dsheinem wrote:-Roger Ebert was a deservedly respected film critic throughout his life and a generally thoughtful writer on a range of subjects. He was never an "old man shaking his cane" or some such - that's dismissive of his age and ignorant of his work. I also think, as a critic of a medium with qualities to which so many game developers have admittedly aspired in their own work, his opinion does and did matter to the discussion of "are games art?"
I actually like Ebert as a critic, and value the discussion that was had despite my dissapointment with his articles, I simply think the response to his article reeked of the usual "Mainstream-senpain noticed me" that I so much despise.
Erik_Twice, you keep mentioning "the press" (their supposed role in the HM2 stuff, their response to Ebert, etc.), which is bringing this discussion much closer to the whole GamerGate thing than I am trying to suggest with the OP.
That seems fair. I mainly cited the press because it's the most visible part of this, and (IIRC) it was what sparked the Hotline Miami 2 debate. They were also a key driver of the complaints towards Lara Croft (2014) dropped sexual assault subplot and other minor examples. I really didn't mean to get into my beloved "game press sucks" bandwagon, sorry
What I do wonder is: How does this tie with other changes games suffer based on player outrage? It's common, for example, for games to get balance patches not out of design but out of player complaints (Eg. Nerfing the already weak Pyro in TF2) or for player complaints to drive a significant portion of design in roleplaying games (Editions wars). How do these changes compare to each other? I think there's something interesting here.
Exhuminator wrote:So saying "movies were this after 43 years" versus "video games are this after 43 years" is illogical because it assumes the two mediums were equal from a technological perspective to start with, and they most certainly were not.
While I do think that technology has expanded the kind of games that can be made, I don't think games have to "catch up" to film when it comes to artistic merit, specially since most games I would consider artistic masterpieces aren't particularly dependant on technology.
Everyone has his own list, but I think I can get at least 50 games of AFI's Top 100 quality without reaching or being hopelessly niche and filling the list with shmups. Most games wouldn't be particularly modern, either.