There are basically two real arguments that tend to come up in the Games as Art debate:
1) The first is the one that defenders of other mediums, like Roger Ebert, use- Art is something as defined by it's creator, which excludes any medium that allows viewer participation in experiencing it in any method other then observation. While a little short sighted, it's easy to see where Ebert is coming from, since Video Games would BE the first real surviving artistic medium that's based around viewer participation. Of course, the smartass counter-arguement would be that the saying 'art is in the eye of the beholder' and that whatever it's made OF doesn't matter as much as what is made of it. Mostly, people are just going to have to agree to disagree here, since it's a line in the sand nobody's ever really had to try and draw before.
2) The second one is a little more narrow-minded, in that video games have yet to reach the threshold where they can move people like other forms of art. This is, of course, a load of bunk, since most people can probably think of one or two moments at laest where a game has made them step back and really feels something beyond simple achievement for completion- whether we're talking about emotional movement from a story or the awe factor of simple experiance.
But this does flow well into the next topic...
2) Games and our corruptable youth: I do think violent video games can influence a kid's behavior... in the same way violent TV, violent movies, and what-not can.
Parents tend not to pay attention to what their kid is playing, and a child raised with Grand Theft Auto without ever being told why what they're doing is wrong barring a warning meter isn't going to grasp things the same way the kid that plays that kind of game with their parents, being constantly reaffirmed that what they're doing in the game is wrong, and their characters are NOT the good guys. I wouldn't ever let a child of mine touch a GTA until their teenage years myself, but if I were going to, you'd better believe I'd be paying attention and hammering life lessons of right and wrong into the kid at the same time.
Never stop taking an interest in what your kid is doing, even if it's something that doesn't interest you. That's an easy way to lead to a bad end.
Sega's Mighty Failure. We all know why the Saturn died. Price point, inferior software, Sony's little wondersystem hitting ALL the right notes quickly.
The Dreamcast is a very different beast. It came out cheap. It had probably the best console launch ever (Sonic Adventure + Power Stone + SOUL CALIBER > any other console first-day offerings ever) with six very strong following months. It got a bevy of support early, from both small and large developers. It had the first widely-successful console online service. So... why did it fail?
Firstly, from a competition standpoint- a combination of bad reputation (The Saturn was a colossal fail), poor advertizing, and simple bad luck. It did ok for itself, mostly while everyone was waiting for the next big thing to hit. And when it did, the waves it sent out on splashdown overturned Sega's S.S. Minnow. Everyone- from consumers to developers- jumped ship to the PS2 (Which for the first 12 months was a barren wasteland devoid of fun and awesome) and Sega couldn't deploy enough bilge pumps to save it from going over. When the Cube and X-Box joined in, there wasn't enough room for a four-man market, and Sega's already-ailing Dreamcast was given the boot.
The other problem is a less optimistic view of the Dreamcast's supporters in the Dreamcast's heavy piracy issue. The system was dirt easy to cheat, since it read CD-ROMS and had a software-based lockout. This probably really dug into the sales of games- especially the niche titles the Dreamcast was living off of later, since mostly the people who actually go out and buy those titles are also internet-savvy enough to learn that even without modding, they could get a burn of it and play it with zero hassle. While not a huge dent for games like Sonic Adventure 2 and Sega's other frontline offerings, it ripped into niche titles like Capcom's fighters, Bangai-O, and other games which weren't going to see more then 50k in sales, and saw far less when even two to five thoursand of those people were downloading those games from the net instead.
