[Batsu]

What matters is that the NEA now officially considers video games worthy of artistic merit, which is pretty damn cool.

Since the first I heard of this (apparent) debate, I wondered why artwork, music, and story were all works of art separately, but the three of them together with a form of interaction by a person was not. The consideration of video games as a form of art doesn't seem like a judgement to me, it seems more like a rationalization.

[sp332]

If the game is just a delivery mechanism for "art" (like the music or visual design or whatever), then the game itself is not art any more than an art gallery is art. I've always held that games can be art as games and not just as packages of visuals and audio. Because the act of playing the game can be affective. Like when you had to burn the companion cube in Portal. That kind of experience can't be conveyed in other forms of art.