Video games have come a long way since I last knocked a square tennis ball around with a pair of rectangular bats. Yesterday I settled down with a console for the first time since the end of the 1970s. I appear to have developed into a fully armed armchair action hero. I can send pirates splattering (Drake’s Fortune), fulfil glorious new destinies (Fable II) and bounce over meerkats (Little Big Planet).

Was it fun? It was fantastic. But I am probably a pushover as far as interactive technology is concerned. I cannot read Hardy’s Tess without constantly hoping that Angel will discover that letter. And as for Géricault’s huge drama painting The Raft of the Medusa, it is impossible to see it without wanting to scramble on board. But can a digital video game become art? Yes and no is the analogue answer. But then I frequently wonder if art is actually art.

Digital technology has clearly developed at a rapid pace. Crude graphics have given way to opulent scenarios that rival the special effects of films. Tennis-ball bleeps have turned into entire musical scores. Even a digital illiterate like me (it was a long time before I found out that Photoshop wasn’t just another branch of Snappy Snaps) can tell that this all takes tremendous skill; that a software program can’t make something without a creative decision being taken by the mouse-clicker.

It certainly takes time and expertise to appreciate them. I couldn’t get my characters to do much more than walk round in a few circles. And does it matter if there is seldom a single acknowledged author? Think of Damien Hirst. His art works are also collaborative products.

Artists are fascinated by the possibilities of new technology. It was only a couple of years ago that I found myself at the Turner Prize playing about in a Langlands & Bell computer simulacrum of Osama bin Laden’s hideout. What was the difference between the work of these 2004 Turner shortlisted artists and Metal Gear Solid 4? The art work was a great deal more boring. It was like comparing the Pepsi Max rollercoaster to your local park’s slide.

However, the easy pleasures of the video game are also its aesthetic problem. The games I tried yesterday all compete in a commercial arena. Their creators must remember the market, which seems to mean two things. First they must ape Hollywood and keep up a relentless narrative pace less their audiences lose concentration. Secondly, an appetite for novelty still presides. The possibilities of technology are alluring. I cannot help wondering if digital artists are tempted into making something happen simply because they have found a way to effect it. It is only when this desire for novelty wears off that more thoughtful ideas develop.

At the moment, the more superficially interactive a game is, the less engaging it seems at the deeper level where it counts. The digital medium is still in its artistic infancy. That should be thrilling for artists. Think how much the fun the Surrealists would have had with this technology.

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