Storytelling has always been an artform, it stimulates the ear, and in the form of a play it stimulates the eyes. When you are reading shakespeare do you not see the characters form in your mind (this is why I say there are 7 senses in art). The second the characters are re-created in your mind to your standards you have played with aesthetics in sight.

Games are not art.. because games are games. I know that sounds simplified but I really don't know how to explain it beyond that. You can INCORPORATE art INTO games, but games themselves are not art.

I guess what it boils down to, it just depends on your perspective of the very definition of art, and that is something that cannot be definitly answered.. But art from my view cannot BE games. Only used IN games. It's like saying porn is art. I suppose you can say you can make "artul" porn, or incoroprate artistic features into porn, but I think we can agree porn itself is not art, and its primary purpose is not to be art.

I think if you start blending the term art with games, it begins to be a slippery slope, because then nearly everything could be considered a form of art. I think you have to draw the boundaries somewhere, or the term art loses all its meaning and its value.

I don't think you quite understand metallicube's perspective, for me and metallicube it's not that games are a set of rules, it's that gameplay is a set of rules. For metallicube and I, everything non-essential to game function is stripped off. For example, you can play Mario Brothers while muted, but than you're missing out on the artistic music, but you're still essentially able to play the game correct? For MGS4 you can play without watching any cutscenes, or reading any of the text, (as I said story is an artform) but essentially you're still able to play the game right? Now take LBP, if I were to make a completely blank canvas world, could you play LBP in it? Yes you could, would it be enjoyable? Probably not. Is there art still involved, yes there's art in the graphics of the sackboy. From our perspective a game isn't the culmination of all these items, but rather these items are added on for additional enjoyment of the game.

Bingo..

The biggest problem I have with people saying "games ARE art!" is that it implies the art in games is the primary focus and very REASON for the game, and if the art is primary, that means the gameplay is secondary. The focus of games, or the "reason" games exist if you will, is to entertain users by letting the user interact with the medium, over a set of given rules. Art does not serve this purpose.

Let's turn this around, and say that "art ARE games." Now is that statement true? Most artists would take offense to that, because art is it's own entity, with its own purpose. Art are not games, and games are not art. Games are centered around user created fun based on a set of rules, giving the user interactivity. Anything else is exterior.

It's fine that you think that, as long as you acknowledge that it's not an argument and cannot be the backbone for discourse concerning the subject.

Sex has been used as performance art before, actually! It's funny you say that.

Here is the thing: you are commiting two problems here.

1. You are transforming "art" into some kind of sacred cow which cannot be touched. It isn't. Art comes from everywhere and can belong to anybody. You know Shakespeare's plays weren't art back then, right? They were derided for being full of nothing but murder and dick jokes. Now he's considered the bacbone of the entire canon of English literature. Art is changing, ever changing, based on what people find appealing and meaningful.

2. You are saying games cannot be good enough to be art. This is fallacious ou of reflex, and I dismiss it ou of hand: games have always been better at illiciting emotion for me personally than cinema, and that says a lot. In terms of conveying experience, the very itneractivity which you decry is what makes games so powerful. Yes, they are games, but games are never "just" games, even when fun is the only stated design goal of said games.

I understand that the term art is loosely defined and somewhat relative. But then what ISN'T art, by your description? At that point art ceases to lose all its meaning, and where then is the value of art, if merely anything can be interpruted as art? At what point does the term "art" become so diluted that it loses all power and value in society?

I'm not saying games are not good enough to be art, I'm simply saying they are separate entities, thus games are not art. Games are games.

You can, of course, experience cinema while removing either the sound or the visuals and still enjoy it perfectly well. I've seen a project where a blind person is playing through Wind Waker based on nothing but sound and memory. I don't see the point you're making here.

Gameplay does not preclude art, which seems to be your primary point. "Games cannot be art" is specious because it is needlessly reductive concerning what art is.

Obvious that you don't see the point I'm making, because without sound or visuals it's still a story, and any story is visually stimulating whether that story be played out in real life or not. The project with windwaker, how is that related? I'm trying to say a game can exist without those functions and as such means they are expendable. Not preclude, expendable. I'm getting tired of this arguement, I have orchestral auditions for jobs coming up and don't have time for this, all I can say is I never read Ebert's definition, I don't give a rat's ass about it, but if I were to entrust you with violin students using your definition of art I know they would only become musically confused. My perspective is as valid and needed as yours depending on the situation, although my occupation forces me to accept said perspective. Our perspectives differ in our definition of art and as Metallicube said if I let anything be art than it would be slippery slope, and my job as a musician would be a lot more difficult.

@kasz Ok I'll say Ebert is an elitist dick in that case. I haven't read the article at all, my view still doesn't change however for it to be art there must a set of rules it must follow, most importantly it must stimulate senses. Culinary, painter, musician, graphic designer, fashion, writers, etc all these people are artists in my definition and view because they use a medium that directly stimulates senses. 

It is impossible for a story to be visually stimulating without visuals. Or, if you prefer, to the blind. Any one aspet is always expendable, it just means that art is experience differently by different people.

And your perspective is a valid one, sure, but it's still needlessly narrow. My view of art comes from art in literature, and similarly I would not leave a bunch of literature students in the hands of someone whose entire concept of art is based around the whole of sensory inputs.