First, I want to give my two cents on 3D technology. Stop it. No, seriously, just fucking stop it. I paid almost twice what I would have paid for a normal 2D matinee and while at times impressive, for the most part the 3D added absolutely nothing to the movie whatsoever. The depth of field goes from awesome to distracting and back to awesome but as far as what makes a movie an absorbing experience, feeling a part of the picture is not it. At times, people in the foreground look not so much a part of the scene as an intrusion of someone standing in front of the screen, taking me right out of the flick. While the new XD screen certainly wasn’t as dark as previous 3D movies I’ve seen, it still didn’t justify the expense or the discomfort of wearing Elvis Costello glasses over my regular glasses. Make the tech work without bulky glasses, then we’ll talk. Otherwise, stop foisting this shit off on me.

As for the movie, let me just start the review with

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Yeah, don’t read past this point if you don’t want the big secrets revealed because I’m about to go through all of them.

Still reading? Ok, here’s the spoiler.

Benedict Cumberbatch IS Khan.

Wow, what a shock. No, really it isn’t a shock to anyone even slightly familiar with the original movies. This brings me to my main criticism of the story. If all you are going to bother to do is REIMAGINE old Star Trek movies and shows with a few minor variations here and there, why bother with all the secrecy? Just tell people you are going to do it and let it be judged on that. As a remake of the Wrath of Khan, it’s decent. The spin of having Khan be the instrument of a war-mongering Admiral before turning on that Admiral was interesting. In fact, that story would have been fertile ground for an examination of the whole concept of the Federation and an analysis of the Rodenberry philosophy underpinning the whole universe. Unfortunately, like most of the plot, that thread existed solely as an excuse to have the Enterprise get pummeled by a fuckstupid dark Dreadnought class version of itself.

Most things in the plot seemed to happen as excuses for larger set pieces. The entire opening sequence in which Spock gets trapped in an exploding volcano while Kirk and Bones run from the planet’s indigenous life because Kirk stole their holy scroll (why was never explained and made little sense because he left it hanging from a tree) only to jump off a cliff into the ocean because the Enterprise is hidden beneath the water. Why is it in the water? Who the fuck knows? Even Scotty comments that it’s stupid to hide a starship in the ocean but hey, it looks damn impressive coming out of the water in 3D.

The logic of the plot only gets slightly better from there. Things happen… because. Khan’s frozen people are hidden in experimental torpedoes to be fired at the Klingon home planet, either to destroy the Klingons with their bad-assitude or the torpedo’s payload – the answer is neither clear or important apparently. Kirk takes the place of Spock from the original movie to save the Enterprise by being irradiated so that Spock can get all slash fiction-y boyfriend angry and yell “KHAAAAAANNNNN!!!!” before heading off to have a kung-fu battle with Khan on a ship flying over San Francisco. And of course, with foreshadowing so heavy-handed they might as well have had cue cards run across the screen saying “THIS IS IMPORTANT!” a revived Tribble shows that Kirk can be saved with some of Khan’s blood.

In the end, it feels like they wrote the screenplay on a whiteboard filled with story beats from the first Khan movie and Under Siege written in erasable ink, and just shuffled elements around as needed. The story doesn’t breathe, and it chokes the longer you actually think about it but it’s ok because there’s 3D being ejaculated across the screen into our eyesockets.

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it. The actors seem to have had a ball and they treat the material with a lot more skill than it deserves. Take the action bits out and you have all the best character bits of the original Star Trek movies done well. I’ve certainly seen a lot worse movies (the Star Trek Next Generation movies in fact). It just seems that 3D, bombastic effects, immaculate set pieces and cookie cutter plotting take the place of a story that could have elevated the material above “just another Star Trek movie.” I’m not asking for Citizen Kane. In the end, the two reboot movies feel like the pilot episode of a new Star Trek TV series only twice as long and more expensive. The really interesting parts will likely be left as backstory for the next movie, where we will hopefully see more than 5 minutes of the Klingons.

Incidentally, the lack of Klingons is but one of the missed opportunities here. The other big absence is that of a post-credits sequence. Surely they could have spent one minute showing Bones surrounded by Tribbles after the credits. It would have been entirely appropriate given their role in the movie.

I’d give Star Trek Into Darkness 3 out of 5 stars because I did enjoy it, but rue the missed opportunities and shallow storytelling.

