The film director Guillermo Del Toro, best known for his fairtytale movie
Pan's Labyrinth and film adaptation of
Hell Boy publicly defended video games as being an "artform" at a book reading this week.
"Video games are the comic books of our time," said Del Toro at a book reading in the U.S., currently available to
view on YouTube. "It's a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia. They say, 'Oh, video games...' And most people that complain about video games have never f***ing played them."
"Video games have proven to be incredibly immersive experiences, and not every game is a shooter game," the director continued. "You will see that they are an art form and anyone saying differently is a little out of touch, because they are an art form."
"Like the way they say, 'Horror movies, they make the kids delinquent! Horror comics, they make the kids criminal!' Now it's video games," he added. "It's all bulls**t."
At the book reading event the director spoke of his love for first person shooter games, despite his "entirely anti-war" politics. He cited
ICO and
Shadow of the Colossus,
Gadget: Invention and
Marathon as "masterpieces" and described
BioShock as having "one of the most fully-realised worlds in any medium".
Del Toro was responding to a question about the forthcoming "Lovecraftian" video game
he recently announced on MTV News. Del Toro told MTV the project's massive scale would necessitate a three-year development schedule, with the game hitting store shelves in 2013 in the "best case scenario."
Speaking at the book reading event, Del Toro promised the audience a "really big, revolutionary, very different game". He described the project as "a long-term commitment", and an idea he's been trying to green-light for the last "three or four" years.
"I expect and hope to create what I would like to see in a video game," he said. "The one thing I can say [about my movies] is that I'm doing them because no-one else is doing them. And the video game is the same thing: I want to do that video game in a way that no one else is doing."
