Woo hoo! The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has made it official: Video games are art. Or, perhaps more accurately, video games are a legitimate medium for legitimate art. Just all oil paintings can be art (but certainly not all oil paintings...), so can video games. Here's a link to a great post on four game projects that were funded in 2012 as part of the NEA's Arts in Media grants.
Now, I should mention that I never really spent that much time playing video games as a kid or as an adult. For that matter, I don't really read much fiction, either. (I prefer poetry and nonfiction.) But I'm thrilled by this development nonetheless.