While at Pixar last week, I passed on the opportunity to tour the animation studio.

Instead, I spent my time speaking with “Wall-E” character designer Jason Deamer about a wind range of subjects, most them completely unrelated to his work on “Wall-E.” Deamer has been at Pixar for 11 years and a gamer since the Atari 2600.

I wanted to know what a filmmaker who’s not on the level of Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson thinks about games. Deamer’s answers, including why he couldn’t finish “BioShock” and an argument in favor of games as art, surprised me.

Missing out on a tour wasn’t a big deal.

On why Deamer couldn’t finish “BioShock”…

“I played BioShock, which I thought was really gorgeous in terms of production design, just really exceptional. I didn’t get very far into it; in terms of just the gameplay, chasing down the zombies and stuff, the way they move, I didn’t find it satisfying to shoot them and chase them around. But the world I found to be really intriguing. I was inspired. I love the fact that the first moment you’re awake is outside of a plane crash and you’re swimming in the water and everything’s on fire — what a cinematic moment.”

His complaints about “Assassin’s Creed”…

“I thought it was visually so engaging and I really enjoyed climbing the buildings, jumping around. I had one complaint about it, which was just that a lot of the things it was asking you to do got repetitive after a while, like having to do the eavesdropping or the pickpocketing. Actually, I had two complaints. The other thing was the story stuff. I felt like the game locked you up in these little sections a lot of times where they’re telling you this plot that you couldn’t really follow, [that you are] supposed to hunt down and kill this so and so person, whose name you can’t remember and you don’t really need to know.”

If games should really take storytelling cues from movies…

“I think they’re completely different mediums in a way. For example, with “Halo 3,” they did all that testing on it to see where people got stuck. I think there’s definitely a way you can tell a video game story that’s completely first-hand, interactive that is satisfying. It makes you feel like you always made your own decisions, and you never get stuck and you go from beginning to end and you have this first-person experience. In a way, though, it’s just kind of inherently different. I feel like people are reaching for a connection between the two things. There’s some fundamental medium differences going on there. I think they both can do their own thing in a great way.”

How game designers should be encouraged to do their own thing…

“I think it’s just that we’re familiar with the idea of visual storytelling in terms of movies and TV. It’s something as a culture we understand, and video games is a new thing. I think people using the vernacular that they understand this other medium with to try to understand video games — there are some elements that are similar. But it’s a different medium and in a way needs its own set of language and things to understand. It’s not necessarily about plot as much as gameplay. It’s a different thing.”

Why Roger Ebert is wrong when he says games can’t be art…

“I do consider video games art, for sure. I think it’s totally an art. I mean, you could get into a philosophical conversation about what is art, but I went to art school and let me tell you, nobody has the right answer. Nobody knows the answer to that question. The most broad explanation for what art is is ‘the result of a creative act.’ I believe that’s what it says in the dictionary. You know what — [points to bag of rubber bands on the table] I can fold these rubber bands into a knot and call it art. [laughs]“