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

[Bobcat]

Something i thought about lately and is interested in hearing peoples opinions on the matter.

Since forever, popular movies and TV-shows have been made into video games. A couple of good ones sure, but i'd say the majority were just fan service and some terrible ones that just rode the hype and was little more than a cash grab

With ever evolving techonolgy and affordable(ish) hardware like the PS5 and Xbox S/X. Great looking games have become common. Not only do they look good, but between motion capture and high quality voice acting, they are also able to realize compelling narratives in a way that was impossible 15 years ago.

What that has lead to is we now have videogames getting TV/movie adaptations instead of just the other way around. The last of which is "The Last of Us" on HBO which imo was an incredibly strong narrative and is soon comming to HBO and seems to be getting really good reviews as well.

The last year i've had some time on my hands so i've been able to play quite a few single player games, and what struck me when playing some of them was that i found the plot, narrative structure and dialogue to be on par if not better than most modern TV-shows. For example God of War, Horizion, Cyberpunk to name a few had me fully immersed in the story in a way i've rarely felt the last couple of years. The Witcher 3, The Last of Us and the Uncharted series are also notable examples although they are older, the latter has also spawned a pretty mediocre action movie

In the same timespan i've watched House of Dragons who admittedly was really good, and Rings of Power who i found pretty "meh" despite an insane budget.

Does anyone else feel the same or have i just lost the plot completely?

 

[CassiusClaymore]

Watch better tv shows.

 

[afrocentricity]

Something i thought about lately and is interested in hearing peoples opinions on the matter.

Since forever, popular movies and TV-shows have been made into video games. A couple of good ones sure, but i'd say the majority were just fan service and some terrible ones that just rode the hype and was little more than a cash grab

With ever evolving techonolgy and affordable(ish) hardware like the PS5 and Xbox S/X. Great looking games have become common. Not only do they look good, but between motion capture and high quality voice acting, they are also able to realize compelling narratives in a way that was impossible 15 years ago.

What that has lead to is we now have videogames getting TV/movie adaptations instead of just the other way around. The last of which is "The Last of Us" on HBO which imo was an incredibly strong narrative and is soon comming to HBO and seems to be getting really good reviews as well.

The last year i've had some time on my hands so i've been able to play quite a few single player games, and what struck me when playing some of them was that i found the plot, narrative structure and dialogue to be on par if not better than most modern TV-shows. For example God of War, Horizion, Cyberpunk to name a few had me fully immersed in the story in a way i've rarely felt the last couple of years. The Witcher 3, The Last of Us and the Uncharted series are also notable examples although they are older, the latter has also spawned a pretty mediocre action movie

In the same timespan i've watched House of Dragons who admittedly was really good, and Rings of Power who i found pretty "meh" despite an insane budget.

Does anyone else feel the same or have i just lost the plot completely?

Let's put it this way. Some of those game stories are much more memorable than some of the stuff I've seen on the box lately. In fact I'm watching even less telly nowadays and I wasn't exactly a TV addict before...

 

[Amar__]

TV is great, shut up

 

[horsechoker]

No, I would argue that TV shows on average are a far better quality product. I can't remember a bad or even average TV show that was released uncompleted or unwatchable (in a literal sense).

Video games require an ever increasing amount of resources to push boundaries and even then they will be stuck trying to appeal to 12 year olds who just want to teabag their friends.

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

 

[Solius]

Some are just as good. I’ve never felt that Last of Us needed a TV show because the game did it perfectly.

 

[Dirty Schwein]

No film or TV show can match the immense lore of Hollow Knight.

 

[Bobcat]

No, I would argue that TV shows on average are a far better quality product. I can't remember a bad or even average TV show that was released uncompleted or unwatchable (in a literal sense).

Video games require an ever increasing amount of resources to push boundaries and even then they will be stuck trying to appeal to 12 year olds who just want to teabag their friends.

