>>1773503
It's important to understand the artistic value of games for the culture to evolve; the lack of that respect, besides contributing to censorship because the perception seems to be a game needs to explain itself before doing anything offensive, causes each subsequent generation of developers to learn increasingly reductive creative ideologies. Emplemon has a great video about how the golden age of gaming is kind of a mistake, and the most natural form of gaming is literal slot machines.
I think it's pathetic that someone can say, "but space invaders isn't art," and not be struck down for their idiocy, that only games which _contain_ art but are not themselves art, like OP's example, are mistaken for art games.
For instance, we take it for granted that games are a simulation of reality, but the mechanics which drive games are actually abstract and arbitrary, where even minute differences are hugely significant, like the standard corridor length in a console shooter vs the default FOV and zoom level(Perfect Dark Zero). Compare that to the first man who single-handedly discovered how to create "fun" out of nothing, with no previous example, with almost nothing to work with, and invaded the entire world. Games have the capacity to be compelling in ways other mediums just can't. No matter how excellent a book or movie is, it's complete and static, which causes people to primarily interact with it from the view of having already read it, which means that people widely have an inherent respect for stories that endlessly circle back around to the safe and expected conclusions, because there's no sense of reality or practicality. This character is evil, but you can save him! There's a world where he becomes your best friend and pays it all back by helping people? But what of after the credits? Was our primary exploration of his entire character just a misunderstanding waiting to be subverted? Or does he not feel the weight of his fate drawing him back to be our enemy again? Stories were not always static like this, they were retold and reworked with audience participation again and again, being inherently interactive on a cultural level. Any definition of art that excludes games on the basis of art's immutability has no respect for the natural state of art. Copyright law has probably had an effect on our culture that will one day be studied to be as profound as leaded gasoline.
Games can depict practical realities, violence, cruelty, but also mercy and loss, through their mechanics and systems. I think Alpha Centauri presents human nature and evolution in a very compelling way. Understanding that a faction is gaining dominance through ideology that is reprehensible to others, and the pressures their empire places on their neighbors and competitors, and calling up the AI one by one to use the right leverage to make them help you or join the war, until you ensure they all benefit more from fighting with you than not, and turning around the entire world on a huge empire about to crush your pathetically unlucky start, is a lesson that must be experienced.
When I played Nier it was the wrong season to get Yonah a pumpkin for her last quest. The previous meals she made for me were terrible and she probably wanted to try again, but as a person I expected her to fail. I tried really hard to get her a pumpkin anyways, planted seeds when I couldn't buy one whole, but the fields were overworked and every crop died, and then I couldn't see Yonah anymore. Because I never finished that quest, I got the Shadowlord's rusty pipe at the end. It honestly made me tear up, to think that across thousands of years I tried my best but couldn't be a good dad, just like him, no matter how hard I tried. The act of participation just creates inherently stronger emotions than other mediums, but people can't realize this because noone's explained it to them yet and they only know how to talk about a book they've long finished and now seek meaning in which is entirely different from their first experience with it. I'd go as far as to say that the empathy which children learn by growing up reading which allows them to one day enjoy mature stories is never respected or encouraged in gaming, so people probably lack the capacity to enjoy mature concepts in games, like playing an RPG while respecting its reality instead of using saves and a guide to force the outcome you want to view but not participate in, not as something that requires temperance, but as a perception that hasn't been learned.
There's a reason gamers are so culturally distinct from nongamers.