I gotta hand it to Rockstar Games VP of Creative Dan Houser for sticking up for core gamers and video games as an art form. In an interview with New York Magazine, Dan says:
Yeah, fuck all this stuff about casual gaming. I think people still want games that are groundbreaking. The Wii is doing something totally different, which is fantastic. We’re hopefully going to prove that there’s also a very big audience for people who want entertainment in another form, who think of games as being a narrative device that can challenge movies.
Games as an artistic medium are still in a developing stage and the potential is there to completely blow away established art forms. While there’ll always be a market (and a need) for casual games, the danger is there for the industry to get stuck in a rut of churning out derivative products in order to appease shareholders. We need great developers like Rockstar to be successful so that innovative game designers and developers can continue to have their chance to further the art form.
Read the whole interview [nymag.com]