People try to put art up on a big pedestal when it's really very simple, primal, and ubiquitous. Most art is primarily a form of entertainment; that's why Shakespeare wrote plays and why musicians perform concerts. The existence of highly sophisticated art doesn't invalidate more simplistic works of their artistic value, they still have their own aesthetic and they still embody certain ideas.
The expression of the game comes from the rules of play. You dismiss playing cards as having no artistic merit, but there are over a thousand different rule sets from idle solitaire games to raunchy party games, from slow and strategic to reflex-based, from chance to skill. The same deck of cards interpreted a thousand different ways using nothing more than rules. In much the same way that 12 notes can be structured in different patterns to evoke different emotions, the experience that you get from playing with 52 cards depends on how the game is structured.
Ironically, the people who put art up on a grand pedestal are actually diminishing its importance. Art is everywhere. It's not just confined to galleries and museums.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
