Almost no mention of streaming and also contains this gem:
> Lucas and Spielberg also spoke of vast differences between filmmaking and video games because the latter hasn’t been able to tell stories and make consumers care about the characters
This definitely wasn’t true at the time and it isn’t true now. Just goes to show how hard it is to predict the future.
A lot of game developers, myself included, don't think scripted stories belong in games at all. A lot of they time they are bolted on because some players expect one.
All the best games have no story, Factorio, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, Quake, Pacman.
A lot of game consumers disagree! There are many great games without a story, but there are many amazing story games too. I mostly buy games with strong storylines, and get tired quickly of "pure mechanics" gameplay.
If you judge it by playtime it's probably true. Story-driven games like TLOU sell well sometimes but the games that gamers spend the most time with are those with attractive gameplay loops; the story just becomes window dressing. Personally I put down TLOU after two or three hours; the story didn't excite me (generic zombie slop, sorry) and the sneak/combat gameplay was too bland to keep me interested. On the other hand, MGS5's story is a half-baked abortion but the gameplay kept me coming back for several hundred hours.
The story gets way more deep and interesting as you progress. If you feel like giving it another shot, the remaster also makes it look super-pretty and improved the gameplay somewhat.
When I first played TLOU I had that same reaction but as the other comment said it is a lot deeper than it seems. An allegory for all types of love represented by each location.
The Beginner's Guide, Fallout New Vegas, Disco Elysium, Professor Layton series, Mother series, Bioshock series, 999, Virtue's Last Reward, Portal, Vampire the Masquerade, Arcanum, Death Stranding, Silent Hill, Kid Icarus Uprising, there are so many.
I think you should be considering the number of games matching the criteria against the total number of games available. You will see that even 100 is a drop in the ocean of hundreds of thousands of games.
I'd further argue that while Citizen Kane might have been an important movie for moving the genre forward, it certainly does not fit the criteria of "a movie everyone should watch".
Someone wrote they think Portal/TLOU/Bioshock have one dimensional characters and stories but deleted (maybe fearing downvotes), but I wanted to know:
What games do you think excel at story/character?
The average perspective of literary studies presents characters in media as often not made to simulate humans but be symbols for ideas, conflict, groups, emotions.
I'm not sure I would agree with TLOU, but I completely agree with Portal and Bioshock.
Portal is a puzzle game with a bit of a silly story to move the puzzles along. I didn't care about the protagonist, in the same way that I don't care about the art work in a chess game. It's lovely but I'm not emotionally invested in it in the same way I'm not emotionally invested in Fast and Furious.
Bioshock 1/2/Infinite was similar. The world had been lovingly crafted, the antagonists and enemies had backstories but the main character was not anyone I cared about. Having a backstory is completely different to having a relatable protagonist that I want to see succeed.
For every Logan there are 6(?) X-Men films that are just explosions.
I am loving the depth and richness of Baldur's Gate so far, but I will be honest. The storytelling, as creative as it is, feels very flat due to how it seems to be presented. I almost feel like a sociopath while playing the game, due to how little I feel invested in the overall plot and its characters.
For example, there is a high degree of ludonarrative dissonance, and quite regularly an emotional or otherwise important event will take place, to absolutely zero fanfare or reaction from the party. You just get dropped back into the game.
I know it is a matter of scope and available resources, but it reminds me a lot of how one might compare the narratives of GTA: San Andreas vs GTAV. Many prefer the overall plot, scope and worldbuilding of GTA: San Andreas vs GTAV. But due to time crunch and constrained resources, parts of the game had to be cut and it really shows.
More typically of games of its time, San Andreas can very abruptly take you in and out of the narrative experience, to the point that some emotional cues are lost. Red Dead Redemption 2 on the other hand excellently bridges this gap, possibly in the most organic fashion to date from any video game.
I hope Larian can look toward recent games such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk for guidance on how to handle a narrative-heavy experience more organically and holistically.
Lots of great recommendations here, I'd add in Spec Ops: The Line.. although perhaps that's cheating since it's inspired by a movie that's based on a book. I won't say which so you can find out for yourself:)
Dead Space series (specially 2), Max Payne, Metal Gear Solid 3, Silent Hill 2, Rule of Rose, Mass Effect 3 are the ones I remember that I enjoyed its story and cared about the characters pretty much.
Last of Us and God of War tend to get a lot of recognition, but it depends on what you’re looking for. Like film, you have to be open to the experience.
These were characters I thought a lot about, as I was playing the game through my exit out of the military. Leaving your gang behind while trying to stay positive and be the best you can in a quickly changing world made me feel human after years of never feeling like I could be myself. That game is a 10/10 story and video game experience. Anyone who thinks that a game couldn't be that compelling as a story has a bias against games, and should give games like this a try.