Case in point: Square Enix noted “weak sales” of some of its releases for the last fiscal year as reasons for firing their president and “restructuring.” Now, normally the words “restructuring” means a lot of peons will lose their jobs for the failings of their bosses but nowhere in the story does it say they will lay people off. This happens all the time in the video game industry, especially since the global economy took a massive dump on itself in 2008 (thanks Wall Street!).

However, I note this story because it highlights something that just makes no good goddamn sense. The president of the company gets fired for the “weak sales” of multiple titles – that part makes perfect sense. It’s good to see someone held accountable for failure. The part that doesn’t make sense is the numbers. You see, the three titles highlighted by Squeenix as having weak sales all sold… well, they sold pretty fucking well, actually. Sleeping Dogs, by every indication a well-made game, sold over 1.75 million units. Hitman: Absolution sold 3.6 million and Tomb Raider, despite having early trailers that made even traditionally misogynistic gamers a bit squidgy, sold 3.4 million units.

Those aren’t failures. Those are not weak sales. I’d wager most video game developers (not publishers, mind you) would give body parts to get sales that high, especially a developer creating a brand new IP like the guys who made Sleeping Dogs. All three games got decent critical reviews and sold very well. Yet those sales are considered so weak that a man loses his job over them and the company loses over $100 million because of them.

How fucked up is your company and by extension, the industry itself when that many units can be moved and the company still doesn’t make money? What exactly has the money been spent on? Another big-time publisher, the continually inept and thoroughly evil Electronic Arts (EA) has stated recently that most of their franchises would need to shift FIVE MILLION COPIES to break even.

FIVE… FUCKING… MILLION. This list of the top-selling video games of all time tells you that a game with those kinds of sales numbers would automatically be among the best-selling video games EVER. As in all-time historical bests. So how would a company that puts out so many games in one year expect that every single one would have all-time record sales or else the company would lose money on them?

They couldn’t because they wouldn’t. Even if you didn’t exhibit the kind of willful incompetence that Electronics Arts has shown in the past three months (hi, Sim City fans!), one still could not reasonably expect that every game a publisher puts out is going to be a hit, much less an all-time record seller. It is statistically impossible.

So I ask the question again: how fucked up is the industry that the players with the most money have such insane business practices that they must have record sales on every title to break even? I guarantee you the developers aren’t getting the money. Most are happy to make enough money to pay all their staff and make another game. It isn’t the game retailers because we’ve seen over the last few years that Gamestop’s profit doesn’t come from new game sales so much as secondhand used game sales. So where is that money going? I don’t have an answer though I suspect like much of the business world these days, there’s a good bit of “bonus money” that’s getting doled around to everyone not actually involved in the making of the game. People like the soon-to-be ex-CEO of EA, John Riccitiello, who likely leaves a floundering company with millions of dollars in severance pay and stock options to feather his nest for generations. Even executive greed though can’t really account for just how spectacularly bad their dollars and cents are to be drowning in losses on games that generate as much revenue as a 1.7 million unit seller should.

Is it any wonder developers are now flocking to funding sources like Kickstarter to avoid the money pit that publishers represent? If the accounting is so bad on projects with so much money on the line, imagine how dodgy the accounting must be when it comes time to pay out royalties to developers. And when the big pubs use incredibly dodgy reviews scores from Metacritic.com to determine whether a developer should get the full royalties on the games they produce, the big publisher accounting starts smelling pretty fishy.

In short, this industry is a corrupt house of man-children getting taken advantage of by slick assholes in suits who run off with golden parachutes after depriving developers of hard-earned royalties and investors of dividends. Unfortunately, the alternative funding sources like Kickstarter are now getting abused by assholes with more money than goddamn sense or game design skills to fund their vanity projects while indie developers continue to go begging.

So congratulations Electronics Arts and Square Enix for money-spinning successful video games into huge ass losses. I don’t have a solution, but I sure do see a problem.

My Tragedy-Meter tells me that no significant gun violence has occurred recently. That’s not to say that no one has died from gunfire in the last little while. With over 11,000 deaths a year from guns in the United States, we average over 30 gun deaths every single day so the chances that no one has died from a gunshot wound in the last 24 hours are between slim and none. No one can accuse me of taking advantage of the victims of a recent tragedy though I’m sure some gun fetishist would likely try.

