what is it about art that makes people spout such clearly nonsensical things? his thesis is that games aren't art because games like chess are categorically different from art. but that's not even the claim being made - games like chess are themselves categorically different from video games like Disco Elysium. the latter is not a "game" in any sense: there's no contest between the player and anyone or anything else. the "game" is a novel disguised in another, interactive form. the "player" can do nothing to shape the course of the "game's" events - they are free only to shape the protagonist and thereby themselves.

and this must be perfectly evident to the author - none of the games he gives as examples of those that others have suggested as art are pure games or contests. they're all cited because the "player" interacts with them and discovers a story.

and that's not even to touch the fucking nonsense that is the extended diatribe about "great art" - which can only be understood as bourgeois ni aristocratic art. you cannot both cite driftwood and a toilet as influential art then claim that a whole medium of story telling can never be art when the whole purpose of the former as art is to illicit a reaction, to make one consider what is art, to defy the traditional categories of art, and to recontextualize the process by which art is created. art is subjective - if something carries deep meaning to you, if it's valuable to you on some level that is neither entirely personal nor entirely external to yourself, it's art. "great art" is made-up gatekeeping by class enemies and I refuse to give it the time of day.