They are equal in that they all fit into the definition and etymology of the word art. https://www.etymonline.com/word/art 

Yes, you are correct, it must require skill; also imagination and elicit admiration. 
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 

I get a 404 error from that. So, I just looked up the word artist on the site.

Artist: "one who cultivates one of the fine arts," from French artiste (14c.), from Italian artista, from Medieval Latin artista, from Latin ars (see art (n.))." Even by the loosest sense of the word, a speedrunner is not cultivating one of the fine arts. So they wouldn't count. A kindergartener probably wouldn't either unless they are extraordinary. Bruce Lee and Michael Jordan also don't qualify. So, you've kind of proved yourself wrong again. I've explained the other ways, but you're just ignoring the actual points and repeating yourself. Maybe that's an art too. *shrug*

Simple way to solve this. Assume for the sake of this question that you are super into speedrunning videos. If someone you don't know that well asked you who your favorite artist was would you consider speedrunners in your answer? 

People misuse English words. I will not ignore the roots of the word to cater to peoples failed understanding. I disagree with you on what constitutes art. I’ve given my definition over and over in various forms to help you see my point. You and I are unable to see eye to eye. 

If someone asked me who their favorite artist is then my answer would depend on the context in which the question was given. That doesn’t matter, what matters is that if it fits the definition of art — then it’s art. 

https://www.etymonline.com/word/art

XD. Everyone is using the word wrong but you I guess. My god the lengths people will go to avoid admitting the obvious.

You know what that is? That's an excerpt from the Canterbury tales. Written about 100 years after 1300, when the definition for art you're using comes from according to the site you're linking. Do you talk like that? Obviously not. Because the way we use words has changed over the last 700 fucking years. I know for a fact you don't use words the same way people did in pre-Shakespearean times, because I can comprehend you, so it's ridiculous that you are arguing we have to use words in that manner. Gonna acknowledge that, or continue to show your mastery at avoiding honest conversation?

Faggot once meant a bundle of sticks. Go around yelling about how you like to burn faggots and if someone seems angry, refuse to clarify, and just tell them you won't cater to their failed understanding. Go into a gay bar and yell about how gay you're feeling that day, and when people assume you're looking for a hookup, scold them and tell them how they're failing to understand, and you will not cater to them.

Likewise, the meaning of art has changed. Plus, as has already been pointed out, the dictionary you're using as evidence has a definition for artist that is different than yours (not to mention all of the other dictionaries). So, if you want to insist your definition of art is correct based on that, then you have to accept your definition of artist is wrong. Will you acknowledge this, or simply continue your artistic dodging of valid points?

We don't see eye to eye because one of us is being honest and one is not. The obvious answer that you avoided is that no, if someone asked you who your favorite artist was, there is no reasonable conceivable scenario where you would say something like "cheese the guy who has the Mario 64 speed run record". You could make up some wacky scenario, but in no circumstance that will ever occur in your life or any other would that happen. Because you know that is not how virtually anybody is using that term.

Words are tools used to communicate. If you insist on using a word in a way that you know the vast majority of people are not using it, then you are the one failing to communicate. :) Amusingly failing at least. You may continue to ignore the points made, and if you so choose, use feigned indignation as a reason to cease the conversation, as is the custom around these parts.

Great responses by everyone in this discussion but I see there are some kind of mixing up of things, despite some answers already giving out some points as to why there isn't and only way to classify something as art:

- First: There isn't a closed or very small and well rounded definition of "art", as others have pointed out, even though there have been definitions that have tried to restrict what is considered art through the ages, to this day elements from several definitions still overlap when analyzing several kinds of expressions

- Second: its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures, what was/is considered artistic, aesthetic pleasing for one culture can not necessarily be the same for other culture.

- Third: Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences, and a master of that art was anyone that was considered to excell at their form of art.

- Fourth:  after the 17th century,  "aesthetic considerations" were considered prioritary by some groups, so "fine arts" were differentiated from other type of arts, like applied arts. Some snubbish people have used  this ever since to treat other artistic expressions as inferior.

- Fifth:  in "fine arts" it is not that art should be "useless", what it discussed in the theories of "fine arts" is that to qualify as "fine art", the pieces of art should be created with only aesthetic-seeking intention in mind unlike applied arts, this is ambiguous as hell for things considered in the second point, and I've got to say it, a lot of what is considered "fine art" has been evaluated under a very eurocentric point of view.

