With the creation of computer games as a new aesthetic medium the question arises how it relates as well as changes existing aesthetic media and arts. Among the central ‘neighboring arts’ of computer games are not only film and literature but also theatre. Could computer games be a subgenre of the art and the arts of the theatre? Against this claim the paper argues that despite some affinities (the performative dimension of playing; the complex relation of work and instantiation and the existing audience with the emergence of onlinestreaming and -recording) the idea to understand computer games as drama, performance, staging etc. tends to obscure the important differences between theatre and computer games. At the same time, however, it argues that there are indeed relevant exchanges between them. My thesis will be, on the one hand, that we must clearly distinguish the arts, but that this fact does not mean that we cannot conceive of corresponding processes of exchange and redefinition as work on the meaning of the individual arts. On the other hand, it will be that the thesis that computer games are to be understood as drama, performance or staging etc. tends to obscure the differentiation of the arts and that we should exercise caution here.