Somewhere out there on the internet lives a forum that I inhabit from time to time. It's quite a good forum, filled with intelligent people who are always respectful of one another. I swear I'm telling the truth! Now, on this forum are the occasional discussions of whether video games are or are not art, not unlike everywhere else on the internet. Like everywhere else on the internet, this debate is always the same. Like everywhere else on the internet, I always get sucked into it because even though I'm completely sick of the topic, I hate myself or something I guess shut up.

So I walked into the debate once it had reached two pages, which is a decent amount of debating without being overwhelming. I read and I read and, wouldn't you know, people likened games to all sorts of other media and all sorts of other kinds of games (sports and such) as if this proved their points.

Rather than force you to read all of these other opinions, though, I'll do what any self-respecting ego-maniacal jerk would do and we'll eat dessert first and then completely ignore the rest of the meal. First I'll give you a spoon and a bowl, which is a very strained metaphor that is supposed to let you know that I'll quote the last two things I read before I launch into my ridiculously long-winded and self-important response, which is a very strained metaphor for ice cream for dinner! Because I'm sort of an adult and I can do whatever I want as long as my girlfriend approves or doesn't find out!

Here is the first guy. "Anyway, not to be curt but I think the discussion is closed. Games are art. A lot of them of are bad art, sure, and some are good."

Now here is the second. "So why can't some games be categorized as "not art"? Is computer solitaire art? Is bejewelled art?"

Nothing wrong with some games not being art. Some are just abstract rules created for the pure enjoyment of operating within those abstract rules. Tetris is awesome.

This leads to some games being like sports. It's all about technical skill, not in understanding a message. Many games are played with representational figures that help illustrate the objectives of the game. There's no reason for you to be anything but a colored square that can move in a few specific ways, but it makes it easier to understand if you're a guy who can run, jump and shoot. There's a tiny bit of art there, but it's still mostly about mastering the rules of the game. Super Mario Bros. and Team Fortress 2 are awesome.

Some games are puzzles. There's no losing, there's only getting stuck at a point that you can't figure out and never completing the puzzle. And like most puzzles, the more pieces you are able to put together, more of the picture becomes revealed to you. It can be a pretty picture that is simply there to reward you, or it can be a meaningful image that makes you feel a real emotion or have a real thought. Braid and Portal are awesome.

There are even games that are more akin to music. Sure, there are rules and structure, but they are only there for you to have something to experiment with. There don't need to be penalties. You can move through the world any way you want to explore or create something beautiful, or you can break the rules and alter the structure to create something new, exciting, and probably hideous. Sometimes there is meaning, sometimes there is only aesthetic enjoyment. Neither is better. It just depends on what you want to experience or create right now. The Sims, Flower, and Garry's Mod are awesome.

Often, you'll play a game that is like a movie or a book. It's there to tell you a story. Like all stories, it might be there to give you something to simply enjoy while it lasts, it may be something to need to decipher, it could be there to teach you something, or perhaps it exists to express an idea that you may or may not agree with. Brutal Legend, Half-Life 2, and Mother 3 are awesome.

Then there are the games that are not like any other media. They exist to give you an experience. These games want you to feel something, whether it be a specific emotion or what it's like to be a completely different person. These games are fantasy. They're escapism, but there's no reason that escapism can't be beautiful and meaningful, even when it's violent and meaningless. To walk in the shoes of another is to learn and grow, and to do this without the dedication, danger, depression or dollars it would take to do in real life is something best afforded by video games. Rock Band 2, Grand Theft Auto 4, and Shadow of the Colossus are awesome.

None of these categories is better than any other, and many of these games can easily fit into many of these categories. Hell, many of these categories can be related to the different forms of media mentioned in the other categories. That's the point, though. Art is subjective and the definition is always changing. It's a nebulous idea at its most well-defined. It's not a binary choice between "art" and "not art" so when I hear the old argument come up about whether games are art or not, it's not surprising to see most of the debate hinge on the very definition of art, with no clear consensus on where to draw the line because the definition of art does not have any hard lines. It's more like a spectrum where the closer you are to the center, the bigger the A in art gets.

While that's all well and good in the world of art, what strikes me most is that nobody realizes that everyone has a different definition of video game. You can't look at any one game and say that it embodies everything that every single game in the world is going to be apart from the absolute basic components of being interactive in some way and being played on an electronic device with a screen. What happens when you have a video game that doesn't even require the screen? Is it not still a video game in the same way that Storm is part of the X-Men? The concept of what makes music, books, movies and video games is almost as formless as what makes art.