NationStates Jolt Archive

This is something I occassionally debate about to people of the pre-gaming generation. They believe that computer games can only ever be good for simple gaming, i.e. that a game cannot tell a story or innovate in artistic direction, and that any attempt to do so is pre-emptively failed. What do you people think? Personally, I believe that a game can have a plot and world equal to any book or movie, and has the capability to tell an equally gripping story, especially recently, where narrative and immersion has been coming along leaps and bounds, with professional story-writers being hired in order to better communicate the original idea, or come up with their own, in the case of cash-cow developer/publishers like EA. To further illustrate my point, I've came up with a shortlist of games I feel have really began to push the boundaries of interactive storytelling.

Neverwinter Nights
Baldurs Gate I/II
Planescape: Torment
Warcraft III
Halflife I/II (and expansions)
Max Payne I/II
Shining Force II
WH40K Dawn of War
Homeworld I/II (to a lesser extent)
Knights of the Old Republic (haven't played the sequel)

And these are just ones that I've just considered. I'm sure with time I could double or treble the length of that list. So I have two questions. First of all, what do you think? Do you agree/disagree with my statement that games are an equal medium to books/film if done correctly? And secondly, assuming you do agree, what games in particular would you say outdone themselves in plot, setting, etc?

KOTOR I and II are good examples. They set you out as Darth Revan in the first one, a former sith lord who had his memory wiped. In II, you are an outcast, exiled from the jedi order.

They really involve you in the plot...

Deus Ex

I completely agree, though you don't see as many story-driven games as action-driven games anymore. The list has above has some good games, and I'd add the Final Fantasy series to it. In the way of immersion and story, the GTA games are also pretty good in their own way, although most people tend to focus on the killing, drug dealing, and random violence parts of it.

Deus Ex

Damn, beat me to it.

The first Deus Ex was brilliant, the first game I've played that's been driven more by the plot than the gameplay.

Deus Ex
oooh, forgot about that. Yeah, that's a really good one.
Aquinon: I think GTA has a potentially good premise, but I'm one of those rare people who thinks it has been done terribly. The problem with a game with that kind of freedom is, unless there are serious consequences to your actions, the extreme behaviour gets old. Fast. GTA to me isn't tight enough for me to enjoy or get into, and the average mission generally (that's generally, not 100% of the time) involves going from A to B and shooting up some people of varying ethnic origin. Mafia (at least the pc version of it, I dunno if the others are different) was like a superior version of GTA to me, except for the horribly, horribly done stealth sections. I really enjoyed that.
Dimmimar.... you could've at least put "SPOILER ALERT" in your post :D... not everyone has played Kotor yet.

Whilst games are certainly a form of interactive fiction, they are completely different from books. I would argue that modern computer games are much more akin to films or television programs.

Books demand visual imagination. They require that the reader visualizes for themself the surroundings, the characters, the facial expressions etc. Games in general remove this demand. As such, although they are interactive in a way that boks are not, they are also more passive than books in the imaginative work demanded.

If you see a film based on a game you are not disappointed by the images of the characters etc. These are pre-defined. If you watch a film based on a book, however, the images can be in complete conflict with those in your head.

One problem with computer games as interactive fiction is that they do not have the freedom that non computer RP has. The choices of action, although large, are always limited to whatever the programmers/designers chose to include. Table top RPing is much more like interactive fiction.

Neverwinter Nights
Baldurs Gate I/II
Planescape: Torment
Warcraft III
Knights of the Old Republic (haven't played the sequel)


I agree with these, *definitely*

The rest I haven't played, except for Half Life I, which was really just a cliche trans-dimensional alien invasion. Good game, but there was no real story.

And I second Deus Ex!

I agree with these, *definitely*

The rest I haven't played, except for Half Life I, which was really just a cliche trans-dimensional alien invasion. Good game, but there was no real story.

And I second Deus Ex!

Half-life itself, in retrospect, doesn't appear to have much plot to offer. Instead, it's one of the games that really furthered a computer game as an immersive platform. Before that, first person shooters started off like doom or quake, the first level loaded, and with no explanation, rhyme, nor reason, you were shooting people. Zombies in doom, dogs in Quake. These things were never explained to you, except perhaps a cursory paragraph at the end. However in halflife, you knew why you were fighting the aliens, to an extent. You were informed why the humans supposedly coming to rescue you shot at you, in short, it actually had reason behind its actions as opposed to just flinging you in. The story isn't all that, I admit, but the point was, it was one of the original games to bother actually having one that was longer than a paragraph.

