November 4, 2012 by

Storytelling with pixels: The evolution of a medium

For a long time video games have been considered by many people to be a second class form of entertainment. The argument of “Are games art?” has been bandied about on games forums for as long as I can remember – even by people who profess to enjoy playing games. I would actually go so far as to call this debate insulting. If they are not art, then what are they? A mindless exercise in hammering buttons without any creative forethought? I’m sure that the designers and artists who have a hand in creating games would quite rightly take issue with their work being cheapened in such a way.

The concept of art has always been open to interpretation. A fusty old music professor may only consider the work of Bach or Beethoven to be important, but this doesn’t mean that the psychedelic genius of Jimi Hendrix is any less significant to someone who likes rock music. The same can be said about computer games. Just because a fan of science fiction literature considers video games to be a lesser medium doesn’t mean that the tale of Commander Shepard in Mass Effect 3 is any less engaging to those who don’t. The fact is that games are slowly turning into a fully-fledged medium of their own, conveying an experience in a way that no other medium can.

Video games are unique because they make us feel as if we are actually involved in the story somehow. This level of interactivity can be quite minimal like in Thirty Flights Of Loving or it can be complex and involved like in Dragon Age: Origins. It doesn’t matter if the experience is a short indie game that’s over in fifteen minutes or if it’s a lengthy RPG that takes 50+ hours to complete, the end result is still the same – we feel as if our actions have made a difference.

This is different from passively experiencing movies and books. Don’t get me wrong, these mediums obviously have advantages over video games. Novels will always be the purest and most extensive form of storytelling and films have much better cinematography/acting but they both keep their audiences more separated from the story. The bottom line is: why should video games strive to be more like films and books – aka “real” art forms – when they could be something else entirely?

The most notable thing that differentiates video games from other storytelling mediums is the inclusion of choice. The end of Mass Effect 3 caused such a furor amongst the gaming community that Bioware had to make an extended cut ending to try and hold on to the game’s fan base. It’s quite remarkable when you think about it, but the choices players made throughout the game caused them to have a much bigger personal connection with the plot. Many people referred to their save files as containing their Shepard. It was as if the options they had taken throughout the game reflected their own moral inclinations, making the events of the story all the more hard hitting and personal.

It’s not just the choices in Mass Effect 3 that have affected players on an emotional level either. Other games have used different methods of presenting players with choice and have still achieved the same effect. The heart wrenching tale of a father’s son being kidnapped by a serial killer in Heavy Rain is involving enough, but the way that the game allows players to initiate choices through the use of dialog driven quick time events makes them feel involved whilst presenting it in a similar way to a movie. Sometimes complicated visuals aren’t even necessary. The Nintendo DS sleeper hit 999: 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors is basically like a “choose your own adventure” novel and is little more than static images and walls of scrolling text. The experience is made almost entirely on the strength of the stellar story and the choices are just the icing on the cake.

Of course, visuals can make an impact on the storytelling experience as well in the right circumstances. L.A. Noire is an example of one such game. It’s special because it’s one of the first of its kind: a game that successfully blends the digital world of video games with the real life performances of actors. Sure, it had some shortcomings, but I like to think of it as a milestone achievement and a sign of what’s to come. Making choices regarding whether or not to trust witnesses in murder cases was all the more believable when the characters reacted with actual human expressions. It’s very encouraging to think about where this blend of art forms might take us in the future.

I have said nothing but good things so far, but there are some shortcomings to storytelling through the medium of video games too. The main one of these is that games are first and foremost exactly that – games. Sometimes the story must take a back seat to actually completing some interactive challenges that don’t always advance the plot. This is something that will – quite rightly – never change, and it undoubtedly breaks up the pace of the storytelling in a way that books and movies don’t have to contend with.

It is both simultaneously amusing and baffling to me how the general public reacts to video games. On the one hand you have people denying that they are actually art, and on the other you have awards ceremonies for them like the BAFTA’s. Whilst the latter approach is far more appropriate, neither are actually correct. Video games won’t be considered as art by many people because they are the new kids on the block, and the few who do understand the amount of creativity and forethought that goes into them wish to put them into the same bracket as movies. Games have a method of storytelling that is still in its infancy, but it is one that seeks to involve the audience in a way that no other medium can – by letting them play a part.


  • http://twitter.com/djchan08 David Chandler

    Interactivity is definitely a hallmark of the video game medium, so much so that gameplay has not achieved that great lofty point of storytelling perfection. The question I keep coming to though is “Should it?” Interactivity has been a part of storytelling since the first epistolary novels hit the market, and turning the pages of Richardson’s “Clarissa” turned the reader into a voyeuristic peeping Tom, combing through a character’s private letters. Later, the novels of Faulkner asks us to play detective to piece together some sordid, incomprehensible story.

    I think video games still don’t know what they want to be. They owe a debt to actual games like chess or bridge that are so much more complex than video games because they are not bound by narrative. Gameplay is still far removed from narrative, and when narrative does take a back seat gameplay is often at its best. I think that the only games can really mature is if they take a step outside of narrative–to let games do what they do best, so to speak.

