Other Are video games in the process of surpasing TV as a story telling medium?

[Siorac]

Games that have tried to push a more deeper and philosophical experience get derided too. There was a lot of mockery for death stranding but it's games like that that are more likely to get video games regarded on par with TV and cinema

Planescape: Torment is widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time and that game is basically a philosophy textbook. It wasn't derided 23 years ago and it isn't now. More recently, Disco Elysium got rave reviews and all sorts of awards. No derision there either.

Death Stranding is divisive, mostly because it's Kojima. It's weird, thoroughly - clearly, Kojima was given complete free reign and the result is a strange, confusing, at times impenetrable game. Still, no derision - maybe some grumbling that Kojima is now so far up his own arse that he's in serious danger of disappearing. You may or may not disagree with it. I personally found the premise intriguing but the gameplay loop got old after only a couple of hours so I gave up.

 

[Siorac]

I think people focus too much on typical story telling and hence when analyzing the gaming medium they mistakingly tend to look purely at narrative and cutscenes.

In truth the medium of gaming aside from of course having conventional storytelling is able to touch upon more facets of the human experience through its immersive.

Let's take a game like Deus Ex - which is considered to possibly be the greatest game ever created. Its narrative was good but what was unforgettable was the level of immersion it achieved which films just cannot.

And then you have games like Outer Wilds which for me personally had a stronger emotional and immersive impact than a film / TV show has ever achieved. So there's all kinds of story telling and experiences and limiting it to traditional narrative is incorrect in my view.

Exactly this, video games have immense potential for different types of immersive storytelling. Exploring, say, a lost and abandoned ancient city where your environment tells a story in itself is something that's almost impossible to replicate on TV.

In a TV show or film, the creator has full control over the viewer's experience - but that's a constraint, too. Video games allow you to piece a story, a world together for yourself (it's one of the things the Souls games excel at) by immersing you in the world itself.

 

[Revan]

Video games are 'not art'

Tell me you haven’t played video games without telling me you haven’t played video games.

 

[Vidyoyo]

Planescape: Torment is widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time and that game is basically a philosophy textbook. It wasn't derided 23 years ago and it isn't now. More recently, Disco Elysium got rave reviews and all sorts of awards. No derision there either.

Death Stranding is divisive, mostly because it's Kojima. It's weird, thoroughly - clearly, Kojima was given complete free reign and the result is a strange, confusing, at times impenetrable game. Still, no derision - maybe some grumbling that Kojima is now so far up his own arse that he's in serious danger of disappearing. You may or may not disagree with it. I personally found the premise intriguing but the gameplay loop got old after only a couple of hours so I gave up.

Speaking of this, there's a quote from the writer of The Talos Principle - great game btw - that says something about how games are naturally good for setting up philosophical stories. I think it's true and works because they can invoke some form of moral quandary, or as others have said interactivity, where you take an active role. Planescape and Disco are great examples.

I suppose too that you don't even necessarily have a choice; an illusion of one can go some way into creating a more immersive story that hooks you. I recently played Persona 5 for example and while the story is a) incredibly over-written, and b) not much different to a standard anime plot, the impact of being able to do things such as make minor dialogue choices makes a big impact to the enjoyment, even if overall it makes very little difference to how it ends. Nier: Automata is also a fantastic example because it ends in a way only a videogame can.

Anyway, videogames for me are like a collage of all the best parts of other mediums: visual storytelling, textual storytelling, even musical/audio storytelling in the case of Hellblade. They might not excel at any one thing in particular but the combination of them can make a unique experience. The major flaw occasionally is when they get bogged down by one specific element, which is very often simply gameplay and largely why a lot of games simply aren't good for stories because they prioritise enjoyment/fun first (nothing necessarily wrong with this).

 

[Ainu]

I think people focus too much on typical story telling and hence when analyzing the gaming medium they mistakingly tend to look purely at narrative and cutscenes.

In truth the medium of gaming aside from of course having conventional storytelling is able to touch upon more facets of the human experience through its immersion.

Let's take a game like Deus Ex - which is considered to possibly be the greatest game ever created. Its narrative was good but what was unforgettable was the level of immersion it achieved which films just cannot.

And then you have games like Outer Wilds which for me personally had a stronger emotional and immersive impact than a film / TV show has ever achieved. So there's all kinds of story telling and experiences and limiting it to traditional narrative is incorrect in my view.

I mostly agree with this and I think your last example is spot on. The story of e.g. The Last of Us can be told through different media (an easy example, since we're current getting evidence of that) but the manner in which the story of Outer Wilds is "told" is something that is simply not possible outside of video gaming. I say "told" because the story isn't actually told, it has to be pieced together by an active participant and how much or how little each player gets from it depends entirely on how deeply they interact with the game.

It's an absolute triumph of video game storytelling, a much better example of what is possible within the medium than your average AAA game that most people seem to focusing on. Not that those games and narratives don't have their place, they absolutely do and they can be powerful experiences as well. But when looking at what is unique about video game storytelling, there is so much more out there.

 

[Mr Pigeon]

I think if the first episode is anything to go by, then the Last of Us show highlights that games still have some way to go and it's probably an impossible bar to reach. Most games focus on one perspective, and are at the mercy of the player missing out on certain world building items or documents. Shows can present the info not only when it wants to but when it can have the most impact.

