[kibwen]

I think there's an important insight hiding here. Art-world folk are perhaps overeager to shoehorn games into their definition of "art" (which is naturally rather nebulous). Just because a piece of software has NES-era graphics and allows you to use the keyboard to move a sprite around does not, to my mind, instantly qualify it as a game.

By a similar token, a box containing a blank white board and a single six-sided die does not instantly attain the status of a board game. And even though it is, perhaps, art--and fully something I'd expect to see in a board game exhibit in a museum of modern art--I wouldn't begrudge board game enthusiasts (of which I know many) if they grumbled at how such a "useless" exhibit was soaking up attention that could have been devoted to a game that was more substantial, more influential, and more representative of what board games really are.

But at the end of the day we're still just disagreeing over the definition of "art", which is perhaps the least constructive argument that has ever taken place in the history of humanity. :)