| Reasonable said: As for talent, as I said there's plenty of great games talent - but you name me creative writing talent on even a par with average films and books? |
Forgive my intrusion.
Shigesato Itoi is an accomplished novelist who is also the creative force behind the Mother series. He is an excellent writer whose primary storytelling tool lies in the building of theme rather than straight-up characterization, though this is more apparent in Mother 2 (EarthBound) than it is Mother 3. I would put his works up against anything that I've come across in my studies as a literature student. Mr. Itoi's work benefits not only from the quality of his writing but his understanding of video games as a unique medium that communicate themselves very differently than do more passive entertainment forms like cinema.
Another writer and designer in games who I consider essentially peerless is Chris Avellone, who was the designer and primary writer for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, which outside of perhaps Itoi's work has the best writing in the history of the medium. The world he creates, the characters that he brings forth, are peerless - Kreia, in particular, is probably the single greatest video game character ever written, bar none.
I would argue that Mr. Fumito Ueda should also stand here, but you seem to be aware of his works, so I will simply reiterate that he understands that the power of gaming's ability to communicate a narrative has almost nothing to do with telling you a story.
I know that convincing you as to the (rarely and preciously) realized potential of the medium is unrealistic, but might we not at least agree that the criteria of what defines a game as art is very different from the criteria we use for literature, and even more different from cinema?
