clear definition of Art. “    10     gamers experience video games as a form of art, does that not automatically make them so？” some said. Others, tired of reading what others had argued before them, were simply content to say “Ebert doesn’t get it.”

The family who eats together

What’s the price of a family meal? For many families in the world’s wealthiest countries, the answer seems to be, ‘too much’. For instance, in the United States,     1     is often a trendsetter in such things, the majority of families report eating a single meal together fewer than five days a week. In fact, the frequency of shared meals     2     (decrease) in American families by 33 per cent over the last twenty years. The meals     3     have shortened too: from an average of 90 minutes to just 12 minutes.

So perhaps we’re better off asking ourselves     4     the cost of not eating together is. Once again, we could turn to the figures. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that 15-year-olds who reported not regularly     5     (share) family meals were twice as likely to be absent from school. In Europe, research has suggested that children who don’t eat dinner with their parents at least twice a week face a 40 per cent higher risk of fatness. Another study,     6     (conduct) by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (滥用) at Columbia University, found that kids who eat dinner with their parents five or more times a week are     7     (likely) to have problems with drugs and alcohol.

But those numbers, impressive     8     they seem, may be beside the point. After all, having a meal together is more than just a preventive measure     9     future misfortune. The primary cost of the family meal is also the very thing that makes it important: time.

The time spent together over food leads to all the positive outcomes that are measured in the studies. That time spent together has less noticeable—but no less real—effects too. So often,     10     is at the family meal that the family as such—the family as an organic unit with shared memories and feelings and ambitions—is made.