Let’s have a little background then. I was born, raised and have lived my entire life in Mississippi. My first 13 years of life were spent in the country and by country, I mean COUNTRY. The closest town was miles away and that “town” were what we termed “eyeblinks” – as in blink your eye while driving through and you miss it. I know a little something about guns. I grew up with guns. I’ve shot pistols, shotguns, rifles and BB/pellet guns as well as paintball guns in later life. I’ve hunted though not with the organization of deer hunters at camps so much as hunting birds and squirrels in our yard (yard being several acres worth of forest). I grew up in a Republican-leaning household. When I was the age of 8, our house in the middle of the boonies was broken into and most of our shit stolen. When I was 23, I was robbed at gunpoint outside a local coffee shop though the gun was there mostly for show. These two brushes with crime allow me to understand the paranoia that motivates people to seek self-defense options like concealed carry. Up until the last year, I’ve been an avid proponent of the right to keep and bear arms but always with the caveat that I think gun owners should be required to submit to background checks no matter where the gun was purchased and that training should be mandatory.

You know, sane regulation of deadly weapons. The kinds of things that “gun rights” advocates are now calling tyranny and government overreach.

Let’s get something straight right now. A gun is simply a tool. Gun rights advocates will often spout the adage that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Ok, with that in mind and with the definition that a gun is simply a tool, let’s flip that adage a bit. “Hammers don’t hammer nails, people hammer nails.” This is as true as the statement about guns and killing people. It’s logically consistent and makes sense. It also means fuckall to the debate about controlling guns.

See, a hammer is a tool built for hammering nails. It’s very good at that task but it can’t hammer a nail without something or someone to make it hammer the nail. A person can hammer a nail without a hammer, this is very true. They would be very bad at doing so without a hammer, and they might have to resort to a different tool to get the job done, but it could be done. A hammer is just a more efficient, one might probably say the best tool for hammering nails. And that’s what the gun is to gun violence.

A gun is a tool built for one simple purpose – propelling bullets at things at a very high rate of speed so as to inflict damage upon it. It is a force multiplier in military terms. Inflicting damage upon another person is what it is best at. It could hammer a nail but that’s not what it was built for and using it for such could likely be dangerous. Is it the only tool that can kill people or inflict major bodily damage on another person? Well, no. If one wanted to inflict damage, one could stab someone with a knife, bash their head in with a hammer, or a baseball bat or a car or even a frozen fish. The key difference is that the gun is so specifically created to do the damage inflicting bit that it does it so much more efficiently than all the other methods. It is so efficient, one gun can kill multiple people within a short span of time than anyone else. A well-trained gunman can kill lots of people with less chance that his victims can fight back than the same guy with a knife or a bat or a hammer.

When gun rights advocates start saying things like “guns don’t kill people” and “if you outlaw guns, people will just choose a knife” to deter the talk from their guns to other non-starters. Yes, a killer without access to a gun will choose a different weapon like a knife. I chalk that up as a positive for gun control because that same killer is going to have a lot harder time killing the same numbers of people with a knife as he would with a gun. The Sandy Hook shooter might only have killed five or six as opposed to 26 with a knife. With a lower-capacity weapon like a double-barrelled shotgun, he might have only killed 10 as opposed to 26. Controlling gun violence by reducing the amount of guns is not meant to suddenly override the basic human instinct towards violence. It won’t stop violent people determined to inflict violence on others from doing so and anyone who thinks it would is living in a fantasy world. Gun control is about reducing the number of deaths and wounds from guns, not doing something impossible like removing them from existence for ever and ever. People will kill people. I want to make it harder for that to happen.

Another great argument against gun control is “if you outlaw guns, only criminals will have guns.” You might think this is an argument against gun control but it actually sounds like a positive result of sane laws. If only criminals have the guns, it makes it pretty simple to figure out who is a criminal. That sounds like a net gain in law enforcement efficiency to me, a simple if > then statement in programming terms. If the perp has a gun, the perp is a criminal. Arrest him, take his gun and suddenly there’s one less gun and one less criminal on the streets.