 

[sullydnl]

Video games are 'not art'

Would be interested to hear an argument against video games being art as I can't think of any that would apply to all video games or not equally apply to recognised forms of art.

 

[Bobcat]

Not even remotely. In fact, I'd argue video games from 20 years ago told a much better story than today. Planescape Torment, Metal Gear, Baldur's Gate, Deus Ex, Silent Hill. And recent - Mass Effect, Dragon Age, the Witcher series, etc. Today's AAA games are basically "how many Hollywood styled cliches can we put into this?". Now if you mean it from that point of view, probably. But they are basically a bad mimicry of Hollywood than an actual good product.

Not sure i agree about all modern games just being Hollywood cliches, but the examples you mentioned are imo examples of good story telling. I guess my OP was poorly formulated, but in a lot of cases it seems the game devs but a lot of effort into world building

Speaking of this, there's a quote from the writer of The Talos Principle - great game btw - that says something about how games are naturally good for setting up philosophical stories. I think it's true and works because they can invoke some form of moral quandary, or as others have said interactivity, where you take an active role. Planescape and Disco are great examples.

I suppose too that you don't even necessarily have a choice; an illusion of one can go some way into creating a more immersive story that hooks you. I recently played Persona 5 for example and while the story is a) incredibly over-written, and b) not much different to a standard anime plot, the impact of being able to do things such as make minor dialogue choices makes a big impact to the enjoyment, even if overall it makes very little difference to how it ends. Nier: Automata is also a fantastic example because it ends in a way only a videogame can.

Anyway, videogames for me are like a collage of all the best parts of other mediums: visual storytelling, textual storytelling, even musical/audio storytelling in the case of Hellblade. They might not excel at any one thing in particular but the combination of them can make a unique experience. The major flaw occasionally is when they get bogged down by one specific element, which is very often simply gameplay and largely why a lot of games simply aren't good for stories because they prioritise enjoyment/fun first (nothing necessarily wrong with this).

Agreed and you formulated it much better than i did in my clumsy OP.

Of course the interactivity can bring immersion you dont get with TV because you participate in the story instead of just being a passive observer, but to take the Witcher as an example. The Witcher 3 blows the Netflix TV-show out of the water in terms of dialogue, character building and world building. For example The Bloody Baron and his questline is 10x more intriguing than anything in the show

 

[oneniltothearsenal]

No, I don't think so. Video games should, IMO, be primarily about gameplay and good addictive gameplay doesn't mean storytelling in the traditional sense.

For example, I had some friends really get into the Game of Thrones mod for Crusader Kings II a number of years ago. What seemed really interesting was taking your own custom noble house and building them up over the years and the way the gameplay allows someone to basically create their own personalized version of Game of Thrones lore. That seemed really cool. But it doesn't surpass the novels or TV show, it just succeeds alongside them as a different medium.

I feel like video game storytelling can be great but it's just fundamentally different so it can't "surpass" literature or television, it just provides a different, more interactive mode of narrative.

 

[Dargonk]

For me it would be no. For tv shows and movies, their primary focus will always be entertainment and pushing out a story. So the focus, and ability to carefully craft when and how the viewer receives information is fully controlled from a story telling side.

Now with video games, they don't have this ability, unless the game is ridiculously linear to the point it is becomes less of a game and more of a movie anyway. The games primary focus is engagement, immersion and a game play loop that keeps people playing. As a result, the story often takes on a secondary role (though still very important) to how the player interacts with the game.

So for me from a purely story telling side, I don't think Video games are able to surpass tv/movie. Though they will and have easily surpassed them in other areas.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

I think if the first episode is anything to go by, then the Last of Us show highlights that games still have some way to go and it's probably an impossible bar to reach. Most games focus on one perspective, and are at the mercy of the player missing out on certain world building items or documents. Shows can present the info not only when it wants to but when it can have the most impact.

Showing things from one perspective can make everything feel much more personal than your typical hopping around 5-7 character show which although does keep things moving and entertaining but also makes them more impersonal.

Besides the whole TLOU=video game story telling is also wrong. Not that it's not brilliant at it but there's much more to storytelling than just that - at least in gaming. And I'd argue that gaming as a medium has greater sensory experiences than just story (due to being an active participant) and hence the efforts of the developer are rightfully balancing other parts.

 

[NinjaZombie]

I've just bought Dwarf Fortress, so I'd say video games are surpassing bar exam books.

 

[Sweet Square]

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[Bobcat]

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I think its almost universal agreement that the dialogue in that game is bottom of the barrel. Both the writing and the voice acting is just absoloute rubbish

 

[Jev]

I think the medium is very well-suited to ambiguous, atmospheric storytelling that leaves you thinking, games like Braid, Limbo, Inside, Bloodborne. In terms of pure storytelling, character development, original plotting, good dialogue etc., I'm struggling to remember any game except TLOU that I felt was on par with quality tv shows. It's usually quite cringy and predictable.

 

[Iker Quesadillas]

Ingmar Bergman's Fanny & Alexander: the MMORPG

 

[Scandi Red]

Video game dialogue peaked with The Curse of Monkey Island.