In a video game, though, the player is doing instead of experiencing. Since its the player's actions that decide the ultimate outcome, players can feel proud or even guilty of what they have accomplished. These feelings are difficult to create in any other form of media.

However, when one looks at video games, we see a lot of games that don't take advantage of that. I'd say the majority of video games are fairly mindless fun. There isn't anything inherently wrong with that, but there is so much untapped potential within video games.

Here are some games that I think are incredible experiences that are only possible through video games:

-the Legend of Zelda series
-Shadow of Colossus
-the Metroid series
-Kingdom Hearts series
-Earthbound and its Japan-only sequel, Mother 3 (I highly recommend both of these, even if you aren't a fan of video games)

So, while this post turned a bit more into a rant than I had intended, my point still stands. I feel like there's a lot that can be done with video games that simply hasn't happened. How do you think the media can be improved?

~Chris
 

I personally love DOOM. I like to clear a floor before going on, but have the opportunity to zip through fast if needed.

I dislike games where I have to train my character to be able to complete the missions. I don't have that much patience. I love Doom because there are cheat codes to just go in and mindlessly blast away.

 

Ico has a special place in my heart. It's not a particularly difficult game. Rather, the point of the game is the story: To save a girl and discover her mysterious origins. But it's such a moving story. The creators use only little touches here and there--the way the girl sighs, the way she hesitates just a little bit when you take her hand and pull her along. These little details cement the character/ user connection, and by the end, you really do feel like you've come on a long journey. Same, of course, with Zelda Ocarina of Time and the Twilight Princess (less so Majora's Mask).

I think this is just the beginning, though. I think we're going to see more of this type of gaming, as the consoles get more powerful and the video game industry diversifies and matures.

[This message has been edited by annepin (edited March 08, 2009).]
 

I am not a huge player of games but I am a girl gamer, there aren't many of us and we tend to find each other (gee, Anne, is it any surprise to find this is something else we have in common? LOL)

My main RPG of late (rpg = role playing game) is the Elder Scrolls series. I've played Morrowind through almost to the end twice now. Still on the brink of the final showdown but something in me won't let me finish it because the story is so interesting and I just don't want to be done. The next one is even better - Oblivion it's called, and it's also fantastic. Clearly a lot went into the creation of the story as part of the experience (though both games have some of that "get into here and kill everything that moves" element that makes RPGs such mindless fun. One interesting bit is that both games also sometimes have you play the role of the guard for someone else, or have to go into a dungeon and kill everything *but* the guy/girl you're looking for.)

I think there's a great market for writers on video game design teams, but it's a really funky kind of writing. It's not linear. You can't just start at the beginning and write til you get to the end. There's a lot of branching - well if this happens next then these other dialogue options become available, or until this step is taken, these options are different, etc. Very complicated, but I imagine most video game houses have custom software they use to capture this kind of thing. I would imagine the storyboarding meetings are loads of fun. I used to design interactive learning software, which shares many similarities with video games. Very tricky to design, but really really interesting.

Meanwhile, one of my in-person writer's group members is looking for work in video game design.
 

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't get past the dark cabin in the ship or the stupid elevator in the tree.

When I met someone who claimed to have done the whole thing in one evening, I gave up. I have the other games in the series, in the box, unopened. I know you can get cheat codes, but that seems to me like, well, cheating. I think games should be doable without cheat codes, for people with ordinary brains like mine.

KayTi
In the 80s there were a set of books based on games where they would start the story, then come to a decision point. YOu then had to jump to a different page and paragraph number to continue reading. I glanced through the book, but never read it to the end so I have no idea how the story actually went. These books are sort of what your plots for the games would be.

The Final Fantasy series is a good one for above-average plots. FFIII (which was FFVI in Japan) is one of the best, released for SNES. FFVII is also really good, though some of the plot points still confuse me. FFX is a great unraveling plot, every layer making sense as you go down for a great finish. I'm playing through FFXII now, which is good, though not as good as 3,7, and 10.

Deus Ex is one of my all-time favorite games. A first-person shooter with a nanobot-enhance anti-terrorist agent for a protagonist. The plot is a complex weaving of every conspiracy theory you've ever heard of, there are some branching plots. Multiple ways through every mission from blasting through the front door, bribing guards for the keys, hacking into the security system. It's a shame they had to Hollywood-ize and totally ruin the sequel.

 

Graphics got good enough that action overtook the storylines. Same thing happened with most action movies, though we've seen a few breakouts (Bourne series comes to mind).

