That's a decent argument I suppose, but it seems to me that his view of art is too narrow. While it's true that interactivity hasn't had a place in the high arts as far as I can remember, I don't believe that this makes it inherently irreconcilable. (And I will begrudge Ebert for pulling out A Tale of Two Cities as an example of high art, but mostly because I hate the fuck out of Dickens for a variety of reasons.) If it were up to me, I'd say that in the end, art is about certain feelings of awe and understanding and a certain element of painful candidness. I think your argument about puzzles is a very good one: there is a beauty in math that mathematicians consider artful. Mechanics may very well provoke feelings of sublime beauty.

But more than that, if I may go onto softer ground here, life is made of doing things -- why should we think that adding in the ability to do something in a medium should inherently render us less able to remark upon life?

Also board game creators can be very smart and I bow to their leet skills.

Anna Anthropy raises some good points but is a bit combative for my taste. (Pot kettle black, I know! But she sounds like People I've Seen on Tumblr.)