    • Liam Dean

      I understand what you’re saying David, and I certainly agree with you that sometimes gameplay can be better if the narrative takes a back seat for a while, but does the overall experience end up mattering to you as much if it does? Take Torchlight II for example. It has excellent RPG mechanics that invite the same giddy thrill of looting and leveling up a character that Diablo II did, but it has no real plot to it. Even though it is superior in terms of gameplay to titles like Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic, I don’t find myself half as invested in the story, and as a consequence I do not think about it as much whilst I’m not playing. That surely has to count for something.

      I know that the storytelling techniques employed by video games are still in their infancy as yet, but I do find this to be a fascinating topic. I’m waiting for games to get to the point where they interest talented writers in a similar way to the likes of literature and film. Even though the medium has some hang ups when it comes to creating cohesive story, I actually believe that these hang ups could be used to further invest the player in the right hands.

      I’ll never be able to compete with your knowledge of literature on this topic though ;)

      • http://twitter.com/djchan08 David Chandler

        I think that the experience can certainly matter if the narrative isn’t engaging. Skyrim’s story is complete ass. So is Fallout 3′s. Braid’s. Limbo’s. Super Smash Bros’. Hell, any Zelda or Mario game tells the same damn story. But these are some of the most intricately designed games out there. I have no lave for the Assassin’s Creed story, and it’s a fairly narrative-heavy game. The mechanics, however, are interesting and worthwhile. It’s the gaming part of each that has me coming back, and it will always be that aspect that I find so absorbing.

        I don’t mean to posit that narrative in games sucks now and always all the time. Those you mention in your post are certainly entertaining. And I don’t think that game developers and writers should not strive for narrative nuance. I think that for a game to build a truly successful narrative, it needs to complement the gameplay on more than a basic level of “push button here, prompt cutscene there, put the controller down while a movie plays, now pick it up and play awhile until the next narrative segment starts.” I guess I just want see what a “game narrative” would be like–not a game aspect and then a separate story that has elements of film or novels. Like you say though, it’s a fascinating topic that begs for discussion.

  • infernoqrusher

    Another issue is audience and if literary theory is to be believed, the discursive elements of games is the only reason why they aren’t appreciated as art.

    For example, you claim Mass Effect 3 as an immersive piece of SF lit. As a lifelong SF nerd, I see it as a reductive, hyper-cliched space opera with simplistic, lowest-common denominator morality and horrible character development. Not to Roman it up too much here but the Mass Effect franchise is a lot more about the action (ie plot) than any other element. The problem lies in how crucial immersion is and how much it skews the game towards shooty, actiony bits interspersed with pith-and-cliche cutscenes. It’s more important to the makers of Mass Effect that they effectively convey to you the importance of the mission objectives than have the other characters develop in any way outside of the player’s interactions.

    As daily life and good literature and movies would have you believe, most people outside of yourself aren’t too focused on just you; by having everybody in the party reliant on Shephard for their movements and epiphanies, the makers of Mass Effect insert you, the player, into every romcom, actiony, etc bits as the immortal, powerful son of God. The rules and the narrative only reinforce that you’re the Messiah. The world is reliant is on you and so every action you take is important. In a way, playing a game like Mass Effect is almost like playing a Space Jesus simulator which, though it might be the point, has been done to death (think Kony 2012 or, further back, the White Man’s Burden).

    For some reason or another, and this may be due to the fact that most gamers are white, middle class males, it’s hard to have a game where you’re not the (optionally white) savior of (a mostly white gaze) humankind. The resurgence of this motif in games post-Halo blinds it to other possibilities.

    • Liam Dean

      Right you are sir. You make a good point. I’m not going to argue with you that Mass Effect 3 is rather cliche from a story perspective, but if you to have played all the way through all three games you must have felt some kind of connection to the characters involved. The Mass Effect games are rather plain in terms of gameplay, after all. The only time they become interesting is when you’ve got some context to the tasks you’re ordered to perform onscreen, no matter how much it tries to paint you as a “space jesus”.

      The audience for video games is – for the most part – made up of, ahem, less discerning story critics. But, given time, I do feel that this will change.You only have to look at games like Heavy Rain and LA Noire to see that this is happening. Whilst they are cornball and cliche in a lot of ways, they at least resemble half baked crime dramas. I even think that the likes of the BAFTA video game awards are a sign of progress in this regard. More and more people are opening their eyes to the possibility of games being used to convey story driven experiences, and I’m interested to see where this leads.

      I also understand what you’re saying about framing players as the centre of the universe in a lot of games. It is a problem to try and write stories from a third person perspective shifting the focus to multiple characters, but I believe that this is a conquerable hurdle. The player obviously, for the most part at least, plays the protagonist in any given story. It’s easy to write stories from first person and even third person perspectives in this way as long as the other characters play a strong enough role and are not just supporting the player. I believe that this is another problem that can be addressed as the audience matures. There will come a time when gamers are satisfied to play a character that fits into a world instead of one that defines it. Well, some of us will at least :P

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