Guillermo Del Toro says games are art and he’s making some

Guillermo Del Toro, director of such popular and conspicuously arty movies as Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, has weighed in on the debate that will never, ever be settled to everyone's satisfaction, proclaiming that of freaking course games are art and anybody who thinks otherwise is a freaking moron. More or less.

In a Q&A with a Portland audience, Del Toro, who recently relinquished directing duties on the perpetually-stalled Lord of the Rings prequels in order to focus on developing “the Citizen Kane of videogames,” compared the current (dis)regard for gaming as an art form to the way previous generations viewed comic books: “It's a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia... and most people that complain about video games have never f***ing played them." Gaming naysayers, he added, are “a little out of touch, because [games] are an art form."

Above: Putting eyes where eyes don't usually go is a favorite GDT gambit

Citing the usual suspects – Ico, Colossus, BioShock – as examples of games' artistic potential, Del Toro courted an unfavorable GamesRadar review for his current project, a “big, revolutionary” title influenced by HP Lovecraft, by neglecting to explicitly add, “Also, Okami was the bomb, yo.”

However, being seasoned professionals, we'll disregard the oversight and suggest that Del Toro's statements suggest the well-informed perspective of someone whose games ought to be worth a look.

Oct 6, 2010

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We took this on in 2007, and – shock! - the debate wasn't resolved

Our list of the titles Del Toro needs to best