One of my favorite gun rights arguments against gun control is the frankly batshit crazy theory that the Constitution outlined the right to bear arms so that citizens could use those weapons to overthrow an oppressive government. First, that’s been tried before and it didn’t work then. We call it THE CIVIL WAR and it was a bloody mess. It also crystallized the legal precedent that you can’t legally rebel against the United States Federal Government. Had the Confederacy won, perhaps that would be legal, but they didn’t and so it’s not. Rebellion against the American government is called treason, it’s a crime and those who attempt it don’t end up well. Just for shits and giggles, let’s say that it was somehow legal to rebel against the government. Do the gun fetishists who claim that “they can take my guns from my cold dead hands” truly believe that their stockpile of assault weapons is going to allow them to not only survive against but overthrow an oppressive United States government? Even if the conflict escalated beyond ATF agents and into the National Guard being called against the rebels, do these people really think AR-15′s and Glocks are going to do much against a force that can wield tanks, drones, bombers, fighter jets, attack helicopters and so on? Have they not seen what happened to insurgent rebels in Afghanistan or Iraq? See how well those insurgencies did? That’s you, Ted Nugent, if you decide you want to rebel against the government. Go ahead and try it. At least we wouldn’t have to listen to your moonbat whingdings on television anymore.

The simple truth is that gun ownership has been elevated from a sensible though likely unnecessary ownership of the means of self-protection into this higher calling from God. Americans have a fetish with guns. Many of the most fervent gun rights supporters picture themselves as Bruce Willis in Die Hard, fighting off terrorists single-handed when the truth is nowhere close to that. Laws like Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws make prosecution of gun crimes almost impossible and sets up a false bravado in the minds of gun owners which pushes them towards pulling the trigger instead of exercising caution. This country had its days of unfettered access to and use of firearms, the Wild West. It’s not wild anymore for a reason. The reason is that people like going to a bar without the fear they’ll get into a gun fight.

I’ve gone from advocating cautious, sensible gun control to wanting an outright ban on most if not all firearms. The cost does not outweigh the benefit. 20 dead elementary school kids is not worth it for scared people to feel a little more macho. The killer at Sandy Hook did not own the weapons he used, but the weapons he used were legally obtained and stolen. You can’t prevent him getting those weapons with sensible gun control, only with complete gun removal. If it’s harder for him to get a weapon, maybe that gives us all time to help the clearly deranged kid before he does something violent. Maybe he even decides killing 20 kids is not a good use of his time. How many deaths would there be a year from guns if guns were extremely hard to get (a la Britain)? Statistics say that the different is 11,000 to 37. That could change our death rate from 30 per day to 1 every 10 days or so. I think that’s a pretty appreciable difference and it’s worth doing.

Notice I didn’t get into the whole issue of mental health in this country. That’s another issue we certainly have to address in this country, both from a social stigma and treatment standpoint. We do a horrible job with mental health. We need to address that.

However, if mentally damaged individuals weren’t able to get access to guns at every Wal-Mart and pawnshop in the country, they might be a lot less dangerous.

Certainly, there’s a middle ground between a complete ban as I advocate and total fucking anarchy. There always is. I’m willing to listen to that argument. What I’m not willing to listen to is jacked-up gun fetishists and the head of the NRA telling me gun control is a government intrusion on freedom. The NRA can go fuck itself. It has become nothing more than the mouthpiece for gun manufacturers who are making a literal killing in gun sales now that gun control is on the political agenda. It doesn’t represent gun owners, it represents the guys who want to exploit the fears of gun owners to sell more guns and ammo.

So let’s talk sane gun control without the moonbats and industry shills shitting up the conversation. 11,000 people will thank us eventually.

Can I be one of the first to say a hearty “FUCK YOU, LOSER” to Mr. Romney and kindly invite him to fuck off to the obscurity of his pampered, rich white asshole lifestyle?

Far be it from me to put words in Mr. Romney’s mouth, but what he’s essentially saying is “those poor blacks, Hispanics and others don’t want to work for their things, they want to live off the government teat.” And that might be a viable complaint (it’s not) until you see what he lists as these boons of government largess that supposedly doomed his campaign. He lists:

• College loan debt forgiveness
• Contraceptives covered by insurance
• Being able to stay on your parent’s healthcare plan until the age of 26

That’s the exact things he specified, so let me tear them down one by one. College loan debt is a pretty big deal, and yes it’s a gift. For most college students coming out of school these days, there are NO JOBS. What jobs there are do not pay well. An average B/C student coming out of school likely has no scholarships and cannot afford tuition even with the help of some programs like Pell Grants, and that doesn’t even cover the costs of books and materials. Some of the more lucrative professions that require graduate work (doctors, lawyers) also require so much schooling that the student can come out over $100,000 in debt before they ever draw a paycheck from that degree. All that money for college loans is money that isn’t going into the economy and last I checked, we really need consumers to spend money for our economy to get better. While I agree this is a gift, it’s a damn good one. I was damned lucky not to have much of any debt coming out of school. If I had, I’m sure the crappy mall job I had when I graduated wouldn’t have helped much. It’s a gift, but it’s one that helps the economy.