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

I see your point, and while there are quite a few games that gets released in an unfinished state i'd argue thats more on pushy publishers than it has to do with incompetent developers and while a video game can be patched you cant really do the same for a TV-show

And while the majority of the market sure is geared towards teabagging 12 year olds, i still think there is a sizable market for more narrative heavy games like Death Stranding (never tried that one myself)

 

[rimaldo]

agreed. i much prefer watching fifa 23 demos than watching united.

 

[Member 125398]

 

[Adam-Utd]

It's definitely possible, game's make you immersed in the world far more than any show can. You live and breathe it and feel attached to characters.

I think that's something games have over TV or film, that you spend 80+ hours with the characters rather than a shorter 2hr film etc

 

[Drainy]

Of course not. A great game may be better than an average TV show but not many games are able to get the most out of the medium to tell a story like the best shows.

Even with the likes of Nier Automata gameplay disrupts the pacing of the story, even if the payoff of being a game is great for the ending

 

[Bobcat]

Oh man. That's brutal

Ancient games aside though, isn't Resident Evil that way by design? Cheezy as all hell and not to be taken too seriously? Like a B horror flick?

 

[FrankDrebin]

I mean, once you take the gameplay aspect out of the majority of game's you'd find out the narrative is usually paper-thin or just outright sh*te.

 

[Chairman Steve]

Video games are catching up to TV and Movies as an entertainment medium in becoming more mainstream, after decades of being deemed nerdy, anti-social and only for children.

But video games shouldn’t be focused on overtaking TV and Movies as the storytelling medium. The gameplay experience should come first and foremost, and replayability is absolutely integral. Video games are a lot more expensive than a movie ticket or a TV subscription. I wouldn’t pay £60 for a movie or TV experience that I get within a game. This is why I stay away from David Cage games.

A good story is a neat add-on to video games in my opinion. It’s something I fear in the future with video games that as they become more mainstream, that some of the TV and Movie people infiltrate it and push out the video game developers in favour of games that are derogatorily named ‘walking simulators‘ or ‘interactive movies’. Those exist now but I fear a saturation of the market of them, to the point all the money goes into them and an ambitious video game dev doesn’t get the budget to do something great.

Original Resident Evil has comically bad voice acting and a B-Movie plot that’s tongue in cheek, which would be laughed out the room by most TV and Movie people, but millions of people love it because it was a good game that took Alone In The Dark and refined it to put survival horror into the mainstream, regardless or not whether the story was as good as Citizen Kane, whether Chris Redfield was the best protagonist since Atticus Finch or whether Albert Wesker was the best antagonist since Hannibal Lecter.

 

[Bobcat]

I mean, once you take the gameplay aspect out of the majority of game's you'd find out the narrative is usually paper-thin or just outright sh*te.

Traditionally yes, but i feel like they have taken some big strides the last couple of years. Red Dead Redemption 2 for example is imo very well written, where even non-dramatic events and everyday banter is both belivable and enjoyable. The Mass Effect trilogy, while pretty cheezy at times imo delivers a good story, but also manages to construct a pretty good backdrop with pretty fleshed out lore

Video games are catching up to TV and Movies as an entertainment medium in becoming more mainstream, after decades of being deemed nerdy, anti-social and only for children.

But video games shouldn’t be focused on overtaking TV and Movies as the storytelling medium. The gameplay experience should come first and foremost, and replayability is absolutely integral. Video games are a lot more expensive than a movie ticket or a TV subscription. I wouldn’t pay £60 for a movie or TV experience that I get within a game. This is why I stay away from David Cage games.

A good story is a neat add-on to video games in my opinion. It’s something I fear in the future with video games that as they become more mainstream, that some of the TV and Movie people infiltrate it and push out the video game developers in favour of games that are derogatorily named ‘walking simulators‘ or ‘interactive movies’. Those exist now but I fear a saturation of the market of them, to the point all the money goes into them and an ambitious video game dev doesn’t get the budget to do something great.

