For clarification: I'm not saying that games aren't art in the sense of any definition of art you could pull from a dictionary. I'm saying that games don't feel like art because they aren't fully treated like art by its own enthusiasts.
I can make a feminist statement about a film, a book, an image, a movie, a song, a comic, or almost anything else, and there's a more readily understood context where critics and enthusiasts of these mediums will not feel attacked or feel like I'm applying a statement to the mediums that is inherently incompatible with their existence.
But when Anita Sarkeesian makes a feminist statement about games? She gets fucking rape threats because "games aren't about feminism, and they're not sexist; they're about fun!"
It's an extreme example, yes, but it's emblematic of an attitude I find to be wanting one's cake and eating it too. I feel if people are sincere about games being called art, then that means they must let games finally be responsible for allowing the dialogue about their sociopolitical and thematic meanings that other mediums embrace. No more "keep politics out of games!" No more "I only play for fun!" No more "You're thinking about this too hard!" No more of trying to undermine and erase the discussion that art and its audience have with one another. Otherwise, I don't feel like you can meaningfully call games "art" anymore than you can call a toy or a ticket stub or a drinking straw "art."
I think this is a very good point (as is the wider discussion initiated in the OP - gave me a lot to think about). This a very generalised point but it feels to me that there's a weird hypocrisy in how there's a correlation/crossover between many of the voices who push "keep politics out of games/it's not real/it's just fun" arguments and those who are particularly angry about the medium not being taken seriously in terms of media coverage and/or their peers as a 'serious' hobby in the same bracket as other artistic mediums (or say, sports). It's a strange irony to me that so many people have spent so long striving, arguing, shouting, debating with people who degrade the experience of playing video games about their artistic value - in some cases for decades...and yet many of those exact same voices argue vociferously against the very aspects that set other artistic mediums apart from gaming (i.e. meaningful discussion based on an acknowledgement that socio-political issues of race, gender and sexuality cannot exist in isolation from games as the result of a creative process initiated by other humans). It feels like there are people who want things both ways - parity with other artistic mediums (respect) without wanting to commit to the same level of scrutiny and discussion.
There's no way of knowing for sure and it's a really multi-faceted, complex array of things, but I had some thoughts on why that might be. I think there's two core reasons.
Firstly how, despite loads of exceptional work to move on from this, games are rooted in functional fun and escapism. For all of the opportunities for challenging norms you get in virtual spaces (and there's loads of fantastic examples of this), there's also plenty of opportunity to 'escape' from those social norms and the pressures of day to day life by treating games and consoles as objects to be interacted with but not 'deeply' engaged with in the manner you would a TV show or film. That's not absent from other mediums, but I think gaming's roots and relative infancy compared to other mediums means it's a lot harder to move away from. It's like you say in the last paragraph (quoted) regarding "meaningfully" discussing games as art - if games are pigeon-holed as primarily
functional by a large chunk of those who interact with them (like a drinking straw or ticket stub), then those discussions can't take place.
I agree with the OP that this is not totally an issue of interactivity as installations and so on have done that decades prior to video games. However, I'd say that interactivity being at the very core of the medium - it's (not completely) Unique Selling Point compared to other artistic mediums - does play a significant role here. For many (and indeed, it's inherent in a lot of older game marketing), the act of physically playing a game separates it from the level of engagement expected from TV/Films - it's rooted in reactive thinking, problem solving and immediate thrills, not reflection and feelings beyond excitement. Again, this has massively changed, but it's still in the DNA of many who grew up with gaming. (Edit: For the record, I'm not saying 'functional' gaming experiences don't have artistic merit, I just mean that it's a factor that contributes to games not feeling like art in the same way as other mediums do).
Secondly, I think a fair amount of the reason for some wanting to push games away from engagement with socio-political issues (or rather, as the OP sets out, this is more often refusing to acknowledge that games are already absolutely intertwined with those issues in the first place but don't want to acknowledge it) is a kind of trauma response. Partly because it challenges a lot of gamers' interaction/engagement with games (functional escape vs artistic medium) and partly because of the very real trauma that has occurred when socio-political issues have been discussed in the gaming space in the recent past.
Linking to the first point, game players have ended up more closed-off as a 'community' than other mediums in terms of negative assumptions about people who love video games and the medium itself (particularly from critics and/or those who look down on it compared to other mediums). Overtly discussing socio-political stuff within games is, to some, I feel an intrusion on what they see as the very functional character of the medium they enjoy - it's injecting a significant dose of
reality into their core means of, as they see it, escaping reality. That's traumatising and forces a level of engagement (and often self-reflection) that many people don't wish to engage with as it contradicts why they want to play games in the first place. Many play games for the exact opposite reason and they relish that engagement (particularly many on here, me too) - but nonetheless that feels like a shift (a necessary one) and people react differently. To me, those socio-political dimensions have always been present in video games, it's just more overt now as the medium is transitioning, slowly, to try and nurture discussion on these themes in the way you would do about TV shows, films etc. and that process takes a toll on some. It's challenging an engrained norm and that always means a level of resistance and emotional fallout.
In terms of the recent past, I don't need to go on about the very well-documented, passionate arguments - both the hateful and loving responses to Anita Sarkeesian's critiques is already a very good example. But I think an often missed part of the puzzle are the people who do not (explicitly) have any strong views on socio-political issues but are often the most vocal in terms of their unwillingness to meaningfully engage with those themes and issues because of the passion and anger it causes within the gaming community they inhabit. This is gonna sound unintentionally patronising, I just mean this as an analogy, but I think of it a bit like traumatised children during a parental argument. Gamers who only explicitly engaged in debate around mechanics, graphics, opinions on developers etc. were suddenly thrust into a very different level of passionate debate, particularly on forums and social media. In the wake of 'Gamergate', what I found really striking was the relatively large amount of people simply wanting it all to "go away" - speaking in terms of the community uniting, but crucially not uniting under any banner other than "please stop arguing about these things that we didn't argue about before". I'm not trying to paint people like this as neutral - personally, I think those kinda discussions are absolutely crucial and citing 'can't we all just get along as gamers' in the face of open, hateful, violent misogyny, racism, homophobia etc. is really sad and essentially alienating. But yeah, it feels to me like there's a lot of gamers out there who do not want to engage as the level of passion is entirely new in their cosy gaming space - it forces self-reflection, to think of things in a way they may well have turned to games to escape from in the first place and that's traumatic. I think that's partly a gaming demographic issue - engagement with socio-political reality in the gaming space necessarily tends to challenge and/or encourage discussion on behaviour that wouldn't be tolerated in other 'scenes' - it challenges power and comfort. Or rather, many don't care who's 'right', they just want their parents to stop shouting and threatening eachother - which in turn feeds into why games do not *feel* like art in the way other mediums do. I don't agree, but I 'get it'.
I would say here that sometimes it's easy to be a bit harsh to people who love games compared to film/TV fans etc. - there's as much horrid, dumb shit in discussions on other mediums too as discrimination is structural and will therefore just come up. But the core difference is that there's far, far less willingness within gaming to even acknowledge those discussions of being worthy of taking place in the first place compared to other artistic mediums. Anyway, I am very caffeinated so sorry if this is rambling. Big thanks for Nepenthe for kicking this discussion off, it's really interesting.