RSS
Kotaku
Back in 2005, film critic and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls screenwriter Roger Ebert stated why games were inferior to books and movies. His rational? Games force people to make choices. Making choices is bad, apparently. Novelist Clive Barker took the critic to task at Hollywood & Games Summit today in Los Angeles today. Years late, but hey, we'll take it Clive! Here's what Barker had to say:
That's bullshit. This is a medium that's barely 2 decades old, and he (Ebert) is saying oh, there's no War And Peace yet — of course there isn't! ...You have to come at it with an open heart... Roger Ebert obviously had a narrow vision of what the medium is, or can be. It seems so high-handed. A lot of very very smart people, here in this room, are working to make these experiences extraordinary....We can debate what art is, we can debate it forever. But if the experience moves you, some way or another, even if it just moves your bowels, I think it's worthy of some serious study... Games mean something to a lot of people... Games aren't about reviewers, they're about players.
That last bad ass quote, that's one for the ages. Well said.
Clive Gives Keynote [Gamasutra]
