I am a huge fan of Ed Catmull and have been for a long time, especially after reading his book, 'Creative Inc.', about 3 years ago. This is probably streching the bounds of being related to software development but he is my favorite software developer, and one of the reasons I am doing anything in computer science at all, given I started out with the intention of pursuing computer graphics and later transered here to NYU Tisch to become a film major.
As for the content of the article, I was interested to see what Ed Catmull has to say about virtual reality, given he is one of the fathers of computer graphics technology. What he believes is not far off what I think, giving up control of the camera angle, whats in focus, where audience's eyes go take much control away from the storyteller and gives often unwanted agency to viewers. I think this comes from a vast disconnect from what people want from media such as film and tv and interactive media such as video games, VR makes more sense for responsive applications because it is inherantly built on user input, something non-existent in film.
VR provides very interesting prospects for how a story can be told. It does seem unfortunate to me that the interactive element of video games hasn't been exploited to a larger degree to tell stories that couldn't be told through film or TV. From a technical standpoint, I do suppose it makes sense that video games have not allowed players to have more freedom, but it would still be great to some day see a story told through a video game where the user input actually is instrumental to the story being told. The increased immersion VR provides would certianly make such a story more impactful. Before such stories can be told, however, the economics of VR and video game development must be addressed to make it possible for studios to create stories that depend upon user interactions and for those stories to be appreciated by a large audience.