i disagree video games are a form of art. A game being to immersive is like saying the monalisa is an incomplete painting. Censorship in this world has just become to stupid and strict on the media but doesnt restrict people like the idiots at the westboro church from "thanking god for dead soldiers" and protesting soldier's funerals. Oh, there is actually a story in ManHunt 2.

As for your pro gamer friends, I'm a former pro in Unreal Tournament 2004, for PC games we care about fast framerates with no lag, we will turn our games to low graphical settings and 800 by 600 resolution. For consoles we should have to suffer from lag, and framerate issues so graphics should be able to free to create wonderful worlds displaying each developer's own art styles.

What does any of this have to do with Nintendo? Wii devs are free to create and explore and render their own glorious art styles. Zelda fans would say Twilight Princess' art direction was magnificent, and it had no framerate issues at all, I might add.

Who gives a rats ass that TP wasn't drawn and textured for 1080p?

Several problems:

1) If you want to make art, you will make it on the PC. Why compromise your art and make games on the inferior PS3 console?

2) I sincerely hope games become an art form. The problem is it isnt there yet. The popular games today are incredibly violent, shallow, and aimed almost entirely at 15-25 year old males. God of War is a great example, as is Gears of War. In fact, any game where you go out and kill hundreds if not thousands of bad guys, beat "bosses" and ultimately "win" are pretty much not art. They're young male fantasies, like Spider Man or Dragon Ball Z -- shallow action stuff intended to be "cool."

If this were a serious art form, educated adults would be playing these games, and by and large, they're not. The games you love are played mostly by teenagers and 23 year olds. Adults ARE playing the Wii, however, which basically suggests you have it backwards.

For 15 years, video games have made almost no progress in capturing the educated adult market. Now, with the Wii, they are. What this suggests is that the Wii has a chance to be an art form, and it's the Playstation brand (and Gamecube, and Xbox, and N64, and any other brand that failed to capture the adult market) that is failing to be art.

Your Mona Lisa example is a great one, because it almost entirely annihilates your position. How many teenage boys do you know that are profoundly interested in Renaissance-era art? Classical painting of any kind? I've known maybe one or two. It's a serious art form, and it's almost entirely dominated by well educated adults. As are all the other serious art forms I can think of -- art house movies, canonized plays such as those of Shakespeare, canonized novels such as The Great Gatsby. These are things adults enjoy, because high art is complicated and, generally, not very fun, as the goal is to engage the mind.

By contrast, the top games on the PS and 360 (Metal Gear, Gears of War, God of War, Killzone) are almost entirely avoided by adults, and largely played by teenagers, especially male ones. This suggests that what you call "art" isn't really art at all -- it's just a young male fantasy.

Again, it's interesting that we both want the same thing SSJ: video games to be something higher than games for little kids.

It's just that I don't see Playstation-style games getting us there, and there is zero evidence to suggest it will. These games have had their chance: ten years of Playstation dominance, and we are no closer to capturing the adult market.

But within 6 months of the Wii's release, we're already seeing adults come much more strongly into the market. This should make alarm bells go off in your head: you've got it backwards.

The most ironic quote of the 21st century. 

Pyramids on DeNile. Wii exponentializes the immersion. I think Piccolo destroyed the moon again because saiyajins seem to be losing their power. That or Yajirobe's out here cutting tails.

(these are all Dragonball Z references by the way)

John Lucas 

 for one. I love Dragon Ball Z and cant wait till Bandai gets the license for the franchise like its supposed to in 2008 so theres a DBZ game on the PS3 =]

How can you say it isnt art? Every character is sculpted then re-sculpted into a program then slowly modeled into a full moving creature. Textures are created in photoshop. The music for the game is written and specifically tuned to that part of the game.

