If I was, I'd be writing books nobody buys because nobody buys books anymore Sales of printed books have been increasing every year since 2012. Last year alone saw a jump of over eight percent.
Truths about video game stories
131–140 of 337 posts
Re: Truths about video game stories
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (…) his comparison of game stories to movies. > How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour narrative? Not only the length makes video game stories different. Another huge difference is that in video games you actually get to be the character(s). You don’t just passively experience the story like in a movie or a book, you’re an active part of it. Even better: you can have the player make meaningful ch…
Exactly. And even if you don't have any real choices to make, you still get to experience the story as your story , not a tale. The author would probably think I'm a lunatic for it, but I consider the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trilogy to have a good story . I thoroughly enjoyed it, and unlike with other shooters, and even though it followed multiple characters simultaneously, I was able to suspend disbeli…
Re: Truths about video game stories
#133If I was, I'd be writing books nobody buys because nobody buys books anymore Sales of printed books have been increasing every year since 2012. Last year alone saw a jump of over eight percent.
Re: Truths about video game stories
#134How exactly are Raiders of the Lost Ark or Breaking Bad storylines better than those of the first Mafia, The Witcher 3, Uncharted 4, Metro Exodus, Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Half-Life 2 + episodes? And I'm not even mentioning artistic pieces like What Remains of Edith Finch or Life is Strange. There are quests in The Witcher 3 you could make a movie from (Bloody Baron).
Re: Truths about video game stories
#135If I was, I'd be writing books nobody buys because nobody buys books anymore Sales of printed books have been increasing every year since 2012. Last year alone saw a jump of over eight percent.
In the US in 2019, a high % of adults reported reading a book recently
https://www.markinblog.com/book-sales-statistics/
…who is reading in the US?
In October of 2019, over 80% of adults, age 18 to 29, have read at least one book in the previous year. Older adults, possibly because they are not spending as much time studying and more time working, read slightly less.
Lockdowns may have increased reading in the US
https://publishingperspectives.com/2021/02/aap-statshot-sees...
Political polarization in the UK appears to drive book sales
https://www.theguardian.com/books/datablog/2017/mar/18/the-f...
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Re: Truths about video game stories
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's gotten to the point that I just don't buy or play new games from American or Japanese studios. It's too disappointing to pick up new releases of series that I've played for more than half my life (such as the Tales series) and find everything that made them great ripped out and replaced with consumerist trash that panders to the lowest common denominator. China seems to be the only country that still has some or…
Got some examples for good games from China? As a counterexample to the first part, check out Nier Automata. One of the most original and compelling games I've played in recent years.
Re: Truths about video game stories
#137We've had theatre and literature as narrative art for centuries. Film has been around for a tiny bit over 100 years, and it took them decades to find their own voices distinct from their predecessors. By comparison, video games are in their infancy. We've been at it for only a few short decades, and having the audience directly involved with the narrative is a radical shift from what we had before. We're looking at a…
Re: Truths about video game stories
#138I have not played any computer game in over more than a decade, but I played a lot earlier. Anyway, what I did for a while - not recently due to a lack of good targets - is watch Youtube "playthrough no commentary" videos (and with story-less gameplay parts heavily cut out). That's usually 4-6 hours of game movie . The Last of Us was good, but the very top #1 for me as far as story goes - ignoring the game play compl…
Re: Truths about video game stories
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The equivalent would be to have a movie or book that dynamically react to you, and that doesn't really exists, at least not as well as how games do it. This does exist and is called interactive fiction, FWIW. I do agree however it isn’t as clearly reactive to the consumer as a video game (you can turn on a dime in a video game, but in interactive fiction you don’t get such a granular level of control in how you int…
I would personally classify interactive fiction closer to games, unless you count gamebooks in that, which I consider closer to books. There was also a movie where you get to get choices linked to Black Mirror that was popular recently, and a few people on youtube explored this by making different videos and letting you pick "what happens next". There's also the whole genre of visual novels, mostly from Japan. I'm no…
Re: Truths about video game stories
#140We've had theatre and literature as narrative art for centuries. Film has been around for a tiny bit over 100 years, and it took them decades to find their own voices distinct from their predecessors. By comparison, video games are in their infancy. We've been at it for only a few short decades, and having the audience directly involved with the narrative is a radical shift from what we had before. We're looking at a…
Journey and Abzü are great examples of what video games can do with just exploration of the environment telling you a story with zero dialogue/exposition that by definition can't be done in other mediums