The art argument is, in my opinion, ultimately pointless as few are willing to take the time to define "art". You can't call anything art unless you have a definition for what constitutes as "art". And that is extremely muddy territory deep in the waters of subjectivity.
For me personally, art is simply an act of creation and expression. I consider good art to be that which resonates with me on an emotional level and makes me feel something. That's vague, but deliberately so. The worst crime any art can make is to leave you with boredom, apathy, and disinterest. If you felt something from the act of reading, viewing, listening, or playing, no matter the medium, then that is to me art.
With gaming what I particularly dislike about the art debate is that it's less about defining art and more so pandering to an self entitled clique of art wankers, desperately seeking their approval for a medium that many people want to be viewed as grown up. And that really shouldn't matter in the slightest, especially when talking about art, which should always be a more personal thing versus a strict consensus.
"Art" and "artistic merit" are generally buzzwords with no solid definitions, instead built around cultural perceptions and definitions within specific circles. I personally find the discussion of what the game actually does, its sequences, scenes, mechanics, characters, and the feelings it evokes, a far more interesting and insightful discussion.
For example: I think one of Naughty Dog's biggest issues with game design in their particular niche of making heavily story/narrative driven video games is the occasional dissonance between the kind of mood and atmosphere they wish to convey and what is actually happening, and the mechanics which you're supposed to engage with. Uncharted falters here, for example, with the jumping and climbing, Drake sometimes able to make obscenely long jumps or high falls because that's the way the level or set piece was designed in order to move the story forward and get you from A-to-B, yet you'll frequently fail to make shorter jumps and lower falls simply because the moment-to-moment mechanics don't always match the scripted mechanics. I find this sometimes with The Last of Us and the AI. Incredibly well written characters, deeply disturbing and gritty atmosphere and setting rich with tension. Then my AI partner is running around like a dumbass into Clickers while I'm crouched shitting myself in the corner, and an armed human is spazzing out on a piece of cover. The former makes sense if they couldn't balance it for mechanics, much like invincible Elizabeth in BioShock Infinite, but unlike Elizabeth it's not something easily forgotten and lost to the experience of play. My brain goes "oh that's dumb" and I'm jerked back to reality; a smelly Australian slumped in front of an LCD television playing Naughty Dog's The Last of Us on my Sony PlayStation 3.
Given I think Naughty Dog has a lot of talent in their particular niche of game design and story telling, the consistency between mechanics, presentation, and play is something I'd like to see them improve on going into the PlayStation 4. A game might have considerably worse animation, rougher graphics, clumsier mechanics, and nowhere near the production qualities, but if there's consistency in the design, play, and presentation I'll often find myself more enveloped and lost into the game world. It's easy to forgive silly, unrealistic quirks when they're balanced with everything else, not when they're conflicting with the attention to detail spent elsewhere.
