For me it was pretty powerful, not so much because of the "nuclear war is bad" thing (no duh) but because oh how it subverted the conventions of the genre. I'm broadly in agreement that the message itself was nothing special but in that instance I'm more trying to show how a game can do something that another medium literally cannot do, as well as highlighting how we might better use gameplay itself to advance games and the art they may contain.

In any event I suppose the fact that it's open to interpretation and has subjective impact just strengthens the broader argument

So let me open this up to further questions, which we've already started touching on: What current games, or game makers, are art or artists? Is it right to say that games can offer things other media can't and, if so, how can we develop this further? Can people offer examples of their own experiences which they would put forth as sufficient for them to consider games artistic?