John Lasseter Speaks of His Appreciation For Video Games

Disney Infinity is due to be released this summer on Wii U, Wii and 3DS as well as other platforms, and it looks to be Disney Interactive's most ambitious project yet. It allows the player to scan real-life toys into the virtual world from all sorts of Disney universes like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Monsters University and Pirates of the Caribbean.

One of the key men behind the game is Pixar's chief creative officer John Lasseter, and in a recent interview with GamerHub.tv he revealed more on how he came to love and appreciate video games.

Naturally, when Lasseter was born there were no video games, so he had to wait a while for the likes of Donkey Kong and Dig Dug to emerge. He spoke fondly about his memories of the two games and said their main attraction was simply how fun they were to play. This entertaining nature of gaming got him excited about the medium, but it was after having children when he became truly immersed:

As I had children and they got into video games, and they were at the prime ages for the development of video games, it was so much fun seeing them play the games and seeing it through their eyes.

As we played with the family, with Mario World, Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. - the mashup of all those things - it's been so exciting to see the tremendous advancement of how great video games look.

Lasseter admits he still doesn't play games, but finds he gets more entertainment from watching his sons play them - although his wife does sometimes tell him off for directing while he does.

He sees gaming as a great platform for telling immersive and fun stories, and he loves Disney Infinity because the player is in control of their own story. They can tell any tale they choose.

I love creating stories in movies and animated films with great characters and really entertaining people - and it's really exciting to have video games and the interactive world as an extension of that. It makes it so we can expand our worlds and what we can do with our characters.

Lasseter said Disney Infinity can still be played as a quest, where you go through set levels in typical video game fashion, however what excites him the most is the prospect of players doing whatever they want and interacting with several other characters from the Disney universe in an expansive environment.

It's hard to even call it a video game, because it's so different. What excites me about this is it puts more and more of what happens in the game into the hands of the user, it’s up to them.

It seems John Lasseter is looking forward to Disney Infinity. Are you excited by it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.