Thanks for reminding me that I survived that shit stain on history that was 2009 to 2014. Seeing this pop up everyday on Reddit as well as the astroturfed support for every colour revolution going including Kony 2012.

homo ludens - this guy needs to read it.

I actually have come around to games not being art, but my argument is very different from the vast majority of people.

Games aren't art in the same way a piano isn't art and a guitar isn't art and a paintbrush isn't art. It's an instrument to create art, and while we can engage with pedantry over whether pianos, guitars, and paintbrushes can themselves be art, nobody seriously considers them art beyond "good craftsmanship automatically becomes art." It's the music being played by the piano and the painting being painted with the paintbrush that is art.

So what is the game equivalent of music and paintings? It's essentially every single instance of the game being played by the player. That is the art. The any% speedrun is the art. The speedrunner is the artist. The actual game is the instrument in which the speedrunner the artist brings forth their art the speedrun into the world.

It's stunning how games map so well with musical instruments, especially with PC games vs pianos:

• game dev = composer

• game engine = physical construction of the piano

• level design = sheet music

• saving = playing the piece at a particular measure instead of the very beginning

• mods = writing on the sheet music

• speedrunning = playing the piece with a much faster tempo because you're bored playing the same piece over and over again at the same andante tempo

• sound and visual from the game = sound and vibrations from the piano

• keyboard and mouse = keyboard and pedal

• gaming chair = piano bench

• videogame player = piano player

• "I play videogames" = "I play the piano"

You could probably set up a rhythm game played on a PC keyboard and a piano program also played on a PC keyboard with identical keystrokes and identical music being played. But the miscategorization would have people believe that the rhythm game itself is the art and not just an instrument like the piano program.

lol this great man theory liberal thinks one person made the rules to soccer.

i don't fuck with the maximalist position, if hopscotch is art then the category "art" is completely useless

"Is X art" is usually a question that ends in elitist bullshit that reinforces "true" art as solely the realm of the finicial elite. The only "true" art disciplines also happen to be ones which require the artist to have an independent source of income or risk destitution. "A gentleman never works". Meanwhile any art that serves a practical function, that is easily with in the reach of the lower classes, is shunned. You don't find many nepo trust fund babies doing wedding photography or sculpting miniatures or drawing weird porn (An extreme example, but the truth is that furry commission you just finished will probably bring the owner more actionable joy than anything they will ever see in a gallery).

This goes beyond the commiditification of art, although it is exacerbated by it, this is about practicality. Demystified art, that is still tied to its use value and serves a function, is a threat to the idea that art is somehow elevated beyond the realm of mere trade and is instead a mystic priesthood caste.

Trade artists are treated as lepers both by the backstabbing art grant gladiators fighting over the coins the government tosses into their gutter and by the "serious" working world. This is why we see industries like game development chew these people up and spit them out.

The worst part of video games are Gamers™ and greedy corpos

Many games have substantial co-creative events or storytelling that works very differently as a game (in a good way) than it would using other narrative mediums. There is no question that this kind of expression, appreciation, and co-creatiin is just as much art as any other medium. Plus don't forget, much of the critics raising the definition of art to incredible heights are undistinguished from those who think one piece of art is seminal and another crap entirely through old rich guy PR fights (which the industry and history try to avoid contending with too openly lest the sham be ubiquitously acknowledged). If a commissioned portrait to entertain some noble fuck is automatically art no matter how little the painter cared, intentionally turning out schlock, then a carefully crafted interactive experience intended to (and succeeding to) create joy, aesthetic pleasure, and engagement is at least at that level.

Also just like all other art, the big funded works follow the ruling class' interests in one way or another and most is whatever they decided to buy, meaning it is frequently soulless - and through no fault of the artists. "I made a big-ass lollypop sculpture that's now in the city center" has its correlary in Yet Another FPS and 30 Fortnite clones.

If Piss Christ and Duchamp's Fountain are "art," I'm pretty sure Wii Bowling is too

I don't think Ebert was right about video games not being art, rather they're an art form still in its awkward adolescent stage at this point, but I have to admire how he absolutely bodied the nerds he argued with