Are video games valid forms of art?

Tonight, I started going through my creative coffin, a black, well traveled suitcase, with some broken wheels, that I keep on the top shelf in my wardrobe. It is filled with scrapbooks, journals, reference papers, artwork, musings, poetry, and other creative expulsions that I've wasted paper on throughout the years.

Going through previous creative work can be a confronting, yet cathartic experience, mixed with a certain sense of What the fuck was I thinking?

Among the papers I wrote for University, I found an essay that I wrote - it was titled (rather elaborately) To What extent do video games or interactive electronic games conform to the notions of art? How do video games conform to these prescribed notions? With cinema the art of the 20th century, to what extent can video games be considered the art of the 21st century?

Image sourced from Pixabay

I thought this would be a relevant, still interesting read. I was sorely mistaken. The essay received a high distinction, the highest possible grade, but now, ten years later, fails to stand up and make a grand statement about why we should consider that video games are art.

It was a construction for me to escape into, and develop my then degree into something that was relevant for me - someone who wanted to tell stories through the media of video games; and convince the institution that there was sufficient maturity in the field of video game narratives, art work, musical scores, and conceptual thinking; that video games were to be considered interactive, collaborative works of art.

Albeit, highly produced, commercialised, and accessible works of art.

It seems at least one man at the institution saw my logic; giving me a high distinction for my efforts. In retrospect, I barely scratched the surface of the topic - except citing the ignorance of one author, and the open-mindedness of another. The essay was trying to introduce the video game into an institutionalised and formal capital A Art environment; where I don't think it should belong.

BioShock: Infinite has direction, plot, depth and complexity beyond most Art.

Sure, there are excellent, fine examples of games that as standalone pieces, can be considered art, BioShock Infinite, Deus Ex, Planescape Torment, probably Zelda, and many others; but we're further along now. Art, in my mind is something that is disruptive, universal, and yet, a shared experience that is not quite shared.

I'll look at a painting and think one thing. Someone else will look at a painting and think another thing. Some people will see the same thing. Video games on the other hand, are more prescriptive than the elusiveness of a painting. You can still have an experience; and derive a great conceptual, intellectual exploration of ideas through a game; but increasingly; this is a rarer and rarer experience.

We also live in a time where games are no longer analysed on their constituent parts in depth - and you'd find it rare to have somone comment, for example, on the Path of Exile skill tree as being reflective of the multitude of choices you make in life leading to some penultimate moment - the fact that in order to specialise at something; you must devote all your energies to one thing, and one thing alone, or you have to start from scratch again.

Does this not do more to describe the human condition (whatever the fuck that is), than a painting hanging on a wall? You tend to linger in a game world for a far greater period of time than what you would ever study a single painting or film. Yet, you experience a compressed struggle in a game, and a deeply intimate one at that; which no other art form can emulate.

Do you think that there is an argument that the video game can be art?
What game would you consider to be art?