Video Games are an art form.

I'll find one of my friends with Bioshock and borrow, thanks for the suggestion. A: All video games have goals In addition to all of the previous arguments for this, I like your new argument about new video games with choice manipulation. I can think of one big example that I have experienced, Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. In the game, one decision can change the rest of the game's storyline, which is innovative and very intresting. Unfortunatley, there are still decisions created by the game creators, in the case LucasArts. LucasArts is making you conform to a set way of thinking, a set way of interpreting the game. Standerd art forms allow the observer to decide how to interpret it, and though choice manipulation is much more of an art form than other video gameplays, it is still not a form of art. B: Deliberation Once again, I found your argument very creative. The most birds with one stone, amusing. But that still isn't a video game, thats a regular game. The definition of a video game as provided by Merriam-Webster is an electronic game played by means of images on a video. Electronic games can't happen randomly, they have to be man-made. Also, simply because only one person can enjoy doesn't discout a memory as an art form. Art can still be enjoyable if only one person could observe it. If the entire world was deaf, and only you could hear things, would music stop being an art form? . http://www.merriam-webster.com... C: Creators of Art I have yet to see a book that, in the sense of a form of art, allowed the reader to make major decisions. I have seen 50 cent flip books that allow the reader to go on a 'quest' and make decisons for themselves by flipping to different pages, but these books are probably not considered art forms. Same thing applies to interactive movies. And though there might be many meanings in a game, the game still has a standard set of goals that the gamer must achieve, and the creators of the game are in essence forcing the gamers to conform to the set of goals. The goals of a video game do not allow the gamer to interpret it the way he or she pleases. Instead, the gamer must achieve a certain set of goals. The interpretation in a video game only goes as far as how the gamer views the game, not on how the outcome happens. And as for the kid/ college book and newb/elite gamer, though these may be considered analogies, these only perfectly correlate to each other if gaming is considered an art form, which this debate is all about. Also, movies are not all the time taken as a whole. For example, many movie soundtracks are given an award for the composer and the quality of the music, and not the movie as a whole. In the gaming world, this never happens. Soundtracks in relation to gaming always stick with the game. Thank you for clarifying your point. I understand what you were trying to say, but though standard art forms have less appreciated sides to them, they still have the characteristics of being art, while video games do not. At the beginning of this debate, I sought to define the word "art" as to further clarify this debate. Unfortunaley, I found many sources that had contradicting definitions. Also, many say that art cannot be defined, and though my opponent and I were able to establish what we consider art, it still the leaves the definition up in the air. Below I have listed a source that discusses how art cannot be defined. Voters, I urge you not to vote on anyone else's definiton of art, only vote on what my opponent and I have established as the definition of art through our arguments. . http://www.smashingmagazine.com... In conclusion, I strongly believe that video games are not an art form for all the reasons listed.