Look, here's the thing about "high art" - it's always been an elitist label that shifts over time. Opera was lowbrow entertainment once. Novels were considered trashy. The gatekeepers always resist the new medium. Video games already do what great art does. They make us feel something real. I've cried at character deaths in games just as hard as I've cried reading a book. The difference is games make you live through those moments. You're not just watching a hero sacrifice himself - you're the one pressing the button, knowing what it costs. I get the skepticism, I do. There's plenty of commercial garbage in gaming. But that's true of every medium. Most movies are disposable. Most books are airport thrillers. The existence of bad art doesn't kill the category. The games that push boundaries - stuff like Disco Elysium or Journey - they're doing something no other medium can. That interactive layer changes everything. It's not just about storytelling. It's about agency, responsibility, consequence. That's new territory for art.

You're calling games "just entertainment," but that's exactly what people said about jazz, about film, about the novel. Every high art form started as lowbrow fun for the masses. The real test is whether something can make you feel something genuine and complex. I've sat with moral decisions in games that haunted me for days afterward. I'm not just watching a character choose - I'm the one who has to live with the consequence. That's a unique emotional weight no passive medium can replicate. Sure, most games are trash. Same as most paintings are forgettable and most novels are airport reads. The existence of Call of Duty doesn't cancel out what something like What Remains of Edith Finch achieves. That game tells a story about family trauma that could only work through interactivity - you're literally living through each family member's death. The form is maturing. It deserves the same respect we give any other art form that makes us think and feel.

Let me tell you about a game called Papers, Please. You're an immigration inspector in a crumbling Soviet-style country. Every decision you make - letting in a desperate family, turning away a refugee - has consequences. Your family starves if you're too compassionate. You lose your soul if you're too strict. I've taught this game in actual classrooms. It makes people feel the weight of bureaucracy and moral compromise in a way no film or novel can. You're not watching someone struggle with impossible choices. You're making them yourself. That's not just entertainment. That's empathy under pressure. Look, I agree with you that most games aren't high art. Neither are most movies or books. But the ones that earn it - they do something unique. They create systems of meaning where you have skin in the game. That's real art with real stakes.

Take Papers, Please. I mentioned it before, but let me drive it home. You're not watching a movie about moral compromise under a crumbling regime. You're the one checking passports, deciding who gets in, watching your own family's heat meter drop because you were too kind. That's not passive consumption. That's skin in the game. You said games lack the "contemplative space" of high art. But what creates more contemplation? Staring at a painting for five minutes, or making a choice that haunts you for a week? The interactive part forces you to sit with the consequences. It's antifragile art - it gets stronger the more pressure you put on it. I'll give you that most games are junk. Same as most novels are junk. But the ones that work? They're doing something films can't touch.