Interactive Storytelling

My rather aged Xbox 360

While literary citizenship tends to focus primarily on books, it has led me to consider other areas where I find compelling stories.  To me, the story matters more than the medium.  I’m double majoring in filmmaking and creative writing because I like to write and I am a very visual person, but also because both are excellent storytelling mediums. 

However, taking a survey on the books in my life made me think of other places I find stories.  A primary one for me would be videogames.  I find that I probably play videogames as much if not more than I read, and I probably spend more money on videogames each year than on books (partially because games cost more). 

At this point, books are widely considered “legitimate art,” while videogames are not.  Likely this is just growing pains, since videogames are relatively new and books have been around for a while.  Movies went through a similar phase in their early years. 

Minecraft cover art

Another part of this may be that Minecraft, for example.  Yet it’s still incredibly fun to play, and allows for the players to create their own narratives.  Others seem more like somewhat interactive movies, consisting mostly of cutscenes and telling a story, but with almost no gameplay.  It’s a difficult balance to achieve, and one style is not necessarily better than another.
some games have no story,

Yet even when games do tell a story, frequently it isn’t a very good one.  This is something the industry seems to struggle with.  A lot probably has to do with balancing story and gameplay.  Battlefield 4 left a lot to be desired as far as story, but the game parts of the campaign were still fun to play.  On the other side, The Last of Us had an incredible story, but I’ve heard the gameplay was repetitive. 

It takes a long time for a game to produce both, and distributors are trying to crank out as many games as possible.  However, games with longer development periods can be successful.  Take GTA V as an example.  It was in development for far longer than the other blockbuster games of 2013, and did better as a result (despite a rocky online launch).

In future blogs, I may take a look at some other examples and continue to try and figure out where videogames belong in the community of storytelling.  I don’t necessarily think they should be judged in the same way books are, but games like The Last of Us have proved that videogames can tell compelling stories as well as books or movies.  My hope is that as this blog continues, we’ll see the quality of storytelling in games rise.