Eh, like I said, just wanted to weigh in on my personal opinion as opposed to fighting.

Well I'm not fighting either... sorry if it came across that way.

Sorry, not saying you were, I was just explainging why I had posted something similar without mention, just because I wanted to make it clear my actual thoughts and beliefs on the subject, as opposed to what I was doing previously.

I think something can be more enjoyable if it is artistic. Not to say that all games are better if they aspire to be art--in fact a good many are better if they simply aspire to be good games--but part of the draw and appeal of something like Passage is in its artistic expression as it's gameplay is rudimentary.
I've just played through Braid and I think that game would lose a lot of its enjoyment if you took away the beautiful artistic elements and simply left the puzzles.
Then again, sometimes art is really just pretentious nonsense or a way to cover up poor gameplay or storytelling elements.

Well, since art is always a purely subjective phenomenon, even within a given medium, it is only natural that people should consider some games art and not others. And that different people would disagree on whether a particular game was "artistic" enough to be defined as art.
With this in mind, it might be interesting to discuss a few concrete examples. I'll go first.
Consider the game Sacrifice (an obvious choice in this context, really). I personally consider this game a work of art. The distinctive and somewhat surreal visual style, the varied and moody, yet humorous storytelling, the voice acting and the innovative gameplay all come together and touch something within me. I get the distinct impression that the game is made with a lot of love, and that the developers have had a lot invested in it personally.
Would anyone care to share their views on Sacrifice in this context?

This thread is missing a very important point: the canonical idea of "art" has been coded within the centuries. Literature is art, painting is art, music is art, cinema is art.
Videogames are 30 years old, they are still considered by the industry that produce them like some sort of disposable entertaining stuff (and all this crazy madness on the DLCs and on-line gaming can't help but exacerbate this idea) so they aren't art. And they won't be so until society as a whole will start thinking about them as something meaningful, and not simply a kiddie's amusement....
I love videogames since 20 years and more, but I will not call them "art" because they aren't. Yet.

I usually strongly disagree with what KingofGnG says, but I have to say that I agree with him here.

Yep, I think games are art.
I think any creative work that makes me feel is an art.
Yep, it's flawed as an argument. And guess what - I don't care :D

I don't understand how anyone can claim that games aren't art when we have stuff like The Path, Photopia, Passage, A Mind Forever Voyaging, Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, Ico, Pathologic, The Void, Another World, Outcry, Katamari Damacy, Loom, The Marriage, heck even Cryostasis (if you have experienced that ending, you'll know why)... I'm not claiming these are (all) examples of good art, but they are art. Games are a medium, and all mediums can be used to create art.

I dont think anything that actively aspires to be art is going to turn out as real art (whatever that is) at the end. If you are trying to make 'art' and not something that means anything to you or the people who will view it, well, your just not doing it right.
I think games are often influenced by (what is commonly accepted as) art, at least. More obviously in things like architecture but also in some game's structure and presentation. Anyone else get the feeling Hideo Kojima could well be a fan of Brechtian theatre?