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| Videogames can tell very effective stories. | |
| Posted By: Leisandir <joecooperstein@hotmail.com> | Date: 5/22/12 12:28 p.m. |
In Response To: Re: Bungie responds to Activision contract. (Cody Miller) Games can make people cry, they can give them adrenaline rushes, they can change your mind about ideas. Not all games need to be based on narrative. Gameplay should be a main focus. It should not, necessarily, be the only focus. Some games are very good at conveying stories, others exist just to provide a challenge. Some meld the two. And a lot of people enjoy experiencing a story firsthand through a game. You could argue that books are the best way to transmit narrative because movies focus too much on visuals, which are not necessary to get the story across. You could say that a live action play is the best way, because it involves real human beings connecting with the audience in real time. The truth is that any medium can be effective at telling a story, and each medium has its own unique quirks that can be utilized in the telling of that narrative. When you're telling a story through a game, you don't want to do it the same way that you would in film - but that doesn't mean you don't want to do it at all. Not all movies are dramas. You don't get the same thing out of going to see the Avengers that you do out of going to see Water for Elephants. Reading The Amazing Spider Man and reading From Hell will give you wildly different experiences. That doesn't make one of these better than the other. It just makes them different. We've been through decades of videogames that view the story as an accessory, something that's nice to have but isn't really that important. In the development process, the story is often created seperately and far behind the game itself. Often, the game is nearly complete when the writers get involved. That's why people think the stories in videogames are bad. And, once again, every game does not need a deep story. Some don't need a story at all. However, there is great potential in this medium and we can't write off the entire art because we haven't exploited it properly yet.
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