|
|
|
|
There is always some sort of revoloution going on in a generation. Some artistic form, belief, or way of life that is considered ridiculous, offensive or evil by the conservatives of the time. The storytelling revoloution is subtle, but it's there. Most adults would scoff at the prospect that a videogame could tell a story just as well (and in some cases better) than a movie or book, but it's true. Videogames are in an interesting place in society because they could be used to teach morals, ideas, and beliefs usually taught in books and film to an audience that may not be interested in the instructive art forms.
In addition, videogames unique pacing allow extremely complex and long stories to be told without worrying about boring the player. Ultimately a storyline within a videogame can be almost endlessly complex and deep because the storyteller has the luxury of allowing the player brief periods of "play" to escape the monotony of constant storytelling, which mainly leaves out the player. Furthermore because the "play" and the story interact and rely on eachother the player is more attached to characters and events because there victories literally are the player's victories.
Videogames can also use "metastory" devices to allow players to review what has already happened. In one game, a player can access an archive of information at almost any point in the game allowing him or her to read biographies of characters (that change as the story progresses) and view past scenes that furthered the story. In this way, even an extremely complex story can be made available. In addition to these pacing benefits a game offers many levels of communication of ideas. Games can include dialogue, visuals, music and uniquely, interactivity. It's true that movies can do most of these as well, but they are often severly limited by the amount of time a person is willing to sit down and watch a movie (rarely above 3 hours), whereas it's not uncommon for certain games to have 40 hours of gameplay or more. In this way, a videogame has the benefit of interactivity, and longevity, while it still has all the possibilities of a movie in terms of levels of communication. The major limit on videogame storytelling is the audience is willing to put up with the story if they find it boring, but this is a technical problem. Many clever game developers have worked in many well developed and interesting themes into games while still maintaing a genre and "feel" that would attract many different kinds of players.
bravenet.com