[the_af]

I don't think this addresses the parent post, though. For one, no-one I know of wants to consider games as solely artistic artifacts. What some in the game development community are asking for is the recognition of games as a valid art form; this is orthogonal to their (admittedly dominant) commercial aspects. In my opinion, more misguided is to consider them as simply mindless entertainment whose content and message is too shallow to be discussed.

Criticism and analysis of games as cultural artifacts is both valuable and needed. Games are like mainstream movies in this regard, where we accept that even mainstream Hollywood movies have a message that can be dissected and analyzed.

[Kalium]

My problem is that games-as-commercial-artifacts and games-as-art both miss the point. Games are both, as well as entertainment and cultural artifacts. Criticism and analysis needs to consider all these things or miss important aspects required for understanding.

For instance, the question is not just what message a movie conveys. The question also includes why. Similarly, there are entire game mechanisms that exist solely for economic reasons (IAPs, gating, etc.) that cannot be understood through artistic lenses.

[the_af]

> My problem is that games-as-commercial-artifacts and games-as-art both miss the point. Games are both, as well as entertainment and cultural artifacts. Criticism and analysis needs to consider all these things or miss important aspects required for understanding.

That's why reviewers can attempt to do both. Just like they do with movies :)

The problem is that videogames are relatively new and people are not yet convinced they can be reviewed as art. It's safer to stick to them being just entertainment whose content is pointless to analyze.