There have been quite a few cracking wise during their yearly "Game of the Year" nonsense about the stories in video games being bad. My favorite is the little chestnut,
"Well, it's great for a video game story, anyway."
All right, so what the heck are they talking about? Stories in video games are catered by the source material that they are using. Most video games are patterned after action movies. Like Uncharted 2, Modern Warfare 2, or even Assassin's Creed 2. These are all great games but we aren't exactly talking about the stuff of Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, or even Goodfellas. No, this is more like Diehard, Star Wars, or maybe the Quick and the Dead. In television terms these games aren't West Wing they are more Saturday morning cartoons. But no one goes to Star Wars expecting to be emotional moved or having a profound life experience. Unless of course you are a big Star Wars fan.
Why can't video games evolve from this? Well, perhaps it is all a matter of role playing and sticking to that role. Drama cannot be created when the player has the choice to do whatever his/her little heart's desire. There are no dramatic moments in co-op games or multiplayer games. Drama is a serious, straight path into a place that the audience would probably rather not go. Also, most of the time a seriously dramatic action movie or just a drama alone has the benefit of showing things from more than one side. Usually it's a duality that plays into the drama. Rarely does a movie choose to show only one side or one path. Doing this in a game would pull the player out of the experience and while some games have tried it; it rarely ever really works that well. I believe Halo 2 did this best job with this but it was critiqued for it.
This is not to say video games don't have important things to say or can't make the player feel things. No, they absolutely can. But not the terms that people have laid out for them. Games are NOT MOVIES and they are NOT BOOKS. They NEVER will be. There is not going to be an instance in the near future where we know the people in a video game the way we know the people in your average book, movie, or television show. We might spend just as much time with them; but because of the limitations of the game itself. It will be very difficult to achieve this kind of storytelling. Rather video games have the irreplaceable ability to immerse the player into an experience. You are not a passive observer as you are with a movie or book. You are a participant. This is what most games try to lean on the hardest and with justification. If I wanted to watch a movie I would.
So please folks, at least until Heavy Rain comes out; can we all stop ragging on video game story. If you question how immersing a video game story can be, play Bioshock again. Really, it's just that simple.
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