Original Resident Evil has comically bad voice acting and a B-Movie plot that’s tongue in cheek, which would be laughed out the room by most TV and Movie people, but millions of people love it because it was a good game that took Alone In The Dark and refined it to put survival horror into the mainstream, regardless or not whether the story was as good as Citizen Kane, whether Chris Redfield was the best protagonist since Atticus Finch or whether Albert Wesker was the best antagonist since Hannibal Lecter.

Dont know about overtaking, but considering we now have profesional actors doing both motion capture and voice acting, the lines are starting to blur a lot more than they did before. I fully agree that gameplay should be the priority, but if we are going to be greedy here, why not good gameplay AND a solid story?

I see your concern that the market might be oversaturated if "everyone" wants to do "interactive movies", but considering how costly and time consuming those are to produce for now, i dont think thats something we have to immediately worry about

I guess my point is, that i didnt mention in my OP, was that a couple of studios like CDPR, Naught Dog and Bioware have some really talented writers working for them, which can easily rival some of the best in TV/cinema

Edit: Also, a clear advantage that video games get, is that the player also choose which parts/how much of the story content they want to consume. For example backstory/lore you can freely choose if you want to engage with it by for example loretexts, side content etc where as TV/movies dont have that luxury without going into weird exposition dumps that often feels forced and are incredibly difficult to sew into the story in a organic manner

 

[One Night Only]

Didn't that Xbox game quantum break have like a movie TV series bit to it? Something like that.

 

[Volumiza]

I don't think so. Different mediums and still largely different audiences but storytelling / emotional placement in games is getting much better. More depth and nuance is conveyed in games now and I admit there have been a few games over the last few years that have made me well up which is a great thing! If games are now trigering actual emotional responses then it shows how far the medium has come over the 40 odd years I've been playing them.

 

[Van Piorsing]

Growing number of movies look like video games, so these two worlds will collide more and more.

As for adult, non agenda storytelling, both games and movies have not enough of it, imo.

 

[harms]

In the process? Perhaps. But they’re certainly in the earlier stages of said process even though we’ve already seen some outstanding examples and obviously the immersion that a video game can produce is better than any TV-show is capable of due to a natural interactivity (as opposed to that horrible shit that Netflix tried to do a couple of years back where you were influencing whatever was happening on the screen).

As of this point though, the first (-ish) advice of watching better shows is correct.

 

[DJ Jeff]

No and they never can IMO because their storytelling capabilities are always limited due to the need to make the players interaction with the game fun and entertaining. TV has a much wider scope to explore because the audience doesn't have to take an active part and the creative process isn't focused on making that active part fun.

 

[Volumiza]

I think the closest games have got to tv shows are some of the Telltale games series. The wolf among us, Game of thrones, Walking dead etc. They were episodic and structured and paced as close to a tv show as I've seen.

 

[DrRodo]

I prefer a good game with a good story (open world rpgs are my fav genre) than a tv series any day, but thats my personal preference. To the op question, absolutely not by a close mile.

I just don't like spending hours sitting in front of the tv (i think breaking bad is the last serie i binge watched) and i have other hobbies which i spend my free time on, namely music production, my band, guitar playing etc. But the tv i think its still the best media for story telling. Some games have good acting and good stories but many dont

 

[Conor]

No.

 

[Pexbo]

On the contrary, I think video games were moving in that direction 10-15 years ago when video games was getting a foothold as THE dominant media but two things happened since:

1. Streaming boomer and all the best writers were snapped up for TV shows.
2. Micro-transactions - Triple A games is where the budget was for that level of story telling and the big producers realised that a combination of dopamine mechanics and micro-transactions was far more profitable than creating a great game and getting a one off purchase price.

