Penny Arcade’s Jerry Holkins Opens Up

Penny Arcade creative genius Jerry Holkins sat down with GameCritics.com to chat. Holkins talks about the Phenomenal turn out and the decision to invite Wil Wheaton and Uwe Boll to speak at PAX as well as men in utility kilts. He also gave readers an idea of what inspires the Penny Arcade comic strips. He also talks about how he and his partner in crime Mike Krahulik deal with the success and accolades for the site as well as the hate mail generated from their often irreverent strip.

Holkins also gets into BioShock, reveals his favorite games of the 27 years he’s been playing, and his take on the trend in the industry to shift games towards the mainstream casual gamers.

Videogames as art is a question many people have been weighing in on. Roger Ebert has drawn a great deal of fire from the gaming community on his “videogames will never be art” stance. Holkins disagrees whole heartedly.

“[Ebert] just doesn’t know any better, and that’s not his fault. You know, videogames aren’t his specialty.”

“A lot of people his age, they don’t know what they’re talking about. They might be senile, and this is just one topic about which they don’t know. And the reality is, it may be that videogames as a medium haven’t reached that ethereal plane he associates with the true artistic experience. My problem isn’t so much his complaint about whether or not games are art or can be art; my problem is the idea that games can never be art, which is something I just sort of find disgusting.”

“We’re surrounded by art. Every time a person expresses themselves, you are immediately experiencing art.”

via GameCritics.com