At the end of my last post of substance (on Roger Ebert’s inflammatory comments), I referenced N’Gai Croal’s blog. Croal challenged gamers “to keep doing the heavy lifting necessary to suss out where the art of videogames lies; to determine how the craft can enhance that art; and to continue the fight to push this young medium from squalling infancy into graceful adulthood.”

A bold charge. But where do we begin? I gave it some thought, and came up with two things we can do right now to start moving forward.

1. Keep talking, but keep it civil

“Yours is the most civil of countless messages I have received after writing that I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature.”

That’s how Ebert began his response to a concerned gamer’s letter in 2005. That’s embarrassing. There’s no way games will be accepted as art if their fans respond like drunken truckers scrawling messages on the wall of a gas station bathroom at the barest whiff of criticism.

For example, a friend of mine wrote an article on homosexuality in animals for his school newspaper when an expert visited the campus, and the article got reposted on a conservative Web site. An assault of unintelligible, demeaning and homophobic comments ensued. They attacked — without mercy and with no logical basis, argument or sources — everything from my friend to gay dogs. As someone who does not really mind gay dogs, I was not at all convinced by their blathering. Nor do I see how any rational person without a predisposition towards either side of the argument could.

I know the Internet is a scary place where everybody is anonymous and can say whatever they want with virtually no repercussions (pun!). But don’t. If you want people to take the issue of games as art seriously, then you have to take it seriously. This is especially true when it comes with people who disagree with you.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we should hush up. If you see an article or statement on the artistic value of games, e-mail the source, comment on it, blog about it and post it on message boards. Think your comments through, organize them carefully and read them over when you’re done. Present them clearly, rationally and with evidence. Don’t resort to personal attacks, as Ebert himself does to no good end. And most importantly of all, TURN OFF YOUR CAPS-LOCK.

Nobody’s going to listen to you if they think you’re a mean idiot. They will have to listen if we all keep talking but keep it civil.

2. Support the underdogs

Games with artistic potential are not produced by Electronic Arts. They’re not the games that people line up for in advance. They’re not the ones that come in a nice collector’s edition with a small plastic replica. They’re not the ones with the big budget ads between every segment of “Battlestar Galactica.”

Games that show artistic potential tend to get passed over commercially. Psychonauts, the Oddworld series, Okami, System Shock, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are all examples of incredible games overlooked commercially because they lacked the big corporate support of your average EA game. Sometimes, these extraordinary games succeed despite this shortcoming. Oftentimes, they fail miserably.

We live in a commercial world. Even if a development team demonstrates their artistic creativity, why would a publisher finance a project from a team that has failed in the past? Even BioShock, which just unleashed a demo this week and has gotten nothing but universal acclaim, had problems finding a publisher due to the legacy of the great but poor-selling System Shock II.

“I remember pitching the game to one publisher who later told a friend of mine that it was ‘just another fucking PC FPS that’s going to sell 250,000 units,’” said Senior Designer Joe McDonagh in a recent interview with ComputerAndVideoGames.com.

“This sort of attitude really pissed me off,” McDonagh continued. “System Shock II, for all its critical success, didn’t sell very well which turned buyers off. Something I realized very quickly was that as much as your boss won’t ever know that you turned down a future game of the year, he will know that you signed up a turkey. You don’t get fired for not taking risks. That kind of mentality is driving the industry into a creative cul de sac.”

Just like with film, the really meaningful, expressive ones rarely come from the big studios. Making a bold product like that is risky, and big production companies aren’t in the business of taking risks. They’re in the business of snagging licenses and big names and producing games they know without a doubt will sell.

If we continue to buy the same generic games with upgraded graphics from these companies, that’s all we’ll ever see. In order to reach a state where games can be artistic, we have to support the underdogs by buying the ones that are starting down that road and showing EA and their big-brand, creativity-squashing brethren that this is the direction we want to take gaming.