See, I think that's where our concepts of "art" fail us. The word "art" has this value connotation to it. Like that shit you buy at the craft fair isn't art, but the Mona Lisa is fucking art. But that's bollocks. There can be good art or bad art, or there can be a single piece of art that two different people fervently believe is good and bad, respectively. Calling something "art" isn't a value judgment, even though we use the word that way colloquially. Saying that video games aren't "art" isn't a slam. It's the same as saying that video games aren't pastry. Because pastry, like art, is a thing, and video games don't meet the definition of what that thing is. Is that chair purple? No, it's green. Well, then it's not fucking purple, and no amount of arguing can change that.
Art and games — video or otherwise — are two different things. A game cannot be art, and art cannot be a game.
Now, the technology that permits video games — computer graphics, all that shit — can certainly be used to create art. Hell, human feces and a blank concrete wall can be used to create art. It might not be good art, but it can certainly be art.
But if you're using a computer to create art, then you're not making a game. And if you're making a game, then that game cannot be an artwork, because it's a game instead.
But for like then three-billionth time, if we change our definition of "art," then all bets are off. Shadow's definition — which I have no problem with — is "a deliberate arrangement of elements to invoke a sense of," and then he named some emotions or mental states. We can quibble about what that list of emotions or mental states should be, but that's just working on the details. The crucial word in that definition is "to invoke." Art is that which is done for the purpose of being art. I know that's circular, but if we go with my definition it becomes "for the purpose of being evaluated on aesthetic merits" and if we go with Shadow's it's "for the purpose of invoking" whatever emotion or state we mean. A game isn't created with that sense of purpose; it has a different — and equally valid! — sense of purpose. But it's not art. It's amusement, or whatever you want to call it. It's a game.
