"as well as a rebuttal coming later this week from a prominent game designer"

Oh gods, this really didn't need a rebuttal. I mean, what are they going to say? "Games aren't art?" Well that's patently false, and there are too many examples here to name, and there's lots of examples of art that's interactive, some even having goals. "Games are art, and the debate *is* important?" Considering that some game creators who espouse that games aren't art are also sometimes the ones who are making artistic games (Metal Gear Solid 2 fulfilled its artistic goals much better than it fulfilled its gameplay potential), it's hard to say that the debate doesn't really do anything except distract game creators. Don't worry that you're not making 'art' with your game. Team Ico's been making art for years and it hasn't bothered you, and it doesn't bother movie directors who just want to give their audience a good time.

What's far more interesting is that it's an EA executive that's saying this. Is it me, or have the other publishers started outstripping EA in the evilness stakes?

All new mediums and ideas are shit upon by the status quo until they die off and then future generations look back on the best stuff as true art while new mediums and ideas in their time are overlooked.

"Instead, I am merely suggesting a strategy about how games could actually come to be accepted as art."

As he says, it's all about context. Go into any contemporary art gallery or show in the continent and you will be always encounter some form of "installation art". Mixed media pieces that react to the visitor in various ways, that can be interfaced with and controlled. Characteristics that, beyond all the fluff, are the very essence of digital video games.

Indeed, some artists are combining that sentiment with their cultural video game upbringing already. Cory Arcangel's "Super Mario Clouds" comes to mind. And if that's good enough to be put into the context of a gallery, then I don't see a need to develop a strategy for it to *eventually* be considered art. The context is already there.

But most, if not all, art works include messages, hence a saying that art is communicating. Even if there is a great "setting" to present something as an art, if the work itself isn't sending any message that can be heard by audience, that piece will be disregarded as nothing but junk. (Urinal had the message, "anything can be art." Many contemporary arts are ignored because they cannot be understood at the time.)

In that light, what about today's games? While many tells stories, what's the message? I find it hard to hear creator's voice in any games, and even if they do, such as MGS series, it's told via cutscene or in full-blown text, which is not really a "game" but rather different medium included inside a package we recognize as "game."

I find game as a medium a long way from achieving a real "art" form.

^ I suggest you check out "Passage". Or, even more indirectly, I find Introversion's "Defcon" a surprisingly powerful -- using mere game mechanics, audio, and simple graphics (no cut-scenes or story here) -- and chilling statement about the futility of nuclear war. Your mileage may vary.

The debate over games as art may be important in the hearts of gamers but it is just a proxy for the truly important debate--are games worthy of first amendment rights. We can let the former pass by but we can not let censorship infringe upon this burgeoning medium. I won't pay much mind to someone who refuses games the label of art, but when that refusal is an underhanded attempt at regulation, that demands action.