8. Aesthetic Beauty
So before we get into the weightier stuff, lets get the most common artistic reference point out the way. For the most part when a lot of people consider something to be art, or to have an artistic quality, they refer purely to aesthetics. Whilst that does lend some credence as to whether something has been produced with a degree of talent, it can miss the point of how a creation should be viewed. There are so many abstract pieces of physical art in the real world that get roundly trounced by mainstream critics or the general publics viewpoint, based on the assumption that any piece of art should 'wow' you or present an immediate visual showcase of talent and colour. Thats not the case depending on what the creator may be trying to say, as with the heart of an artistic message there are other ways to convey the gamut of human emotion in physical form other than conforming to an idea of what a piece should be. A game as mechanically-minimalistic as Journey is just as worthwhile as the bleak palette of The Last of Us, or the bright exuberant fantasy world of Bioshock: Infinite is just as worthy of exploration as the real-world offices of The Stanley Parable, if we are to take the very idea of intended expression as a worthwhile artistic endeavor.