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"Are Games Art?" and the Intellectual Value of Design (timconkling.com)
itwbennett writes: Tim Conkling is an independent game developer whose current project, Antihero, is a strategy game about running a thieves' guild in a Dickens-inspired Victorian city. Recently he had the opportunity to talk to (i.e., was held captive by) an elderly and 'accomplished playwright, set designer, and painter' who quickly dismissed game design as 'not art.' The question of games being art or not isn't a new one. Roger Ebert was on the 'games are not art' bandwagon in 2010. More important to Conkling, who wrote about this interaction in a recent blog post, is the notion that any 'intentionally designed' piece is worthy of intellectual respect. "Nobody would ever seriously write off, for example, an Eames chair or a Gehry building; whether these objects fit some random definition of 'art' is inconsequential to their perceived cultural value." writes Conkling.
"art" could mean just about anything in English, so yes video games can be art.
Other languages are different. For example in Korean, art means painting/drawing/sculpture. Music is not art, it's music. So for Koreans, video games are not art.
I find it hard to understand why "are games art?" strikes anyone as enough of a question to even be asked. Unless you hew to a far narrower definition of 'art' than even most critics and artists do; it seems pretty obvious that they have the potential to qualify.
This doesn't mean that most of them are anything but sophomoric schlock produced entirely for mercenary purposes; but the same is true of music, film, photography, etc. and nobody seriously advances the "Music can't be art; because boy bands and pop tarts!" position or argues that Uwe Boll refutes the artistic status of film.