In a somewhat bizarre dispute between film critic Roger Ebert and various advocates of video games as art, the shade of Marcel Duchamp has been invoked essentially to argue that "art is in the eye of the beholder." Most of these arguments have been perfunctory, but noted comic book theorist Scott McCloud — himself a veteran of other "is it Art?" controversies — has highlighted the notion that games, like readymades (and perhaps with chess as exemplar) are largely experiments in the nature of authorship.

In this context, Ebert as defender of the idea of the film maker (or artist) as auteur is on slippery ground. If, of course, that’s actually what he’s defending.