The importance of the "thesis statement" within an argument is difficult to overstate. While it is possible for an argument to be successful without a distinct thesis statement, its inclusion can only make an argument more clear. What makes the thesis statement so significant is that it indicates, in no uncertain terms, the exact purpose of the argument.
The Purdue Owl online resource gives a couple of guidelines which should be applied when creating a thesis for an argument. First, the claim made by the thesis must be debatable; that is to say, it must be a statement which could be both affirmed by one reasonable person or rejected by another. Second, the thesis should be narrow. It needs to make a specific claim, which can be argued using specific, focused research. If a thesis is too broad, it can result in participants arguing past each other.
In my case, there are a couple theses which could be workable:
1. Video games should be widely recognized as an artistic medium, because they meet the generally agreed-upon criteria for "art."
This would necessitate that I form a working definition of "art" based upon both historical definitions and the theories applied by contemporary art critics. While this could make for an interesting exploration on its own, I feel that any answer I derive from this thesis would be better served as a component of my second possible thesis, and the one I'd like to go with:
2. Because video games meet the generally agreed-upon criteria for "art," games should be subject to the same protections against censorship as other artistic mediums.
This would involve not only creating a working definition of art as with the first proposed thesis, but would also necessitate research into historical examples of art censorship and its consequences as well as historical attempts at censoring content in video games (Florida lawyer Jack Thompson's campaign against mature content in games during the mid-2000's comes to mind).
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