I loved the old PC games of the '80s like Kings Quest and the original Ultima games (IV was my fav). Both were text-based adventure games, and since the graphics were simple cartoons, the mystery of the story took center stage.

I'd even argue for the radio shack classic Dungeons of Daggorath -- boy, for such a simple game my imagination goes wild with it! My kids play the PC port now (free, do a search), and every time the little heart speeds up, your own heart races! It's an actual physiological response based on black and white line drawings! I think interactivity is when you supply an equal measure of the play from your imagination. Once game designers started supplying the whole 3D of it, I just got bored.

Not that I don't like a game of Halo now and then. But not for the same reason.

-- Amber

PS I think Adventure (Atari) was in the same class as Dungeons of Daggarath. You were nothing but a dot, killing dragons. When they ate you, you went down their throat and showed up in their stomachs. Classic!

PPS Does this post make me sound old? Or incredibly geeky? Oh well. Be what you are.
 

Super Nintendo games, such as Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger and Earthbound (I must once again advertise this game >_> ) are more story heavy than the majority of current games on the market. I mean, there are of course exceptions to the rule, as have been pointed out (KOTOR and Elder Scrolls are both great games, I'm surprised I forgot them. I still need to get to Deus Ex). But games seem to be much more focused on just the action. I wonder how that will change as the medium continues to mature as an art form.

As a side note, I wonder if video games might be the best medium for the horror genre. I just finished the original Resident Evil, as well as Silent Hill, and they both had a much easier time scaring me than a movie has in a while.

~Chris

[This message has been edited by SchamMan89 (edited March 10, 2009).]
 

And yay for those old adventure games! I love those classic ones. I bought a King's Quest collection, which was great, as well as a Space Quest collection (made by the same folks as King's Quest. Even more old school--totally text-based games. When I was in junior high, my uncle gave me an old box of disks they found "The Lost Treasures of Infocom". Wow those games are great! It had Zork 1-8 or something, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and about a dozen others. Each was very very long and very very difficult by today's standards--nowadays nobody would have the attention span to play these, when you got stuck you REALLY got stuck.

I'm hoping that at some point we'll hit a plateau in graphics capabilities. I mean, you can only reach a certain resolution before the eye can't tell the difference, right? Then maybe the game designers will have to find other ways to appeal to gamers--like story! The game industry is in many ways like the movie industry--most everything follows slight variations of the same formulas. Those that break the mold are the ones that really stand out.

Katamari Damacy, for instance. Very simple premise--you control a little guy that's pushing around a Katamari, a ball which assimilates everything that it touches (at least everything that's smaller than it). At the beginning of the game you're picking up tape dispensers and snails and whatnot, but throughout each level you get bigger and bigger. Literally every physical object in the game can be picked up. I giggled uncontrollably when I picked up my first human!
Such a simple concept, and while the graphics are 3D they are terrible and blocky, something that would have been low quality several console generations before, but the game is so darn unique it's worth playing just for that.
 

Games are almost universally aimed at a different demographic than literature.

While the technology offers an opportunity for incredible interactive experiences, the huge cost of making such games expects a huge return. It requires them to be aimed at the largest possible market - people less likely to be interested in philosophical themes than they are explosions and gore.

However, philosophy aside, I'm playing Grand Theft Auto IV at the moment and I was interested to learn that the story has two endings based on player choice. I was equally interested to learn that neither choice (apparently) offers redemption; the character appears to be condemned to their criminal dystopia. While interesting, for a 'sandbox' game it's sad to realise that nothing you can do can really influence the outcome of the story.

Which is, perhaps, where the so-called interactiveness of story games tends to break down.

While the player's choices continue to coincide with game designer's plot, the story may indeed be compelling. Unfortunately the game designers only had a finite amount of time to implement the game's story - they can't account for every possible eventuality and have limited interaction with the story through one or more gameplay mechanics. Once the player wants to do something the story/game can't deliver the fantasy is broken and the game's just some software painting pixels on the screen and they've just realised .

Often our most compelling stories feature flawed characters that, understandably, occasionally make flawed choices - choices that a gamer might not. As writers we we often go further to make our characters suffer significant consequences for their mistakes - consequences that our player wouldn't put up with since now they're happening to them. Thus, while the way we experience them may change (books, movies, socket in the back of the neck...?), I suggest that our most memorable and immersive stories might remain outside of the interactive domain.