As for the “free contraceptives” he and the religidiotic set decried as an affront to religious freedom, let’s set the record straight. Those contraceptives aren’t free – they are covered by the insurance plan the recipient pays for every month. The contraceptives aren’t free, they just don’t cost the recipient out-of-pocket. The religious institutions bitching that their right to live in the Middle Fucking Ages when it comes to reproductive rights aren’t paying a dime for the contraception. It isn’t a gift if you have to pay something in order to get it. People without insurance don’t get free contraceptives. There is no gift here, just the prevention of religious nutjobs from controlling things about your body they have no right to control.

Staying on parental healthcare plans until the age of 26 also isn’t a gift, because again, SOMEONE IS PAYING FOR IT. The premiums are paid by the parents. This is just an attempt to make sure as many people as possible have healthcare for as long as possible. Being healthy increases things like productivity, which helps businesses grow and thus the economy grow. Being against that is like being against capitalism.

And just for the record, here’s a list of the other things the people who voted for Obama see as fundamentals of government that perhaps Mitt Romney and his billionaire benefactors do not. The gift of clean drinking water free of industrial pollutants from some prick’s factory runoff. The gift of expecting that the roads that get you to work are clear of bandits, aut0-swallowing potholes and don’t cost you anything. Eating a hamburger without deadly bacteria hiding in the beef. A fair and equitable tax system that says someone who makes more money for one speaking engagement than I make in a whole year should pay a similar percentage of his income in taxes to me instead of being able to shelter all his money in a foreign bank. The right to get medical help when I get sick and to not go bankrupt doing so.

I know, crazy talk. How dare we peons who pay taxes and work 40+ hours a week ask for such things from the government we fund, whose responsibility it is to “ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those aren’t gifts, those are things every government should strive to provide for its citizens. And fuck you if you don’t think so, Mitt Romney. Your father lived off government assistance for a while, which allowed you to live and become the entitled rich asshole you are today.

See, voting is a right but it’s also a responsibility. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You are responsible for the course your country takes whether you vote or not. If you don’t vote, you don’t really have a right to complain if the captain is steering the metaphorical ship into the rocks. You have a right to drown silently. Why is it so important that you vote? Even if your state is a foregone conclusion in the Presidential race, that doesn’t mean it isn’t up for grabs at the Congressional level. You could also be voting for state representation, or local judges, or Supreme Court judges or election commissioners. There may be important ballot initiatives like school bond issues or allowing gay citizens the right to marry the partner of their choice without discrimination from the “my sky friend thinks gays are icky” crowd. There are a ton of reasons to vote even if you won’t affect the big race.

So get your ass out there and vote, or zip it until the next chance. You’ve no one to blame but yourself if you get crappy government.

I’m happy to say that not only did I provide a cover blurb, I did so because the book, The Destiny Engine, exceeded my expectations. E.C. Belikov is a fantastic writer, the kind of writer that disproves the adage that “self-published authors are untalented cranks.” Belikov juxtaposes weighty metaphysical issues and blistering action with the deft touch of a master of his craft. While the book isn’t perfect, those who like their science-fiction action-packed but with thought-provoking philosophical implications will not be disappointed.

The main plot device of this novel is the titular Destiny Engine, a sophisticated computer network that allows those sharing its neural link to experience the future, or more specifically various possible futures that could change depending on the choices the viewer makes. The farther in advance they gaze, the more possibilities they must experience, and the less predictable the results are. The technologies frightening implications have the Mars government struggling with impending legislation that will outlaw the technology and the consulting firm that controls it, which some view as a religious cult. Religions having been banned after a particularly nasty series of religious wars, the protagonist Kiera has to walk a fine line between defending and evangelizing for the firm’s technologies. When a prominent Mars businessmen/mobster has his child kidnapped, the firm sends Keira and her ex-boyfriend to help the local authorities find the kid before its too late.

