The man who made GoldenEye

I consider it to be, potentially. Games merit that view today, but they're in the minority and they're not typically heavily marketed. There are games here at GameCity that merit that view. I'm pretty confident The Witness will turn out to be a work of art.

For me it comes down to a feeling. You want to enjoy playing it, of course, but once that's run out, is there something else? Does it stay with you for a lifetime? Does it give you something to think about next week or next year when you're not playing it?

To me, that's what something that meets a certain bar of importance should achieve. The books I've read, the films I've seen, the paintings I love and the games I love, I carry them with me and I refer to them in my own internal mental life and I bring them up in conversations because their importance carries on and it becomes a part of the fabric of me.

A game that isn't artistic, maybe I enjoyed playing it and then I put it away and it fades into the background.

I'm trying to think of a recent answer...

I play an awful lot at the moment. Mainly I've been playing indie games because they're the more interesting titles to me. They have a higher density of ideas.

I hesitate to say Flower, but one of the interesting things about Flower was I couldn't play it because it was so emotionally provoking. I couldn't play it properly because as soon as I controlled it I felt an upwelling and I had to put it down. That's an achievement.

Another example is Shadow of the Colossus, which I haven't played because I've seen enough about it to know I wouldn't enjoy the feeling of killing those beasts. And yet still it's a part of me now even though I've made a considered decision not to play it. Again, an interesting achievement.

There's something magical I'm not going to be able to explain there, but getting analytical, I like the idea of holism and all of nature and humanity being part of one whole. I don't see myself as a tree-hugging hippy, but nevertheless in another life I could have been.

There was something very moving to me. The way the petals came together to be you, you suddenly leapt to the conclusion that that was you, that's unique and very moving.

At lunch today I saw some of the Newport [University of Wales] students' work – they showed five projects. I look at those and think, 'I'm not sure I could do that myself in three months.' Some of them look very good and the tools and technologies available to people off the shelf now do give you a leg up. With some energy and talent one or two of those young people can go a long way.

Being contrary, I can imagine an indie game that tries to be really realistic in a very narrow, controlled way, but I haven't seen anything like that. Because you're limited with resources everybody understands you have to choose other options.

But there's no sense in which you have to make a 2D game, and yet many people choose to do that for valid reasons and it's an artistic choice. It's a mostly influential choice for your entire game because so many types of genre will work well in 2D and not in 3D, or vice versa.

Crossing that wall is in fact a huge challenge.

It can be if you care.

I don't know. I'm not making that judgement. I think I could choose an easier life.