Are games more than art?

Definitly, I learned more english from games then school (for example).

Edit: I know my english isn't perfect.

I was going to post a discussion topic a few weeks ago on this issue but forgot. Thanks for bringing it up! Video games are the best things ever of course.

Honestly I don't really care if a game is art as long as it's fun to play i'm fine. Now if you can do both that's pretty damn awesome.

The process of making a game alone involves various kinds of art, so yes, it is art.

But is it more? Why would it be?

They have this potential. You need great graphics, great musicians, great everything to create your own world! It could happen, but only a few chosen can fulfill this purpose

It is a long standing debate and the head person for the non-art side of the argument just died recently (Roger Ebert). Even in the end of the debate, he finally confessed he does not know games well enough to profess if they could truly be art or not and that his opinion should not matter.

Can and should games be used in other areas more other than entertainment?

They already are? Militairy simulators; there are lots of brain teaser games meant to help your I.Q. / thinking, etc.; and more and more "social" games that, although are entertaining (to the people who play them anyways) are meant predominantly to be a platform for socializing first and foremost (IMVU, Playstation Home)

Yeah, for sure. In high school IT class we had an assignment where we had to make a game in Game Maker revolving around the fight against cancer, to be used as a tool to raise confidence and morale in cancer patients. And of course there are educational games, simulators and the like. Wii Fit encourages fitness and wellbeing rather than solely being a fun gaming experience.

I like to not get too philosophical about the whole thing, because I don't want games to be something I constantly analyse as opposed to something I use to chill out. But I definitely think games are art. To me, picture is one thing, audio another.. video is like another dimension combining audio and picture, and games add an extra dimension - interactivity - to video. That being said, what makes a game? A lot of titles - including those on Steam - toe the line between being a game and simply an interactive story or experience. It is what you make of it, I think.