Look, I'm a physicist. I can discuss light as wave, or as a particle, independently, and I know when to stop talking about it as one, and start talking about it as another.
The fact that games can be considered art does not prevent them from also being a technology. None of the rest of the verbiage you guys are throwing at this changes that.
I'm not sure if you realize this as a physicist, but today some forms of art ARE technology.
When you go to watch an animated film these days, 90% of the major blockbusters (I'd say 100% but there's always that anomaly) are done by computer...technology.
Feeling art and technology are non-connected is to be very disconnected to the modern art scheme of things.
When I did one of my last books the art was done by hand, but all the formatting and integrating of it into the book itself was via technology, including the melding of it into text and the backgrounds.
Games ARE an artform, especially game design, just as much as many other forms of the arts (painting and photography are one form, but if you noticed one of the artists today that I listed is also involved with other forms of artwork, some that utilize computers in safety and other protocols).
Art as a form has probably been far more highly effected by advances in technology than RPGs at this point, and the similarities are basically the same.
That's even BEFORE the advances in how to utilize light, coloration, and aspects are even taken into effect.
Looking at more traditional art forms being created today (drawings, pictures, sculpture, animation) computers are deeply integrated in many artists lives, while others eschew the technology to a certain point. However, whether the art is good or bad or better or worse is still up to the individual in regards to perspective and opinion. One can say a piece from the 16th century is one of the greatest pieces of art and have a greater following than a modern piece of sculpture (and vice versa) without saying one is definitely better than the other because of advances in technology.
ONE major difference between simply saying something is technology and thus an improvement tech wise, vs that of art is that of empirical vs. opinion.
I haven't seen empirical evidence that RPGs have advanced technologically in a way which we can say the evidence points that this is absolutely a better way of doing things. What studies on this can you list? What hard evidence regarding the university or corporate research do you have to back that up?
Car companies do research on everything from better gas mileage on an engine and transmission to that of safety and how the cars react in a crash.
Compare that to RPGs and normally what you have may be sales numbers (if they release them) and opinions. This is more related to how one judges art (is a movie good or bad, how did the critics think of it, how was the box office, did it get an Oscar?) or other forms of art (is the sculpture place in front of the London Library pleasing, was the money well spent, is it aesthetically thoughtful?).