The increasing popularity of games may hurt games as an art.

[Reasonable]

bdbdbd said:
@Reasonable: You're not really disagreeing with me.

You did read something wrong, the great artist that died before getting recognised as great artist, became commercially successful before they were seen as great artists. Even if the artist died, they production kept living.
The point is, anyone can be an artist, but in order to get recognition as one, you need to have success commercially. This, naturally, doesn't mean that everything commercially successful would be art.

For the videogames as art, if a videogame is art, it needs to be art with the characteristics of a videogame.

No, I covered that.  I know what you mean, but not all Art that is held to be great becomes commercial.  In fact, in many cases the commercial aspect is simply to do with rarity and the nominal 'cost' of ownership.  I'd also note that this notion can be misleading as it only pertains to 'objects' whose creator is dead.  Beethoven is as artistically feted as say Van Gogh.  But due to the different medium I can buy Beethoven cheap due to the fact music is not an object while with a painting I can buy a print cheap but the original is expense.  That's not commercial success - that's collecting rare objects.  Sorry, but I really think you're mixing up commerce and Art.

In terms of 'anyone can beomce an artist' I agree, and I'd wonder your view based on a suprising intelligent children's film, Ratatouille.  The film posits the idea 'anyone can cook' as a metaphor for exactly your statement.  It them procedes to show us a number of people who can, or claim they can, cook.  I think the film rather beautifully deals with the whole concept of 'everyone can...' while addressing the actual reality of the statement - i.e. everyone can, but everyone cannot do so equally well, and only a few can truly create something more than a commercial reproduction.

As another example, consider Stanley Kubrick.  Kubrick was miles from being a huge commercial success.  His films in the main were modest successes, covering their costs with a little profit on the side.  Yet consider his standing in the film industry artistically, and the longivity his films will have.  Again, commerce has nothing to do with it (apart from funding).  His films as Art are what created his reputation, not their commercial success.  Like the painting vs music example I gave earlier, due to the different form of his medium, his works will never attain the commercial rarity of a Van Gogh, because you can buy his Art for $10 dollars if you want.