Most of the people who tell you they want games to be seen as art are lying.

I don't just mean in the sense that "gamers want games to be art but complain when people critique their problematic elements". That is true, but moreover, another side mostly composed of quirky indie fans often gets ignored. Most of the people who talk about "games as art" are really talking about "art as games". People have ideas about what makes great art: stories, characters, music, atmosphere, visuals, animation, setting; this is what a game needs to be great art, it needs to have the same elements that make literature great, or film. Most of these people will say that in order to be art, games have to "more than just games". Some will even say that games need to stop being games altogether.

The Witness may be the single greatest game as a piece of art yet, and it may never get the credit it deserves simply because it is a video game, and it isn't trying to be something else. The way it so totally and coherently expresses itself through its communication and psychology, through its singular mechanic of movement. Navigation in macrocosm and microcosm. It's a game you play on a virtual island, a game you play on a screen within a screen, a game that you play in your head.