- Sixth: Historically(eurocentric again), the five main "fine arts" were painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, with theathre and dance being considered within performing arts, look at how this has changed to modern considerations, and again the thing here lies within the fact that even in "fine arts" there is too much broadeness to the definition

- Seventh: the  modern consideration of "fine arts" include painting, sculpture, architecture, music, litherature,  film, and now most encompass theathre and dance in one chunk as "performing", because as I said earlier: the ambiguity within the definitions causing overlappings or loopholes, the subjectivity in what someone considers that qualify in which category and who are the ones that decide it.

- Eigth: even more problems arise as new forms of expression arise that aren't comparable to previous ones or that doesn't seem to fit in the strict categorization, photo isn't truly the same thing as film nor as painting, yet there is a lot of photography producen with only artistic/aesthetic intention in mind, one user mentioned martial arts, while their central approach in most cases have historically been for self defense, fighting and killing, body wellness and fitness etc., the level of accuracy, dexterity and mastery of body mechanics required by several martial arts have now gone to be greatly used for different types of performances, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and friends used their abilities learned at chinese opera to gave us inimitable performances in their films, very different also from the what we saw at even "more artistic" movies like Hero with Jet Li, crouching Tigger hidden dragon, house of flying daggers or curse of the golden flower, every movie depicting different styles and uses of martial arts in different plots dealing with different themes, this also interwinds with the next point.

- Ninth: as I said lots of expressions can fall within more than one single categorization, music not only groups expression as "instrumental music", music done only with "human voice", done with both, now it also has the problem of what to make of pieces that include ambience sounds from enviroment, from music produced "inorganically" from synths, computers and other types of mediums that generate sounds that still are "pleasing to hear at", or what to make from performers that make improv and don't follow a predefined structure, to randomly generated music in computer and several other issues.

Also where do we group musical performances? like some Operas or theathre-like ones where there is a script to follow, there are dancers, actors and other kind of performer going on in a representation while music plays, or have central moments where chant carries the performance on, lots of operas by classical composers were written to be played specifically at or inspired by performing plays, now music also forms part of film, can be played live or recorded for posterior apreciation each one of those things now also formulate a new question as to what to make of it.

Poetry can interwind with music, with theathre, before it was considered separated but now is a part of literature as art. Some people have tried to break some expressions to try to see in they can categorize them as a single unit, but some others that follow other theories consider that the expression should be considered as a whole or you may destroying the integrity of the artistic expression, or that again they are just trying to forcefully adhere to a very closed vision of art, or should we consider the martial arts epic dramas movies I mentioned separating each part?.

- Tenth: The fact that some form of artistic expression was conceived with only aesthetic purposes in mind trying to achieve the fine art definition, doesn't mean that other people wouldn't make use of it for other purposes or find some kind of utility, architecture theorist have for a long time now discussed that while looking for beauty in buildings is central, they can't be oblivious to the utility, security and societal responsability those buildings can or should offer.

same goes for the other fine arts, the fact that they could have been done with an "aesthetic-seeking" process in mind doesn't mean that someone can't use them for decoration, for entertainment, for education, for training, for historic archiving, for cultural, societal and other academic analysis and many other things including yes, selling, buying or advertise stuff.

There is a lot more of course to discusse of course, and some people have always tried to coerce things to some sense of hierarchy of some activities over the others but i kind prefer the more open definitions like:

"Art is any creative activity or product of the human being that has an aesthetic and/or expressive  purpose, through which ideas, emotions and, in general, a vision of the world are expressed, through various resources, such as plastic, linguistic, sound, corporeal and mixed.

Also 'art' designates any human activity carried out with care and dedication, or any set of rules necessary to optimally develop an activity. In that sense, art is synonymous with ability, skill, talent, experience."

to the excluding snubbish ways so they can still separate "themselves" from "us" as "the artistic comunity", "only artists can understand this", "ignorant people will not get this" etc., that has people and mussueums doing nausseating things classifying them as art between them, and keeping moving outlandish amounts of money for no reason, like the one nailing a banana to the wall and calling it art just because he did it, or Yokko Onno and the ear destroying sounds she spews with a microphone.

