Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
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 【小题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 【小题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, 【小题3】 he expressed a judgment on a public forum（论坛）without having played a single video game — and all the while 【小题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 【小题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 【小题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 【小题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 【小题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 【小题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. “【小题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.”
