Videogames and art in the public eye

Are videogames a form of art? According to The American Heritage College dic-tion-ary-y Third Edition the first definition of art given is the “Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature”. According to this definition videogames are in fact considered art. The end…… hmm that’s a rather boring argument, let’s spice things up a bit.
The dictionary term of art does say that videogames fit the description, but then again so would many other things. When a person mentions the word art to you what is the first thing that pops into your head? Is it a painting, a photograph, a sculpture, or something else that might be found in an art museum? If you thought of any of these things then your train of thought tends to rule out videogames from fitting into the category. Worry not though fan of gaming this doesn’t mean that you have betrayed your beloved videogames. It would actually be quite strange if videogames were the first thing that came to mind at the mention of the word art. Thankfully the world we live in doesn’t exist in extremes such as good and evil, ying and yang, and black and white. Rather it resides in the realism of the hazy gray middle ground.
When I say middle ground I mean that both you and the dictionary may be correct on this subject. Videogames are still a relatively young form of entertainment, and only in the past decade have they been able to even remotely “imitate…..nature”. Couple this with the fact that this media is still largely looked down upon by the majority non-gamer community it’s not all that hard to understand why one would lean toward the answer of no.
The question of videogames being art is somewhat unfair and dependent on the viewer. Overall I think it safe to say that they are not yet considered art. This doesn’t mean that once the industry gets older that the same will be true. It is obvious to gamers that a lot of work goes into the making of these games but art is really in the eye of the beholder. There are some abstract paintings that are simply blotches of paint on canvas and its considered art, yet in today’s time we know of great artists of the past that lived and died poor because their work wasn’t to the people’s tastes. So whether videogames are a public form of art or not depends on the public, but on a personal level it all depends on you.