Dear Mr. Ebert,
Recently, there has been a great debate between you and the gaming community over certain comments regarding Video Games and the art medium. While you've taken great strides to defend your position, I truly commend you for the honesty towards your opinion you keep, and for opening the issue to the public and encouraging those who wish to present another side of the argument to do so. While the issue rages on, let me ask you: Exactly what constitutes art itself? It is writing, Music, Painting, Film, Sculpture? Who really knows.
I would also like to address the gaming community in this letter and acknowledge on their behalf that most of the letters sent to you were rash, and probably not very well thought out. But both sides of this argument are biased for obvious reasons. Mr. Ebert, You are biased because you've been around what most would consider 'Real Art' for many years, especially films. The gamers out there furiously sending out letters to you are biased because they aren't out to prove a point, or even present you with another side of the argument, they are just out to prove you wrong. That complicates things doesn't it?
You said in response to Clive Barker's statements about the issue that your idea of what the average video game amounts to is point and shoot and then move on. What about games that have no guns (of which there are many)? I see games Like I do movies...there are lots of Transporter, Die Hard and other shoot-em-ups out there with no plot value in them that only exist for the sheer thrill of blowing stuff up while jumping off a moving van with a beautiful girl yadda, yadda yadda...but every once in awhile, there is a Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan or a Titanic. In a sea of games it's really hard to tell where these games are, but they do have Drama, Emotion and leave an impact on the player. Isn't impact what Art is about?
What makes a painting of Jesus on the cross so interesting, isn't that it's an old painting hanging in a museum, but the idea that it's a depiction of a man sacrificing himself for the people who persecuted him for the good of the world. When you see the painstaking time spent, and attention to detail, and visualize the pain, suffering and emotion of the situation it leaves an impact and gets the cogs turning upstairs. This is a part of "User interaction". If a person walking through a museum doesn't stop to see a painting and interpret its meaning, it's just a canvas with some chemicals splattered on it rotting in a building. If a poet, playwright, actor, director, musician has no audience to interact with, there is no purpose or meaning in a play/movie/song etc. Your primary argument is that games cannot be art because the player chooses the outcome. You asked if Romeo and Juliet was a game that the ending could be manipulated, would it still be as good? In the case of video games the artist behind the game chooses either outcome for the player anyway, so Shakespeare would have written both endings (if he so chose to include multiple/alternate endings, if video games were around in his day). In this regard I think games can still be considered art to a certain extent.
Now I'm not saying you are right or wrong, I'm simply presenting my opinion as you previously did and asking you to take my point of view into consideration. I do think games should be considered an art (Mainly because the medium takes many forms of art into one, from drawing the storyboards, penning the script, sculpting characters and environments in 3D, painting textures and backgrounds, orchestrating/arranging/conducting music for the soundtracks etc...), even if they aren't considered 'High Art'. I really don't think that matters, honestly I don't think the gaming community would care if they were listed right above Finger-painting on the 'Art Scale', just so long as it was acknowledged as art to begin with.
But there are games out there that have stories that have startling imagery, beautiful music, and plot-lines that make players think and feel real emotions, I know this because I have experienced them myself. I'm not going to ask you to rush out and buy a copy of a game I think is worthy of 'Art-Status', I'm just asking you to read between the recent media blitzes behind games that are obviously not the thinking-man's type of experience (Read: Halo 3), but I want you to at least consider the possibility of games as art, even if we haven't reached that point in time, just consider the possibility.

Sincerely,
The Chief