Answer by Francisco

According to the Ayn Rand Lexicon, art is "a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments", so to the extent that a computer game does that or allows you to do that, I would consider it art, or a tool for creating art. Most good games are a mixture of both. For instance, the game Civilization, one of my all time favorites, allows you to create a civilization that competes with other civilizations. You have to decide whether it is important to invest in research, defense, diplomacy, entertaining the masses, etc. and the balance between them. You also have to decide which lines of research will be most promising, what form of government to adopt etc. In that sense you are the artist. But the effects of your choices are also controlled by the value judgments the game creator made. For example, when you choose to go from despotism to a republic, people become a lot more productive, but they are less productive and more angry if you are in the middle of a war with other civilizations. In that sense the game creator is the artist, because he is selectively recreating reality according to what he thought was important. So I would say that games can be art, although not all of them are, just like paintings can be art, but there are some paintings that I would definitely not call art.