I thought of this question late last night as I was playing LA Noire. I saw all the detail of it and thought of other games such as Heavy Rain and Shadow of Colossus. Tell me what you think.
Video games are an art form because of the way they affect all of us. I mean, there's no better display of the epic battle between Capitalism and Communism than the sub-plots and symbolism of the 2007 First-Person Shooter Bioshock (and people say FPS' are mindless killing >8^D)
Games that visually assault you, like the mentioned El Shaddai: Ascensin of the Metatron (awesome name!) or Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (More Awesome Name!), or I MAED A GAME WITH ZOMBIES INIT!!! (EVEN MORE AWESOME NAMES!) or Bastion (End awesome names...) are art in the simplest of forms, the visuals and aesthetics are striking enough to be incredibly memorable. And yes, sometimes game graphics are so good (See Crysis, Battlefield, From Dust) or their aesthetics crazy enough (Super Meat Boy, Crackdown, Borderlands) that screenshots alone can be considered art. (Don't get me started on all those Reach Files)
Even there, we can expand into the audio of a game. With the music of games like Halo, Crysis, Scott Pilgrim the Game, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Battlefield, the player is as engrossed in the experience as s/he is when watching any quality movie. Some of these are truly epic pieces, and this is all without mentioning Portal! (Whoops...)
Well, Portal lets me segue my way into Gameplay.
We've got Audio, that's covered by Music. We've got Visual, that's covered by... eh... "Visual" Art (paintings, text, and the ilk... can't find a good word). And we've got the mesh of the two in Film. But what Games do besides Audio and Visual is Gameplay, the extra factor that puts it ahead of everything else.
"...but in a video game, you control the story. To me, Video Games are the ultimate form of entertainment," Stan Lee, discussing the new game "Spider-Man: Edge of Time" at the 2011 E3.
Games allow the story to be told in numerous ways. From a cynical and sarcastic Corporation-bound AI, to a song in the background of a twin-stick shooter, to a narrator over your every events, to your own choices, stories in games (the good ones at least) are the best out there. (This makes me wonder what if Steven King wrote a game... Oh yea, Alan Wake)
This is a huge topic and can't be summed up very easily, but this is what I'm going to give now, might come back later to throw some more stuff out.
-Chillz
Oh yea, and to everyone who just assumes art is visuals, you are far from correct.