Alien Born, you make a good point regarding their differences to a book, although a book is even more imagination intensive than at first you would suggest. I, for example, never bother building up a visual image of the characters, but rather what they sound like. I think much more in sound, so knowing what they looked like was secondary to what they sounded like. My point, when comparing it to a book, in the primary was in the sheer amount of detail you can find in a game like Neverwinter nights is like a book in its depth, something which one tends not to find in a movie. Characters generally have a larger timeframe with which to develop, a game lasting between 10 and 50 hours, and a movie being crammed into 2-3.

As for your final point, I feel this is more a constraint of technology than a fundamental limitation of a computer game. The current line of MMORPGs is pushing that further, I'm merely primarily ignorant of them because I don't want to have to subscribe to a game I may or may not play a lot. There is an advantage in the scripting inherent in single player games though, and that is that if the storytelling is given professional attention, there's no way for you to break it, that is to open up gaping plotholes that could be opened by accident where there is less scripting and more freedom. Also, with a well scripted game, you have a feeling of momentum and purposefulness (is that a word?), rather than the aimlessness of the more free-roaming games.

I'm not arguing that computer games are the be-all and end-all of entertainment, just that they have certain qualities and distinctions that make them the equals of other mediums, which I think you agree with me on anyway. I'm just clarifying my views further.

In respect of detail and duration, games are certainly more extensive narratives than films. However I would still compare them to a multi sensual medium, rather than to a purely codified medium. Yes I concentrated on the visual imagination, but sound is certainly as important, even though it is more frequently disregarded.

There is a body of academic work which examines games as narratives. The work of people such as Brenda Laural of MIT or Sherry Tuckle refer to this. My wife actually did her doctoral thesis on computer mediated story telling and creation of narrative meaning along with experimentation with story construction. ("Towards a semiotic toy", being the title of the thesis. University of Leeds 1997)

Games have developed story lines, and this goes further back than you indicate. Relatively early games such as Monkey Island have full blown narrative plots. Even Donkey Kong or the Mario Bros. can be considerd as stories. These latter ones do not have the depth of detail nor characterization that more complex modern games do, but they still have the basic plot elements of a story.

It is probably best to think of games as a new genre of story telling, rather than try to force them into a category that previously existed.

In respect of detail and duration, games are certainly more extensive narratives than films. However I would still compare them to a multi sensual medium, rather than to a purely codified medium. Yes I concentrated on the visual imagination, but sound is certainly as important, even though it is more frequently disregarded.

There is a body of academic work which examines games as narratives. The work of people such as Brenda Laural of MIT or Sherry Tuckle refer to this. My wife actually did her doctoral thesis on computer mediated story telling and creation of narrative meaning along with experimentation with story construction. ("Towards a semiotic toy", being the title of the thesis. University of Leeds 1997)

Games have developed story lines, and this goes further back than you indicate. Relatively early games such as Monkey Island have full blown narrative plots. Even Donkey Kong or the Mario Bros. can be considerd as stories. These latter ones do not have the depth of detail nor characterization that more complex modern games do, but they still have the basic plot elements of a story.

It is probably best to think of games as a new genre of story telling, rather than try to force them into a category that previously existed.

Agreed with that last point. And Monkey Island! I had forgotten about that. Definitely a cornerstone of showing how plot can be integrated into a game. Although I half-jestingly contest that I don't recognise older games as having plot, given that part of my original list was "shining Force 2", a game for the megadrive/genesis that is 10/11 years old if I recall entirely correctly, and 12/13 years old if my second guess is correct. I just forget the names of older games more readily, so didn't bother filling my list with "and that one with the singing penguin..... Artistic gold." I suppose Mario and Donkey Kong and other games of its type do have a plot... but the point of distinction I was making is that in these games, the plot was purely to justify a series of changing environments and why you need to beat up the bad guy. In more developed games they don't just perform that distinctly secondary role.


As for your wifes thesis, it sounds quite interesting, actually, unless it turns out to be one of those scary ones that sounds like it involves writing and argument and ends up involving far more equations than ....something that's ordinarily common in a thesis.