All art is the appeal to your emotions through senses. Each medium just has different tools to appeal to the emotions. Video games is still establishing it's tool set

You can argue anything is art.

This post is art. The deilcate word choice and intricate use of punctuation make for a daringly bold statement about moden culture.

That's a great point.  There are many definitions of art, and of course there is art in the sense of simply creating a nice table, and Art in the higher sense.  The most common definition of Art is a creative work that moves, informs or touches you and generates (to sound very Blade Runner like) an emotional response with its themes and content.

Art therefore can be anything created to achieve that.

OT - In terms of games, few games are even designed as such, and many that have elements of Art are really only borrowing it from other mediums.

I have no doubt videogames can be Art, but few will, at least currently, and of course, as with cinema before it, to truly excel videogames will have to discover whether they can, as a medium, provide a superior way of conveying their impact vs another medium.

The closest I've felt to Art on a videogame was ICO, SOTC and Silent Hill 2 (I'm sure there are others I'm simply missed or not played).  Other titles have been interested, coming close in different regards, Deus Ex, Grim Fandango, System Shock, etc.  But only those three felt to me like they really delivered something again to true Art.

Many videogames, quite correctly, will simply be 'games' in the pure sense.  Tetris, Mario games, etc.  even online MP in titles like MW2, are all examples of pure games IMHO.

You're right on the timeless front, and that's where, rather like films, videogames will likely struggle the most compared to other mediums.  Paintings, music and literature, by their nature, can be incredibly long lived, over (by human terms) large periods of time, films are much newer, and have been prey to rapid evolution, although many classics remain just that, and will likely be watched for many years to come.

Biut videogames by their nature have been very suceptible to chaning technology, and I'm not sure how long lasting even some of the best games of recent years will be over larger timeframes.

Interesting OP, though.  A good read.

One of my favorite topics that I can never fully articulate my thoughts on. Perhaps, I'll try later.
Yeah because even the concept of art itself is subjective.

Your problem is that there is no true definition of "art", therefore it's impossible to define "art" in videogames.

@vaio

I like your threads.

This one's a work of art. *thumbs up*