I genuinely wish you, and every gamer alive, could have attended Warren Spector's keynote speech at PAX 2010. Spector, the creator of Deus Ex, Thief and now Disney Epic Mickey, kicked off the con with a very inspirational speech that gave a thumbnail sketch of geek history, moved on to the current "Golden Age" of gaming, and gave a look at the future of games as an art form.
"Games are an art form," Spector reminded the crowd. "I'm no longer going to worry about that, or what society thinks of it. We're unique; we're an art form, and we're here to stay."
Spector showed off some photos that clearly established his last-gen geek cred, begining with an infant Spector in Mickey Mouse ears. He grew up on Ray Harryhausen epics, comic books, and sci-fi films. Then moved on to table top gaming (D&D in the 1970s FTW!), and his introduction to video games' possibility in the form of the Atari game Space Raiders. He worked at Steve Jackson Games then moved on to Lord British's Origin System, and then to Deus Ex and Thief.
More than just an establishment of his bonafides, Spector's presentation highlighted something important: When all of the art forms he loves were "young," they threatened older people. People in power blamed comics, TV, movies and Dungeons and Dragons for poisoning young minds -- a lot like people now think of games.
Spector pointed out that Shakespeare' Globe theater was regarded as encouraging criminals and louts to hang around, and the novel was regarded as sucking people's lives away when it first became popular.
The place of games as a "legitimate" form of expression is soon to be decided by the Supreme Court. November 2 marks the beginning of the case that could decide whether games are protected by the First Amendment.
Spector went on to remind us how the "mainstream" was becoming interested in our little hobby, and reminded gamers that we should welcome, as opposed to shunning, the newcomers.
"We spent 20 years trying to convince the public how amazing games are, and we've won," Spector said."Revel in your specialness, but we have to get past not wanting to let more people in the club."
I couldn't possibly have said it better myself.
Spector ended his presentation with a look at Disney Epic Mickey... I'm gonna use one word: Amazing.
Comments
Displaying 1–6 of 6
Nerdi_Master
I don't see the keynote address, all I saw was a video of the epic mickey trailer, what gives?
Thogin
I think someone wrote a nice java program and just let the go crazy.... on these comment selections, I hate spammers..
if i was a hacker... i am not... and i enjoy g4 so much, I would just go to their website and spam them out with useless crap make them think twice about it.
Xero_Wing
WTF is g4tv inundated with spammers all of a sudden this week
Bass.EXE
Thumbs Up if you're getting this game within the first week
masked_gamer3694
I am right behind Spector, we hard core gamers should be willing to let the newbies in cause remind yourself this we were all n00bs at one point in our lives. So i believe we should follow Mr. Spector's message cause how else do we expect gaming to live to its full potential. My final remarks are that Epic MIckey is looking great and can't wait to get my hands on it and try it out
Cali_Joe
Great comments by Spector, and as for the game, it just keeps looking better and better everytime I see something new. Definitely going on my Christmas list this year.
Displaying 1–6 of 6
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