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Video Games Shouldn't Be Movies
from the interactive-for-a-reason dept
Video game companies have been trying to set themselves up more and more like movie studios for a while now. In fact, they keep trying to make the video games seem more like movies with detailed story lines including animated "cut scenes" that fill in between gameplay. Clive Thompson, though, is suggesting that this doesn't make any sense, and video games should focus on being video games, not movies. He points out that what makes video games cool is your freedom to "play," not the storyline of what's happening. You watch a movie to find out what's next -- you play a game to see all the stuff you can do. Also, the movies stop you from actually playing. Very few video games actually have story lines worth bothering about anyway, so what's the point -- other than to wow non-gamers and the press with pretty screen shots? Clive even suggests that part of the reason is to force people to feel like they've "finished" a game, so they go out and buy another one.
Reader Comments
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Very biased
Aparently this person has not done much research. One such game/movie was Knights of the Old Republic. A game that performed incredibly well and had an extremely large selection of choices during playtime. Just because some other games have failed to make their game have movie like qualities doesn't mean that we should abandon the concept altogether. We just need to work on it more.
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No Subject Given
When I used to play "Starcraft" heavily I enjoyed the cinematics that were inserted between certain levels. Some of them moved the game along and others were just filler but they wre all well done enough to entertain. I still go back and watch them from time to time.
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Game stories
"Very few video games actually have story lines worth bothering about anyway, so what's the point."
Very few movies I've seen lately have had stories worth bothering about, but I wouldn't burn Hollywood to the ground just yet. It's just a bit of an overstatement to say that poor storytelling in existing titles is reason enough to abandon the project of storytelling altogether.
Fact is, some games attempt to tell stories and some don't. Of those that do, some tell the story well, and others don't. The ones that tell the story well tend to sell a lot of copies, so there are all sorts of basic market forces in place to improve the quality of storytelling in the game industry. So what's the point of climbing on the soapbox and arguing that games must do this and must not do that? Leave it to the designers to try new things; if it works everyone's happy, and if it doesn't they'll try something else sooner or later.
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Halo 2
i agree somewhat with the article. i'll use Halo 2 as my example.
the first time i played it, the ingame movies helped push along a story- not too indepth really, but it was nice. the KEY to the movie/game meld, is to be able to skip the movie. when i played Halo 2 again, i skipped every movie because i knew the story and just wanted to play.
when video games force you to watch movies every time the whole way through just because they want their work to be seen and justified, that is poor decision making. while you may spend a lot of time and money making the movie parts, the MAIN reason is gaming- and that i agree with.
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No Subject Given
There's nothing inherently wrong with a game based strongly on a specific story line. It just has to fit the gameplay. Note that all the GTA3 games allow lots of fun freedom, but they also have a fairly linear progression in a story that is in someways optional, but not completely.
We don't need many rail shooters like Rebel Assult, but what's wrong with having a directed experience, as long as the direction is well thought-out and fun? Every video game does not need to be an attempt to make a complete virtual world where you can roam around just as aimlessly as in real life.
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yes!
God bless 'im! Developers oughtta be investing their time, money, and game structure into the things the player DOES, not the things he sits back and watches. What Thompson is saying is what I've been thinking for so long; darn him for finding a way to put it into words...
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