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Video Games are an art form.

Thank you once again for the debate and thank you for a timely response. A: Video Games have goals You stated that all forms of art have goals, and you listed the Odessey and the Titanic as examples. When you listed these, I think that you may have misunderstood my argument. With the Odyssey and the Titanic, the goal can be interpreted any way one chooses. For example, in the Titanic, one might interpret the goal to be for the Titanic to sink. Others might think the goal is for Rose and Jack to fall in love. With all forms of art, it is up to the observer to interpret. In video games, this is not the case. If you do not interpret the video game in the sense that the video game created sought it to be, i.e. getting passed missions, then the video game does not proceed until you have accomplished this goal. Often times, there are even time limits on achieving these goals to further encourage doing the missions at a faster rate of speed. You can sit and look at a painting for hours and interpret it in all sorts of ways, but if you don't take the bomb to the checkpoint in 60 seconds in a video game, it'll blow up in your face. B: Deliberation You brought up cinema and photography as examples of things that could not happen in nature. This is not true. One could say the first movie was the memory of an event that took place. What was that memory? A series of picture played in the mind in a certain order that recalls the event. Thus, recalling the first time one drove a car would be an example of cinematica art. Same applies for photography. C: Creators of Art Once again, I believe you may have misinterpreted my argument. When I brought up this point, I was not refering to the numbers of creators. Allow me to try and explain it again. In standard art forms, the creator creates and and the observer observes. But in video games, the creator creates and the observer (gamer) can both observe (play) and interact (create) with the game. This differenciates video games from standard art forms, for video games allow the user to change and interact with the game, but standatd art forms do not allow the observer to change or interact with the art form. I like your argument about the perspective of the painting, but that does not go as far as to decide how the observer inteprets the painting, as does the game creator force the gamer to interpret the game. Also, the goals of a video game force the gamer to interpret it the way the creator wishes. In the examples provided, you mainly discussed the entertainment value of standard art forms, but video games have a measure of how entertaining they are to the gamer as well. Also, a kid can read a college level novel and interpret it as gibberish (we all know we tried when we were little lol), but in a video game the same kid needs to accomplish goals, i.e. interpret the game as the creator wishes, to continue to observe and interact with the game. I'm sorry to say that I have never played Bioshock, but I am an avid player of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty. It's graphics, and the graphics of other video games, may be interpreted as forms of art, but that is seperating the graphics from the sounds, gameplay, storyline, and other aspects of the video game. Seperatetly, they may be considered art forms, but video games are a bundle package. By throwing all of the aspects of art in one package, it disallows video games to be a form of art. I would also like to ask you to clarify why you brought up that all forms of art have their 'crap'. Yes, its true, you and many others would consider video games to be the newest forms of art, but the fact is that their not. Video games are much different from the standerd art forms, and though their individual aspects are forms of art, the bundle package defeats the purpose of an art form. I stand in firm resolution that video games are not forms of art, and thus urge the voters to vote Con.