Feature: 'From Paris with Love'

In one of today's main Gamasutra features, our French correspondent was on hand last weekend as game creators Shigeru Miyamoto, Michel Ancel and Frédérick Raynal visited the French Ministry of Culture to receive the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for significant cultural achievement, and has filed a detailed report on the event. In this extract, Miyamoto's collection of his award, which helped honor video games as a major cultural force on the par with other creative media, is discussed: "Shigeru Miyamoto showed neither vanity nor shyness. His irrepressible spirit showed as he embraced the Minister of Culture upon receiving his medal. The applauds were unanimous and while modestly receiving them, Miyamoto's eyes rapidly made contact with as much people as he possibly could as if to say, "Everybody counts." Or maybe he was looking into the audiences' eyes to find out how important, or not, this Chevalier honorific title was. His award speech began with a vigorous "Bonjour!" and went straight to the heart of French culture by saying that he was honored to receive such a distinction from a country he admired for the Impressionist painting movement, especially Monet. He then explained that when he started to work on video games for Nintendo in the '80s, "they were conceived by technicians, not artists". He now feels lucky to have been a part of the evolution of the video games towards an entertainment medium." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including more on Ancel's opinions of games' effects on children and the idea of games as art (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).