Is video game an art?

[Ironside]

Hmm, I just wasted almost three minutes trying to find a comprehensive timeline of the various anti-media hysterias. I'll just do them from memory, and suffer the corrections as various better-read Orgites fill in the blanks.

The circus, at latest around 1850.

Moral tales from the nineteenth century
Check out Are You Going to the Circus?.

For example:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

M. How, then, do poor people and children get money, when they can hardly get food and clothing? I am sure my mother finds it hard enough to get us those things.

U. I must inform you what I have

been told on this subject, for this is another bad thing to which the circus leads. In order to go there, some have been known to pawn or sell their clothes or furniture to get money, or borrow it of their fellow-workmen and others; and when pay-day comes, it must be returned, and then the wife or family must go without some necessary of life or clothing. But that is not the worst, for I have heard of masters being robbed by their servants, and even parents by their children, that they may get money in order to go to such places of amusement.

And that's about circus.

I suspect that link is a gold mine when it comes to silly hysteria issues.

Edit:
As for the question if video games are art or not, I would say that they generally aren't, but that there's some very artistic games out there. The games aren't gerally done for artistic reasons either.
Video games are an interesting cultural phenomena though.