Video+Games+As+Art+(Matt+G.)

I am not a gamer in any way and have probably played video games for a grand total of less than 24 hours my entire life. Having said that almost all of my housemates are hardcore gamers and if I want to talk to them at certain points of the day (which seems to be almost all of the time) I must do so while they are staring at a screen playing video games. When first reading this prompt I asked my friend Cliff who plays lots of video games what light he could shed on the subject. He then showed me the game Braid that took over a year for the artwork in the game to be completed, the finished product of which being quite striking. Considering the quality and attention to detail of the graphics in video games today I would say that many of them (but not all) do qualify as works of art. When creating a video game people are creating a completely new world with buildings, landscapes, cars, people and anything else they can imagine. Is this any different from what an artist would create in a painting? I don't think it is. That is why in my opinion that, while not all, many video games are most certainly able to be considered works of art.