How to tell apart video games and new media art

Images swirl on a screen. A controller in front of it invites you to grab on and start playing. Is this a game? Or is it art? How can you tell the difference between a computer game and new media art? Like any new media technology, interactive computers have established cultural positions by shifting existing understandings of the proper place of things. A starting point for identifying the differences is sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of the art world, but this needs to be moderated by a theory of change, suggested by Judith Butler's critique of Bourdieu. In spite of their differences, new media art and computer games are highly active nodes at the emergence of the contemporary cultural patterns Raymond Williams calls structures of feeling.