So i consider games as art? yes, by a lot of what has been already been said by others and what i have studied, both in the "artistic parts" that make them whether it be the music, the graphics art, the storylines, the enviroments including landscapes, buildings and other parts of the scenery, the characters interactions and now also the film like sequences and the voice and motion captured performances by actors, in a way this part recollects a lot of what has been studied and made in the previous developed artistic expressions, but also videogames have a central part in that by the way the creators can make incredible interactive experiences, this interactivity can interwind with the second part of the definition, about mastering an ability to which, for a lot of things that can be made optimally it requires the dedication or mastering of a skill, like when people do speedruns, or runs of no losing lives, no losing energy, not using some kind of characteristic, discovering or exploting bugs, that makes a lot of the gameplays be and unique and irrepetible experience for each player(thing that has also been considererd part of the art definition sometimes) and how this as a whole is another expressive creation of humanity.

The meaning of the word art (and the word artist for that matter) still means what it used to. You’ve been wrong from the onset. You think that a person who is skilled and creative with his talents is not enough to be called an artist yet you mock me by calling me one? You think I’ll feign indignation while you call me dishonest? 

I know you are saying that it’s more common these days to say artist and mean visual artist. That doesn’t take away the FACT that artist can encompass many, (unlimited) fields of study. You ignored the history of the word art and how relevant it’s history is to how the word is still used today. Then you cherry pick the definition of artist while ignoring the totality of its meaning. I screenshot the webpage you referenced, you only cited the first part. It goes on to say what we are both saying. Like I said, anyone skilled at a craft is an artist. Like you are implying, artist especially means one who practices visual design.

You know I’m right. You are ignoring facts. Just admit that games are art, the creator of fine and entertaining gameplay is an artist, and players that light up their friends and admirer’s faces with their uncanny skill — are artist’s in their own right. 

If you can’t do that then that’s something you are going to need to work out on your own. 

Great responses by everyone in this discussion but I see there are some kind of mixing up of things, despite some answers already giving out some points as to why there isn't and only way to classify something as art:

- First: There isn't a closed or very small and well rounded definition of "art", as others have pointed out, even though there have been definitions that have tried to restrict what is considered art through the ages, to this day elements from several definitions still overlap when analyzing several kinds of expressions

- Second: its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures, what was/is considered artistic, aesthetic pleasing for one culture can not necessarily be the same for other culture.

- Third: Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences, and a master of that art was anyone that was considered to excell at their form of art.

- Fourth:  after the 17th century,  "aesthetic considerations" were considered prioritary by some groups, so "fine arts" were differentiated from other type of arts, like applied arts. Some snubbish people have used  this ever since to treat other artistic expressions as inferior.

- Fifth:  in "fine arts" it is not that art should be "useless", what it discussed in the theories of "fine arts" is that to qualify as "fine art", the pieces of art should be created with only aesthetic-seeking intention in mind unlike applied arts, this is ambiguous as hell for things considered in the second point, and I've got to say it, a lot of what is considered "fine art" has been evaluated under a very eurocentric point of view.

- Sixth: Historically(eurocentric again), the five main "fine arts" were painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, with theathre and dance being considered within performing arts, look at how this has changed to modern considerations, and again the thing here lies within the fact that even in "fine arts" there is too much broadeness to the definition

- Seventh: the  modern consideration of "fine arts" include painting, sculpture, architecture, music, litherature,  film, and now most encompass theathre and dance in one chunk as "performing", because as I said earlier: the ambiguity within the definitions causing overlappings or loopholes, the subjectivity in what someone considers that qualify in which category and who are the ones that decide it.

- Eigth: even more problems arise as new forms of expression arise that aren't comparable to previous ones or that doesn't seem to fit in the strict categorization, photo isn't truly the same thing as film nor as painting, yet there is a lot of photography producen with only artistic/aesthetic intention in mind, one user mentioned martial arts, while their central approach in most cases have historically been for self defense, fighting and killing, body wellness and fitness etc., the level of accuracy, dexterity and mastery of body mechanics required by several martial arts have now gone to be greatly used for different types of performances, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and friends used their abilities learned at chinese opera to gave us inimitable performances in their films, very different also from the what we saw at even "more artistic" movies like Hero with Jet Li, crouching Tigger hidden dragon, house of flying daggers or curse of the golden flower, every movie depicting different styles and uses of martial arts in different plots dealing with different themes, this also interwinds with the next point.

