Games need to stop being movies.
By Arkthemaniac 1 Comments
Games need to stop being movies, as I just said. You're probably saying "But wait, games are games. They aren't movies! Hahahahaaaa!" I'm here to tell you that you are playing movies, for the most part. If you look at the two in regards to one another, you'll see that games are quickly losing all the gameness (?) about them, which is sad.
Let me explain myself, as I love to do. A movie is judged by five things primarily: direction, acting, writing, cinematography and, lastly, point. By point, I mean that if the movie is completely meaningless, much like Seinfeld was as a show, people will look down upon it. If you look at games nowadays, they bear uncanny resemblance to movies, and they have arrived there in the same way that movies have somewhat, but have had a hell of a time getting there. Games, like movies, started out simple: if you've ever played The Movies, you'll remember the first movie you make takes place on a stage and features your lead character trying to pick up a massive weight. It was simple, short and entertaining, much like games used to be. However, much like Gone With The Wind changed film forever, video games had their own shifts, most of them brought upon by the series of series, Final Fantasy. With long winded scenes of dialogue and little action, people loved the new craze of the RPG, and took it all the way to 3D. RPGs are the igniter for games becoming movies, since RPGs generally have simple gameplay, with your incentive to continue being to see what happens next to your party. However, the game industry took a real massive kick in the face with the Playstation's 3D swan song, the product of a film major: Metal Gear Solid.
That is, of course, that it's a movie. It uses no gaming conventions to tell the story, yet separates the story from the action through cutscenes, which has become the norm. Because of this, people anticipate sequels more than new games because they like being near familiar characters experiencing new things. New ideas are shoved under the rug in favor of the same old, because that's what sells. It makes me sad.
I think that games can be games and still tell a good story, but it takes responsibility. Using things like boss fights to convey emotions or ideas is something few games have ever done. People call games like MGS4 ambitious, games like GTA4 ambitious, but these are games falling into the path laid out for them. These games are ambitious in some ways, but they end up losing that traditional greatness found in games that were action first. We have evolved past games like this, but games have evolved into Frankenstien monsters: different parts from different medium thrown together. Rather than do this, we should strive to integrate one onto another, rather than sew them together. Make a solid being, its flesh being gameplay and story together, acting as one. This will open up new doors in the gaming world and allow for projects unlike ones we have ever seen, which is a great, great thing.