While there are parts of the book that dragged, particularly in the middle of the book with the section involving some of the romantic subplots, a patient reader is rewarded with a fantastic finish. I was able to predict the ending, but I won’t say it was telegraphed, and it certainly didn’t hinder my enjoyment. The book earned every one of the four stars I give it, and I look forward to more from Mr. Belikov in the future.

Boiled down to its purest essence, Anathem is the story of a first contact situation with extra-dimensional aliens by a group of not-quite ascetic monks whose devotion is to mathematics instead of religion on a parallel world that might have been Earth except for various divergences in history. While it sounds simple, the author takes over 200 pages just to give us the first glimpse of that plot. He moves along at an incredibly slow pace, obsessing over small details while fleshing out the parameters of the world in exhaustive detail. This is an extremely dense work, full of words the author made up himself. It takes at least 200 pages just to get a grip on the language through his copious sidenote definitions and context. The author’s clear love of mathematics and meta-philosophy is evident, though it devolves into over-written self-indulgence at too many points in the story.

All that said, I enjoyed Anathem greatly. Yes, it’s a chore to get through at times, and I had to stop reading the appendices at the end of the book that were nothing more than narrative solutions of mathematical word problems. Stephenson has often been criticized for poor endings (The Diamond Age in particular was an abrupt, frustrating ending) but I felt the ending of this one actually worked and wrapped up the narrative neatly. If you can manage to make it through the first twenty or so pages without wanting to through the paperback across the room, keep at this. It will reward you for your dedication.

I give Anathem 4 out of 5 stars.

I booted up the game this week and finished it in a little over an hour. This may seem like a short playtime, but given that I only paid $3.74 for it (that included the soundtrack), I’d definitely say I got my money’s worth. Calling Dear Esther a game, though, is a bit of  a misnomer. It’s certainly not much of a game. There aren’t any real puzzles to solve, or much interaction other than walking over an island through a first person perspective. There’s nothing to fight, nothing to shoot, barely any controls whatsoever besides the act of walking and swimming upwards when your character happens to fall in the water. You could call it a walking simulator, though it never really approaches aspects of simulation. Walking is more the method the game uses to get you through the story, involving voiceovers from your character ruminating on the island, as well as dealing with the loss of the titular Esther.

As I walked through the game, I was struck by how many assumptions the vocabulary of videogames imposes on me. I kept expecting to be able to click on things to pick them up and examine them, or to find some sort of lock that I would need to open either by finding a key or solving some sort of logic puzzles. There’s none of that, however. There is only some of the most gorgeous scenery I’ve ever witnessed in a videogame. The only challenges or accomplishments to be had are finding the right path to advance the storyline with another voiceover monologue, or to find my way to the next zone/chapter in the game. As a videogame, with the traditional juxtaposition of challenge and achievement removed almost completely, it’s a failure. I can’t say it’s a FUN experience, but it is an entertaining one. I’m glad I bought it and played it, though I’m also glad I didn’t pay full price for it because I am a cheap bastard.

As a work of art, though, I think it succeeds. And this is the crux of why I wrote this piece. There has been long debates on the Internet about whether videogames can be considered works of art, on par with some of the great works of literature, cinema, painting and music. One notable critic who is firmly in the camp that videogames cannot be art is Roger Ebert, and I’m quite sure neither playing Dear Esther or reading this piece will change his mind. For myself, I have never had to ask the question because I assume it’s a given. Of course videogames can be art. They are, after all, the result of a collaborative creative process. If Dear Esther had been a film at Sundance, the question would never have been asked “Is this art?” The cinematic medium has long ago been established among the intellectuals who care about such things as an art form. Dear Esther is a tone poem, an art installation freed from a physical location. It has all the pretentiousness of a snooty art film (“It insists upon itself” – incidentally I share Peter Griffin’s view on The Godfather), though in this case I really don’t mind it because it IS an art film. The only difference between this game and an art film is that the viewer becomes the camera rather than being restricted by the director’s choice of framing the scenes as he wishes.

Dear Esther is not the first game to approach the level of art, in my opinion, it just happens to be one of the first that insists it be considered through more than the filter that interactive gaming imposes on the viewer. I’ve never doubted videogames could be art, whether they are intended as purely “artistic” or just happen to approach that hallowed designation because of excellence. Games like Deus Ex, Thief, Freedom Force, Mass Effect 2, Wasteland and others have always been considered art to me.