Honestly I really dont understand why adults avoid games like God of War or Final Fantasy in which have story lines that are enjoyable to follow through with and see what happens. Games like Wii Play are basically like board games, no real depth to it. It can be fun to play but after a while you realize nothing else will happen. Oh wait you can unlock a diamond ball. After that theres really nothing to do. The main reason why the Wii is so popular is because like DDR you are forced to move your body and lose wait and unfortunately theres so many people who are to lazy to just eat less and go to a gym think its the greatest diet thing there is and the media basically made it so thats what most people think the greatest part of it is. My friend's grandma bought herself a Wii, why? just for Wii Sports. Why? because it lets her work out. Does she plan on buying any more games? no, not even Wii Play. How many more people around the world are there that has the same mindset? who knows, probably quite a bit since for how many consoles have been sold software sales are lower then they should be. 

 You know why this argument will always be idiotic?  Because it assumes that nothing spectacular was made before the PS3 and 360 and that every game before then looked like complete ass.

Also, you don't need to have machines capable of the most awesome graphics ever as long as you've got style.  No More Heroes, God of War, Okami, Odin Sphere, RE4, Windwaker, Katamari Damacy, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and many many more will always look better than things like Call of Duty, Madden, Oblivion and all those other hyper realistic games will always be inferior to those previous games because they just don't have style.

 As for Heavenly Sword, that game couldn't be more generic and cliche.  I've watched all the videos for it and it does look interesting, pretty, and fun but it has no real style and everything just screams I'm a copy of something else or Hi! I'm not creative in any way at all.  Some of the things they are doing with facial expressions is cool but lets look at Windwaker again.   Link in that game has some of the most amazing facial expressions ever and that was don't on the Gamecube.

Artform argument: this is plain ridiculous.  Just coz it's "art" doesn't mean all the adults like them.  If "art" is a big deal, artists won't be struggling so much.

Only the trained few will appreciate "art".  It is an acquired taste; like wine and the likes.  If a commoner can pick up and understand art in a snap, it's not art.  Some say art need the general appeal; sure, but that's one-dimensional.  In short, art doesn't sell.  

Art needs depth.  Beautiful graphics is not depth.  It's merely the media, and only skin deep.  You can be wowed and amazed, but it's not art.  Art needs to offer new insights.

Do I appreciate art?  Sure, I've been trained in classical music for 20 years now.  But ironically, it's very exhausting for me to listen to classical music.  I immediately go in analysis mode, and it's not always enjoyable.  It's nice once in a while to enjoy the experience, but I can't take too much of it.

Similarly, I can't take "real" art in large quantities.

Games don't need to become artforms.  They just need to be games.  A little bit a depth would be nice, and once in a while an artsy game would be nice for the diversity.  Like "Sadness", I imagine it's an artsy game, although I heard it's also got substantial violence.  Oh well.

Ultimately, adults are kids.  We just want to have fun.  Otherwise we'd all be going to museums instead of bars.  But our notion of fun is more qualified, less mindless, and a tad bit more sophisticated.  

Video games won't take over adults' lives.  It's just a small part of it.  

Just like the arts. 

================================== 

Now here's the practical issue.  The chances of a profit-seeking video game publisher producing art-like games is low; andwhen they do so, you can sure as hell bet it won't be a $10 million endeavor.  It will by necessity have a small budget.  There is no way complicated architecture like PS3 is gonna get the nod for developing this kind of game.  It will be on the least expensive platform, i.e. the PC, unless there's an immersive experience that the PC cannot offer, which leaves us the Wii with its controls.  Obviously, the better the tools an artist has at his disposal the better, but graphics--the tool--is secondary--if an artist can't work around that, he's more of an engineer.

 Spent so much time on the first part I completely forgot to mention this: has the PS3 done that yet?  I know there were Gamecube and PS2 games (and even NES and SNES games) that pulled me in but there hasn't been anything for the PS3 that would do that to me yet.  As for the Wii, they have RE4 (but I suppose you're not going to count that for good enough reasons) and Rayman's style actually pulled me in.  Super Paper Mario had an absolutely amazing style that can not be ignored that pulled you into the game as well.