Video games today influence everything from business management and marketing practices to developments in military technology. But despite, or perhaps because of, the ubiquity of the form, the medium has never been able to fully resolve in its short history at the top of the pop culture food chain an internal identity crisis. Sure, games could serve some purely functional purposes. An economist would even define one as "a system of strategic interaction." But like most economic jargon, that didn't satisfy many gamers with an answer for why video games tugged at their heartstrings. Are video games art in their own right;...