[klikbeep]

Video games might not be art, but they are certainly better than art. Take the Mona Lisa (considered by many to be the most important work of art). Although certainly pretty in its own right, that prettiness is locked within a static form . . . no amount of effort on the part of the viewer can change its smile, or adjust its hair color, or make it talk to you.

Flash-forward to video games. Now you are the artist, solving puzzles and powering up your character to gain the advantage. The tools of the trade (workstations, voice actors, chiptunes, etc) are used effortlessly to do this.

So while games may not be Art (I HATE THAT TERM SO MUCH) they are a lot better than it for the reasons above, a new paradigm for us all.

[klikbeep]

[klikbeep]

Another way that video games are better than art is how when you collect stuff in video games, you can get more stuff. For example, in Tony Hawk, if you collect all the video tapes you can unlock previously inaccessible portions of the game. Art comes up short again in this area: no matter how much stuff you collect (and most art doesn't allow you to do this at all) you can never see more than what is right there in the first place.

Probably no artists have thought about doing something interesting like that, because they were too busy shopping at expen$ive fashion stores for glasses and eating fish eggs or some shit and going "oh look at me, buy my art so I can make money, la la." I make an exception for fan-based art based off of games because that actually adds something to the game experience (i.e. more depth and deeper analisys of the game/characterizations)