Games are art.

A well established developer made a comment several years ago about the validity of games being art. His name is Hideo Kojima of the famed Metal Gear and Zone of the Enders lore, his comment "I believe games are not art, and will never be art", makes me yearn to sit him down tied to a chair in front of 150" HDTV and show him the last great game that he obviously helped put his foot in. I refer to Metal Gear Solid 4, a game that "IS" art in motion, from gameplay to cutscene and right back to gameplay. What surprises me is that Hideo is denying his games the credit they deserve. To me, art is anything that's expressed in a medium, either on paper, tv, game console, whatever.

What Are Video Games Then.
Well the president of Rockstar, Sam Houser, said it best about 5 years ago, he stated "There's a total lack of understanding that games are an art form", games r the expressions of the ppl who make them, the developers, the programmers, the visual artist, the level designers, they all contribute a part of themselves in the production of games. To say that games aren't art diminishes the value of the time invested in them. It diminishes the effort and heart put into every pixel, every code, every texture. Now u could say that games r better than movies or vice versa all day, but the heart of both mediums is the same, they r both an expression of ideas from a persons perspective. The Titanic? Art. The recreation of a love/tragedy story. Max Payne? Art. The presentation of a love/tragedy story that's ongoing(Max Payne 3 due out soon), their both art. The ideas may be different but the intentions r the same, their being expressed. The characters, the story, the plots, all the humor and drama, all the twist and surprises, if a davinci or a rembrandt can involk such factors, so can a game. If Scorsece and Clint Eastwood can pour emotion into masterpieces why can't BioWare or Square Enix be in the same class?

Final Thoughts:
For a long time there has been a debate about the topic and whether or not games fit into a category of art. And for along time I was content in thinking they were, I remember the first game I ever played, Home Alone 2 for the NES, the game was stupid yes, but at that time I didn't care, until around the 50th time that I died on the first level. But it was awesome because I got play one of my fav movies of my youth. It was still an expression then and as much as it sucks today, its an expression now. I know I said this site is unbiased but this is personal to me, as an artist myself I hope to make games one day, and the last thing I want is sumone who doesn't even play games to come along and say "oh no, his games r good but there no Picasso", that would be a tragedy. Look all I'm saying is, games have to be art, too much time and desire goes into them for them not be. U watch an epic like 300 and say, wow, that was... EPIC. But compare it to Final Fantasy, which in my opinion is..... EPIC-er, but that's not saying I like one hate the other, im saying they both r expressing sumthing, whether a fact or a fiction, they r still expressions. What do u think?