"we're in 2010, "just fun" doesn't cut it anymore, we need to evolve past that to be recognized as an art form"

Adding uncanny valley graphics and railroad storylines isn't going to make that happen. GTA IV tried to be art with its story and world, and most gamers just saw it as another GTA. You want games recognized as art, look at what's recognized as art in other media. It's not what games are doing.

What gamers see and what a game actually is are too different things. But you are mostly right. However, it's not by putting a simple fun platform game on a pedestal that we are actually gonna get there.

Actually, it's a necessary step. You want to get games recognized as art, people need to recognize games in the first place. And they need to be kept there. As in you want to go for artistic games, they need to still have mass appeal (like The Godfather, which even though I didn't like, is considered an artistic film and is wildly popular).

You're looking in the wrong direction for "art form".

Games won't become an art form by trying to copy movies.  No successful art form ever has.

Braid and Flower yes.  Dues Ex, Mass Effect, Heavy Rain.... no.

SMBWii.... probablly actually.

The story being told moarly through gameplay is where games as an artform will be recognized in the future. 

Attempts to make cinematic gameplay will always fail because a videogame will never be a better movie then a movie.  The best movies will always be far and away better then the best "Cinematic games".  

Videogames can't really control pacing, character development and consistant characterization due to this in part being put in the players hands.

Gameplay being told through gaming... both in the ways done now... and also in almost a free form stye game that is set up to try and accomadate any moves you make...

Those will be the future of gaming as art.  It won't be developers satisifying they're creative goals so much as developers enabling the goals of the players and merging a world and setting with an immense feeling of immersion.

Meh. I completely disagree with him.

Being cinematic and trying to copy movies are 2 different things. I disagree that a cinematic game is inferior to a great movie, because the cinematic game doesn't have just that quality, it will have gameplay and story. Regardless of medium, a good story is a good story.

Furthermore, you seem to consider a cinematic game to be a game heavy into the cutscenes, while I consider it a game that knows how to frame a scene and transmit it's messages and subtext to the players in visual ways that are dinamic and emote. I heavily criticize MGS4 for being an almost interactive movie, it's IMO a bad example of cinematic.

I completely disagree with your assessment, a videogame can and does usually control the pacing, character development, and characterization, even a game like Mario does that to a limited extent. While you are correct that a videogame, by it's inherent interactivity, can wreak havoc with those elements, a finely crafted game will still be able to succeed in them - for example Deus Ex.

In fact, what you describe as the future of gaming already happened - it was called Deus Ex. You could pretty much do anything, even kill essential characters that had 20+ hours of gameplay "made" for them, in the first hour, and the game adapted and still went on with a fine narrative. You can have entirely different experiences depending on who you visit, which path you take, which character you develop and is built by the world.

While a game like Mario succeeds in a lot of ways, if absolutely fails in setting a good story, with worthwhile characters and narrative. It's merely a box for us to interact with a pre-made game world, while having zero impact in it. It doesn't give me anything back except for a fun, entertaining time.

Each media is different, movies adapted from books have great difficulty and vice versa, same as movies based on games and games based on movies. While gaming is in it's relative infancy compared to cinema or literature, i again reinforce the notion that merely making a fun experience, is not the way gaming needs to grow.

That's not really true.

Mario games are the litterary equivlent to something like Beowulf.

Now that's just mean. What did Mario ever do to you!?

Haha, I mean in that it's a classic story told in a classic way.  Which has a LOT of artistic meaning.  Some of the greatest literary and cinematic masterpieaces are just classics told in a classic way.

Additionally, looking at "story" as the only artistic element of gaming is highly flawed. 

Things like Level Design are just as artistically relvenet.  When you focus on the story... in a way you are ignoring an entire world that has been created by the developers.

I'm of course speaking in overall terms, just used story as an example. I think people read way too much into Mario, Nintendo isn't out trying to make citizen kane when they make it, they just do some good level design that results in fun gameplay. Case in point: I fail to see what you are saying that Mario compares to Beowulf.

So a game where a fat plumber jumps platforms and gathers powerups and coins somehow equates to an epic long form medieval poem?
I'm not sure i'm following that train of thought, and I don't mean this with sarcasm or anything, I really don't get what you're saying.

Because if you're saying it's a "classical" way of doing entertainment, that just means it's meant to be immediate and satisfying, I fail to see classical literature in there. In fact, Mario is anything BUT literature, and I don't mean walls of text.

Like I said, I think people read too much into Mario that they end up projecting stuff in there that just isn't there.