I was joking about putting myself down for the whole tentacle porn thing, but yeah, that shit's been around in ukiyo-e form for ages now so you've got a good point. Sometimes people (myself included) forget that popular classics are often popular because they appealed to commoners, i.e. Shakespeare or those Chinese wuxia novels that everyone and their mothers in China have probably read.

Humans are weird.

I personally enjoy those other forms of art as well. I've been to many museums, including many of the greatest in the world, and also I love going to the theatre, ballet, opera, symphony, and so on. I think, more than anything, time is what separates what we consider high art and low brow art. Each of those various disciplines that I listed were once considered crass and subject to the derision of the intellectuals and taste makers of their time. More recently movies were considered to be crass public entertainment for their first couple decades of existence and then slowly people started to warm to the idea and see the vision of what they could be when done correctly. And they are certainly no solo effort, although any true cinephile knows that a director has far more to do with the quality of a movie than anyone else. Likewise many of the most famous opera and symphonies require so many parts to work. And any true art geek knows that many of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world were actually team produced. Novels are one of the very few things that still remains a largely solo effort. I think with time video games or interactive media in general will become more recognized as an art form. I see it heading in the more artistic direction and more immersive direction as time goes on.

By the way, don't put yourself down for enjoying tentacle porn. Others may do that to you, but no sense helping them do it. In the end, your tastes are your own and frankly… there is a reason it exists. If it didn't have an audience it would have disappeared long ago. So you can bet that a good portion of those turning up their noses to it, are browsing for it that very same night. It's like that whole thing about "who are these rape games for anyway, only creeps and criminals would like those". Except the fact that every woman that I've slept with more than once (only about 15 of them so far, but still enough to make the point) has had fetishes for forced submission and play rape. Half of what anyone says about moralizing over something is a complete smokescreen to say, "Don't look at me too much, I'm embarrassed about what I really think, so look over there."

Meanwhile with video games, the production behind them is complex and many people play them without considering the relationship between the creators, the work, and the audience. Difficulty balancing, level and UI design, cutscene timing and animation, visual direction, writing and presentation of a story in such a way that it can only reach its maximum impact as a game/visual novel/interactive software — I would say these are all skills that require creativity, and being to pull them off properly counts as an artistic achievement. However, it seems like it's easier than ever to distance oneself from the intricacies that go into making a game work and refuse to see the "art" that goes into making a game. Back when video games mainly attracted children, they weren't regarded as art because children aren't expected to think about such concepts with their entertainment. It's not a stretch to say that whether a medium is seen as "art" or not from the perspective of the general public that does not directly interact with it depends on the impressions of the people who do. If "core" gamers don't see video games as art, then there's no doubt that non-gamers or casual gamers don't either. After all, the only connection between non-gamers and video games are their connections with gamers.

This comment ended up longer than expected and I doubt anyone cares about what a tentacle porn game player has to say about "art", so I guess I'll pretend that I'm saying this as someone who used to go to art school.

By the way, I still love Final Fantasy VII, but I considered it rather a disappointment after Final Fantasy VI. But VI is probably my favorite game of all time. I was playing FF since FF 1, and I'm old enough that it wasn't even my first rpg that I played.