- Ninth: as I said lots of expressions can fall within more than one single categorization, music not only groups expression as "instrumental music", music done only with "human voice", done with both, now it also has the problem of what to make of pieces that include ambience sounds from enviroment, from music produced "inorganically" from synths, computers and other types of mediums that generate sounds that still are "pleasing to hear at", or what to make from performers that make improv and don't follow a predefined structure, to randomly generated music in computer and several other issues.

Also where do we group musical performances? like some Operas or theathre-like ones where there is a script to follow, there are dancers, actors and other kind of performer going on in a representation while music plays, or have central moments where chant carries the performance on, lots of operas by classical composers were written to be played specifically at or inspired by performing plays, now music also forms part of film, can be played live or recorded for posterior apreciation each one of those things now also formulate a new question as to what to make of it.

Poetry can interwind with music, with theathre, before it was considered separated but now is a part of literature as art. Some people have tried to break some expressions to try to see if they can categorize them as a single unit, but some others that follow other theories consider that the expression should be considered as a whole or they may be destroying the integrity of the artistic expression, or that again they are just trying to forcefully adhere to a very closed vision of art, or should we consider the martial arts epic dramas movies I mentioned separating each part?.

- Tenth: The fact that some form of artistic expression was conceived with only aesthetic purposes in mind trying to achieve the fine art definition, doesn't mean that other people wouldn't make use of it for other purposes or find some kind of utility in them, architecture theorist have for a long time now discussed that while looking for beauty in buildings is central, they can't be oblivious to the utility, security and societal responsability those buildings can or should offer.

same goes for the other fine arts, the fact that they could have been done with an "aesthetic-seeking" process in mind doesn't mean that someone can't use them for decoration, for entertainment, for education, for training, for historic archiving, for cultural, societal and other academic analysis and many other things including yes, selling, buying or advertising stuff.

There is a lot more to discusse of course, and some people have always tried to coerce things to some sense of hierarchy of some activities over the others but i kind prefer the more open definitions like:

"Art is any creative activity or product of the human being that has an aesthetic and/or expressive  purpose, through which ideas, emotions and, in general, a vision of the world are expressed, through various resources, such as plastic, linguistic, sound, corporeal and mixed.

Also 'art' designates any human activity carried out with care and dedication, or any set of rules necessary to optimally develop an activity. In that sense, art is synonymous with ability, skill, talent, experience."

to the excluding snubbish ways so they can still separate "themselves" from "us" as "the artistic comunity", "only artists can understand this", "ignorant people will not get this" etc., that has people and mussueums doing nausseating things classifying them as art between them, and keeping moving outlandish amounts of money for no reason, like the one nailing a banana to the wall and calling it art just because he did it, or Yokko Onno and the ear destroying sounds she spews with a microphone.

So i consider games as art? yes, by a lot of what has been already been said by others and what i have studied, both in the "artistic parts" that make them whether it be the music, the graphics art, the storylines, the enviroments including landscapes, buildings and other parts of the scenery, the characters interactions and now also the film like sequences and the voice and motion captured performances by actors, in a way this part recollects a lot of what has been studied and made in the previous developed artistic expressions, but also videogames have a central part in that by the way the creators can make incredible interactive experiences, this interactivity can interwind with the second part of the definition, about mastering an ability to which, for a lot of things that can be made optimally it requires the dedication or mastering of a skill, like when people do speedruns, or runs of no losing lives, no losing energy, not using some kind of characteristic, discovering or exploting bugs, that makes a lot of the gameplays be and unique and irrepetible experience for each player(thing that has also been considererd part of the art definition sometimes) and how this as a whole is another expressive creation of humanity.

I was reading there must be a line dividing what is art and is craft and design. I guess this line really exists, I'm a software engineer and software engineering isn't REALLY engineering, but it's design. It's creative, as I can write my code in a perfectly different way of another developer and we somewhat arrive at the same results, this make coding software craft and design for most part, even though it's still largely based on science. I, indeed, think this is what set software engineering and computer science apart

However people who design aesthetic concepts for websites and apps in general, they are concerned with how people will perceive their work, so here while we are still doing design we are starting to cross the line from design to arts. Games are similar, it has science components, design components and art components

When devs need to think how to solve vectorial problems to be able define the physics of a game, games are science
When devs need to think how the physics can be used to create levels and and challenges, games are design
When devs need to think how they can they can use sounds to creative immersive experience to communicate and evoke some kind of feelings, games are art

Makes sense for me