You guys are too nice. I'm used to the Giant Bomb thread where people would've crucified anyone in the crew if they said something like what Tim said on that GOGS, haha.
I didn't think it was a very big deal, for the record.
I think he definitely deserves the flak to be honest. It was/is beyond ignorant. But in a "I hope he sees what he said in retrospect and learns" rather than "Burn him!". The latter being tiring and helping no one.
The new Gamecast about Story was interesting & one of the most important discussions in terms of what games are and will be going forward. But the talk about movies, which are supposed to be inferior to games, really urked me in certain ways. Saying movies are one-dimensional - even though Colin said he didn't mean it as an insult - is just wrong, especially if you look at the years and years of analysis and academic research plus the plethora of styles/genres/stories that are represented and/or were birthed in the medium movie. And true, games probably will evolve over time, but making such broad statements on basic speculation is weird.
Two other things:
1.) It is true that you can explore game environments in some games to a ridiclious amount and that's fantastic. One of the few true fascinating features of the medium game, but to say this doesn't happen in movies is a disservice to the people and directors creating and building backgrounds/requisites/cloth of the actors etc. Sure, Colin says "you can stop the frame and say: oh look at the background", but that's the same as looking at a furniture in The Order or some such. The fact that you interact with it (And even that is questionable because you basically look at it, just up close) is NOT inherently the "better" experience.
2.) Colin talks about player agency as in choosing the following story path. I agree with him, that it's overdone (Becaue most games bascially fuck it up. I have yet to see a convincing game that does it to the extent it proclaims to do), Player agency as in "I walk this way to kill enemy X" or "get over ledge y this way" IS the true gem of videogames, though. This is just a semantic problem, I had, because we agree on this.
All in all, while I have certain problems how Colin differentiates between movies and games, it's true that games are special in their own right. It will be really interesting where we are in 50 years and how we look at the early 90s, 00' and 10' and which games will be considered the masterpieces that define the early goings of gaming story telling & world building.
Another thing:
Pacing in games is a very different beast from movie pacing, because - at least in open world games that give the player a huge amount of controll over what the y do, the pacing is almost completely player driven. To some it might be an advantage, but because those games especially are so huge, it can fuck up the whole experience, which at first really annoyed me (Hello, Dragon Age: Inquisition!) . I feel like the player has to have a sense and sophistication of the genres history/game structure and so forth to experience such games in a well-paced manner (story wise). (CoD is another matter. sure, the player could just stop and look around, but since the scene only really moves when you do, it' nonsensical to do just that.) In that sense you truly have to view games as their own, but from a strictly narrative-side of things, it is questionable whether or not "open world" games can ever achieve true narrative genius.
Also: The "There is place for every game/style"-like argument is tiring and needs to stop. Either you wanna have a discussion or not. Just because there are indeed certain types of games/movies so on, doesn't make an attempt at criticsm "pretentious".
Well, that was long post, indeed.
Hope my ramblings and my english are forgiven. ;-)