Okay, so it’s more of a who cares if it’s art but the authors does put up some arguments for why games aren’t quite art yet.
Personally I disagree. A large part of the argument seems to be that society as a whole chooses what is art and what isn’t, but I disagree. I don’t think that when deciding whether or not movie making was an art form that society chose first and then people started analyzing film techniques and writing books about them. I think it happened the other way around and we are in an age where games and the elements that make a game have had books written about them.
The author doesn’t take into account that video games are little over 40 years old. What most people know and understand about games has comes from a trial and error sense of discovery, unlike film and fiction writing which has had a considerably longer time to develop. The artist who develop games also aren’t using their skills to write about games, but rather actually make them. Well most of them. Someday, a game designer will retire and maybe starting writing about games for a well respected magazine or something, but the fact is, there are people right now that do that. There are books being written about the art of game design (I have a few), and there are definitely plenty of talks about games as both an art form and as a technical science at conventions like the GDC.
Also, art only matters to the people who study it. I studied pre-modern literature and I apply it to game design, so naturally I see pieces the Dante’s The Divine Comedy and certain video games as art. I couldn’t tell you what films are art though because I’ve had barely any film training. The consumer, for the most part, can’t appreciate games as something artist which is really snobbish to say I am aware. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people praise or bash a game without ever giving a proper reason why, which isn’t a problem because no one should ever tell someone that a game can’t be fun, but don’t talk about the design of a level without citing examples. Don’t talk about mechanics without being able to dissect what is good and what is bad about the rules. Don’t talk about a game unless you understand the rules and rhetoric.
