Isn't an art from something which conveys emotion, expressed vividly through a variety of means. Or is art simply referring to something drawn or put on paper, illustrated in some way. But then you have sculptures and chiseled masterpieces.

Either way, i've seen videogames that seem like paintings come to life. Or highly detailed worlds brought to life using a variety of artistic details. Great level design with artistic design could be seen as an evolution of art, artwork brought to life and evolving, not still, in motion.

According to Google, which claims their definitions are provided by Oxford dictionary, art is "the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power". By that definition, I think that video games tick all the boxes; human creative skill and imagination is present in video games in various forms, like making unique character designs, buildings, environment, story, music, gameplay mechanics, artstyle etc. Video games are primarily experienced in visual form. And lastly, video games are appreciated by their beauty and emotional power, if we think about the award ceremonies for visual artstyle, graphics, games for impact, best narrative etc. as well as critic reviews, user score and personal experience. In general, video games are art in my opinion. Also, iirc same discussions had been made decades ago for cinematography, which is now considered an art form as well. We might need some more years to recognise video games as art.

I answered ”No” on the question in the poll.

And in general I stand by that even if there are some (few) exceptions.

Generally speaking if we look at the present day games are mass produced consumer goods more similar to a plastic garden flamingo that you buy at The Dollar Store than art. Games can contain assets that in some circumstances can be considered art, but in most cases they don’t.

A big reason for me saying this is that the industry as it stands today is extreamley formulaic, and as soon as you are formulaic you aren’t art you are massproduced consumer goods. Once in a while there comes along a game that truly does something new and then we have the exception that would be considered as art, the copycats that come after that follows the formula are not art.

There where more games that I would consider art in the early days of computer/video games, in part because the less formulaic approach, an example to this is a series like Zelda that nowaday (until BotW) has been extremely formulaic but if you look at the first 2 games there was no formula (yet).

But also because the bigger limitations in hardware. The hardware simply didn’t allow for grand visions so the developers had to come up with workarounds to try to get close to that grand vision and in the process actually sometimes created a piece of art in the process, an example of this that springs to mind is the first Silent Hill.

When it comes to storytelling I have not seen or experienced any game that even approeches the lowest level pulp stories. And to me John Carmacs quote from the mid 90ies: ”Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.” still holds true. To me it’s obvious that people raving about how good the story is in a game simply don’t read books.

All this apply to music and movies though 

And there are tons of books with really crappy stories. I don't think evert art needs to have quality, that are tons of mediocre artists and art pieces 

Regarding your comment on music and movies I totally agree. Avengers Endgame isn’t art, it’s entertainment and I enjoy it as it is but I would never call it art. On the music side most is entertainment as well and should be enjoyed as such (this is especially true for pop/radio music).

Regarding books (fiction) I never said that all books have good stories and I guess I wasn’t really clear that I didn’t claim all fiction books are art. What I meant is that even books with bad stories have deeper and better storytelling than games. Games in my experience (I haven’t played them all) are simplistic.

Try The Last of Us 2, it has a simple plot but the storytelling goes deep. The screenplay is clever, think like an animated movie. 

Regarding the rest of your comment, you seem to place value in art, which is, with all due respect, a very shallow definition, reaching any kind of quality score is not requirement for art specially because art can't be scored in any arbitrary metric, when something cross a line of being just entertainment and becomes art? There are tons of music and movies that are now classics were regarded as nothing more than just entertainment when originally released. 

Yes, but not in a graphic sense.

From my perspective people confuse culture and cultural value with art. 

Computer games are a part of our culture and have a cultural value, but most of them are not art. 

Well, elevator music is also art, just not *good* art.

Be careful with everything that precedes any concept with "true": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

But yeah, a lot of artists don't want to do anything functional, in fear of it being picked up and used by companies to make a lot of money and this compromising their artistic vision. An example here is Hello Kitty. It is undoubtful an artful creation, but as a franchise also a big moneymaker. Is Yuko Shimizu - the artist behind the concept - happy with the use of her character? I don't know. But it doesn't matter for the decision that Hello Kitty is a product of art.

But you could argue, Hello Kitty itself is non-functional, even though the character is printed mostly on functional products. But a lot of architecture is functional (as architecture usually is), yet also many especially historic architecture is very well considered art. I mean, the Colloseum in Rome had clearly a function, yet it is considered historic art. I wonder if back then some roman artists considered the architect of the colloseum as a sell-out, because they designed for lots of money.