 

[Cascarino]

I love video games, and they're capable of telling great stories.
But having said I personally think that they often have poor writing. It's partly why a lot of adaptations were a bit shit (amongst plenty of other reasons). Video games can also rely on things like immersion through exploration and interactivity, which can be really effective in getting a story to stick with you.

At least in my own opinion. I think some of the best stories that video games have told have been when they've eschewed a traditional story telling structure and told a story that could only be done through a video game. Outer Wilds, souls series, are just off the top head examples of delivering a story in a way that no other medium could.

 

[Irwin99]

I'm not sure about that yet but it might get there sooner than people think. In games like The Witcher 3 for instance you certainly feel the story in a way you don't with TV because you're the one feeling the consequences of your actions within the plot. I remember playing the Bloody Baron quest in TW3 years ago and just being blown away by the characters and the moral ambiguity/gray areas explored.

 

[padr81]

Theres a weird meshing together of styles now which has seen tv get worse and games get better I feel.

Its why most Netflix shows are shite, the writing is very video gamey and seems like its taken from that terrible writing advice youtube channel all the time.

Whats interesting though is a video game with great characters and not so great writing will feel better to me than a series with good writing which in turn feels better than a movie. The more time you spend with a character even fictional the more they become part of your life and in a video game you get to walk in there shoes and kinda live there experiences.

RDR2 is better written than most tv shows, as is the original Last of Us game and stuff like Silent Hill 2.

 

[Moby]

No film or TV show can match the immense lore of Hollow Knight.

Damn straight!

 

[AaronRedDevil]

It hasn't already? Thought it happened years ago.

 

[Vidyoyo]

In some cases yeah but that's both I think because of the quality of certain videogame writing is very good and because some TV shows feel a bit aimless.

Games do well drawing you into the character's world and giving you a reason to be invested in the stakes. Literally it's not just their life on the line but yours too (figuratively speaking).

On the other hand, TV uses both length and an episodic format to keep you compelled to stay interested for the long term. With excellent story building this can feel immense.

It's the same with how drama films work by abstracting a certain part of somebody's life and draw out events at that moment in time to make everything feel grander.

And books? A good writer captures not just events through plot and pacing but also mood through description and metaphor, creating a rich inner world for us to experience and share.

TL;DR All kinds of storytelling work well when they manage to get the best out of their medium.

 

[Sweet Square]

Tbh it seems like games have got better at copying films and tv. Very rarely do games as their form of artistic expression say anything that interesting. The Last Of Us is just a HBO show before it became a actual HBO show and Cyperpunk is really a game about the past which poorly referencing better art.

Kojima is the only one who comes to mind as someone who makes art that can only work as a game and has something to say(Although the dude still loves his cut scenes).

 

[Cascarino]

TL;DR All kinds of storytelling work well when they manage to get the best out of their medium.

Good point. I’ve always felt that one of the strengths of a video game, is the ability to allow the player to make choices. As well as just being a fun mechanic, I find it pretty interesting that a game can tell you something about yourself.

 

[Sviken]

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.

 

[mu4c_20le]

Video games are 'not art'

 

[Wing Attack Plan R]

I think video games allow an immersive story that you feel viscerally, where TV shows tell good stories but at a remove. The truly classic video games that allow for world building, character development, with story outcomes dependent on player choices, are far superior to TV. But it's kinda like we're putting every TV show on one side of the scale, and a handful of video games on the other.

Great video games haven't been around for very long, what, maybe 20 years? whereas TV has been chugging along for 70+ years. So if you compared the first 20 years of TV to the first 20 years of video games, video games win. The Honeymooners or Mass Effect? I Love Lucy or Skyrim?

There are also a far, far greater number of great stories on TV, but as a storytelling medium, video games are the future.

 

[Moby]

Video games are 'not art'

Of course they are. There's an infinite amount of graphic and literature created as part of video games among other forms.

 

[Dr. StrangeHate]

Not as a story telling medium. But games as entertainment make more money than movies and music combined.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

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.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Video games are 'not art'