Are games art?

The question actually is, does art exist?
 
Since games include all the elements from films and interaction, which also includes the elements from photography and/or painting, music and story telling, people tend to think that it is really hard to define art in any reasonable way setting aside video games. Even in the denial of games being art, there is undeniably a lot of art embedded in games (as in the soundtracks), and then some interactivity that people are supposed to enjoy, and many people probably do so since they spend voluntarily hours on that.

But the whole discussion is completely pointless without a definition of art. Art is, for each person, what (s)he decides to consider art. Thus games are art, for me, it is a more personal enriching experience to play theme hospital and learn about queue theory than staring at the Mona Lisa, and for me it is more emotionally inspiring the personal sacrifice of Karan S'jet than the Barber of Seville.

Art was just the "state of the art" or the top-notch way to express some information. Then some people decided to attribute some added value to some pieces of information and call it art in a mystical way. That is subjective, that means that it is in the eye of the beholder, not in the thing itself. That's why there is no objective definition for art. Art is not objective. Art doesn't exist, people just confer that status to some things.

That's enough writing for something that doesn't exist, for which there isn't even a consensual definition, which makes it fictional and undefined, great. I just hope my taxes are spent on real things and not wasted with the excuse of promoting something they decided to call 'art'.
 
PS: provenance:  I just saw in penny arcade a post about that, linking to another blog and many things, but nothing new. I replied to a blog post, and then I decided to create this one, because I like this point and I like to keep this argument, and because comments there are over three thousaand! (and nobody will notice anyway). BTW: I'll link any games mentioned in the comments as examples of games with great artistic value, thx.
 
PD: added assassin's creed for the scenery.

The question actually is, does art exist?
 
Since games include all the elements from films and interaction, which also includes the elements from photography and/or painting, music and story telling, people tend to think that it is really hard to define art in any reasonable way setting aside video games. Even in the denial of games being art, there is undeniably a lot of art embedded in games (as in the soundtracks), and then some interactivity that people are supposed to enjoy, and many people probably do so since they spend voluntarily hours on that.

But the whole discussion is completely pointless without a definition of art. Art is, for each person, what (s)he decides to consider art. Thus games are art, for me, it is a more personal enriching experience to play theme hospital and learn about queue theory than staring at the Mona Lisa, and for me it is more emotionally inspiring the personal sacrifice of Karan S'jet than the Barber of Seville.

Art was just the "state of the art" or the top-notch way to express some information. Then some people decided to attribute some added value to some pieces of information and call it art in a mystical way. That is subjective, that means that it is in the eye of the beholder, not in the thing itself. That's why there is no objective definition for art. Art is not objective. Art doesn't exist, people just confer that status to some things.

That's enough writing for something that doesn't exist, for which there isn't even a consensual definition, which makes it fictional and undefined, great. I just hope my taxes are spent on real things and not wasted with the excuse of promoting something they decided to call 'art'.
 
PS: provenance:  I just saw in penny arcade a post about that, linking to another blog and many things, but nothing new. I replied to a blog post, and then I decided to create this one, because I like this point and I like to keep this argument, and because comments there are over three thousaand! (and nobody will notice anyway). BTW: I'll link any games mentioned in the comments as examples of games with great artistic value, thx.
 
PD: added assassin's creed for the scenery.