Video Games as a Medium for Storytelling

I've always loved games. Ever since I started playing Mario for the first time on my cousin's SNES as a tiny child I have adored them. I count myself lucky to have lived in a time where games have gone from something so simple a concept as Pong or Pacman to something as complex as any number of current generation games. But it's not the fancy graphics or game mechanics that fed my love for gaming all these years...it was the stories they told.

Story has always been a central concept in every form of media entertainment and that goes two-fold for video games as it opens up a dimension that is typically untouched in things like movies or music. That dimension is player interaction and input. If I go to a movie or read a book I'm bearing witness to a story that is playing out on that particular form of media. With a game however, I'm often taking up a role in those stories, sometimes changing and sculpting them into my own story.

This is why I love games and also why I love the idea of game development. Every time I pick up the controller I know that I'm stepping into someone else's world, their story, it's quite daunting at times but I know that this was crafted in the hope that a player will experience the story the creators were trying to tell.

Some of the things that really encouraged me to continue gaming were things as simple as a game having multiple endings or side stories, things that I could change of my own volition. How many books or movies end differently based on the audience's input? The opportunity to really live out a story is what made games so gripping for me.

All that being said, I do have to admit that recent games just haven't satisfied me in the same way as the games of my youth. I could have become jaded at some point and that spark have been lost in the shuffle somewhere in my adolescent years but I still reflect back on those older games and wonder what they did so well that current games don't.

I've thought about the effect that our ultra realistic graphics are having on storytelling and I feel like there could possibly be a connection. Back when games like Legaia, Dragoon, Symphonia, and the obviously relevant Final Fantasy series were rather popular (FF still is) there was far less technology to work with when designing these games.

This leads my to believe (and this is my opinion) that perhaps all those innovative game mechanics and shiny graphics take something away from the importance of story. Don't get me wrong, there are still some fantastic games with solid stories out there, Skyrim was one of those games for me (Side Quests!) as anyone could guess from the plethora of guides that exist on this blog but I digress.

I find myself enjoying more games that would fall under the category of "indie" rather than the bigger launches. I find that these games are made by people who are absolutely dying to tell their story and that's what really clicks with me.

I found that this humorous take on the "retro" games vs. the new games was an accurate judge of how other gamers feel about the subject. From just looking at the like/dislike ratio it's plain to see that I'm not the first person to have these kinds of thoughts.

Credit to freddiew and Rocketjump for the video!