During the 2014 Video Game Awards, “24” star Kiefer Sutherland took center stage and proclaimed his appreciation for the contemporary video game industry. He, coming from the world of Hollywood, likened video games to movies and television series. In doing so he proclaimed that Hollywood has gone through almost no notable changes in the past decades, save for the introduction of THX sound during the 80’s. Meanwhile video games have gone through several waves of technologic advances. He argued that this hungry nature of the video game industry was the thing that makes it such an appealing professional field.

While it is nice to hear Mr. Sutherland’s first hand opinion on the matter I would have to concur. When we dissect Hollywood over the past two decades a lot of changes can be seen, even when limiting the field of view to technological advantages.

The most obvious answer would be the tremendous leaps and bounds CGI has made over the years. Indeed this same technological growth fuels some of improvements in the video game industry.

Aside from this IMAX and its notoriously expensive $500.000,- camera’s continue to push cinematic scope on film to its limit. While we’re on the subject of image quality Dolby is reaching for the bounds as well with its Dolby Cinema initiative (at the moment the only cinema in the world that carries a Dolby Cinema screen is located in Eindhoven, the Netherlands of all places).

The main reason why I am writing this blog is not because I want to entertain the possible notion that I am rubbing Mr. Sutherland’s face in his mistake; not at all! It is because of his direct comparison between movies and video games. I find that the average layman looks at gaming from a historical perspective: “In the 80’s we were playing with two white blips on a black screen; look at how far we’ve come.” While this is of course true it undermines the creative, narrative and collaborative qualities that make video games such a unique medium. Truth be told we’ve come a long way from trying to achieve one-on-one parity with Hollywood, both in products and gross revenue. For the past couple of years year-over-year revenue of the gaming industry have topped the cumulative box-office. The actual games themselves have also been slowly moving away from classical Hollywood tropes, save for some notable exceptions. I’ve discussed how director Hideo Kojima is the perfect example of this trend. Although I understand the easy comparison between video games and Hollywood it is a false analogy; it would be akin to likening high brow literature to gossip columns.

It’s time to see gaming for what it is and not for what it aspired to be around the mid-90’s. Doing otherwise would simply negate anything the medium has accomplished since.