It is a masterpiece. I've played many games but RDR2 is on another level. It's like taking control of a character in a book and take him until the last page.
Check out This War of Mine or Papers, Please. These don’t exactly fit the bill, but strongly counter the popular claim that video games can’t be or aren’t Art.
I tend to think that the LCD game is no different than the equivalent movie.
Past a certain age and once you reach a certain mindset video games become "old" pretty damn fast.
The problem is that a lot of Western men still choose to remain teenagers even past their mid-30s, and this is of course truer when it comes to the demographic of this forum.
What in your opinion is the difference between a video game and and a movie? Do you have an equally bad opinion of moviegoers?
According to the below link, the video game industry dwarfs Hollywood and the music industry. Do you acknowledge that video games are more culturally significant than say, the Beatles, for the current generation?
According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020. This includes revenue from console games, PC games, mobile games, and esports. To put that in perspective, the music industry was valued at $19.1 billion in 2020, while the movie industry was valued at $41.7 billion. That means the gaming industry is making more than three times as much money as the music industry and almost four times as much as the movie industry.
Sounds like you’re just judgmental and closed-minded, unable to comprehend that others have different lives, opinions and motivations than you. Grow up.
And how is that? Old men make and consume movies all the time, are you insinuating that video games as an art form somehow should not hold the attention of a mature man like a movie can?
And how does this male-centric framework reconcile with female gamers?
The movie industry is going to dwindle in size and power over the next decade.
Look at the crappy AI apps that can generate 'movies' available now, look at what unreal engine 5 can do, look at what ChatGPT can do...in 5 - 10 years, we will be able to give a prompt and have photorealistic movies/tv episodes generated, which will satisfy the vast majority of people.
I really don't think private puppet shows, as visually impressive as they could get, would be engaging. The point of a good story is in no small part the surprise and the transformation in world view it is capable of delivering.
AI can already write scripts that match bottom of the barrel entertainment like the fast and the furious movies. The resultant content will absolutely be engaging for the majority of the population, and it can absolutely contain surprise and transformation while delivering a world view.
These are very strong and unwarranted convictions. Did you watch never ending seinfeld? I know "the AI will keep getting better". I guess we'll see about that.
I mean, not really convictions at all, just reasonable inferences based on current technology and where it's trending.
Can we generate photorealistic CGI? Yes. Is that likely to become more common and able to be generated on an average to high end home PC instead of needing a farm of GPUs? I believe so.
Can AI currently write scenes and dialogue that, while janky, isn't always bad? Yes. Is that likely to substantially improve over the next decade? Also yes.
What do you get if you combine them, hmm?
> I know "the AI will keep getting better". I guess we'll see about that.
You say I have strong and unwarranted convictions, but I would say instead this seems like unwarranted and unreasonable skepticism.
Fine it will be hobbyists/moonlighting creators on streaming platforms delivering a heavy dose of 20 second to 30 minute AI generated content. Basically where we are today except it will just get more and more engaging as the tools become more accessible/powerful.
This weird assumption that what amounts to just a competent chatbot will somehow "be good" at everything at some point in the future is just starting to sound like faith based argument to me.
Making good movies is extremely hard. I remember James Cameron saying that, during the casting for Terminator 2, he had to come in on the weekend for the nth-time, just to see how sun will reflect off Robert Patrick's face (T-1000) during that particular day time. That's the level of focus required. Once you inject enough interfering factors, such as various ideologies, you will end up with inferior products Hollywood currently producing.
But of course it is also unlike most other art forms. To execute a movie you need a small army of specialist each providing their own talents. And of course one also needs wagonloads of money for wages, equipment, and other costs.
I believe that is where all the weird fighting over control comes from. Have you ever heard of producers bullying poets over control of their poems? I haven't. Probably because the involved budgets are much smaller.
In this regard I don't know what other art forms are similar to it? Cathedral building maybe?
These artists, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc. all had small armies of folks working for them. Apprentices, workers, etc. Much of the magic of making art at the time was in sourcing, mixing and making the pigments, and other raw materials. So much work went into making a painting before the artists brush touched the substrate. It's not like today when you walk down to an art supply store and buy paint. You had to sail to the ends of the earth, make pigments, etc.
Music is similar. Go to the opera or symphony or live music of any kind. There is dozens, sometimes hundreds of people who have been practicing and working their whole lives at their piece of the puzzle. More than even the musicians, there are thr riggers, lighting and effects professionals, etc. It takes a small army of professionals to deliver a modern stage show.
Even a lone violin player playing a stratavarious. So much has gone into the creation, preservation and understanding of the instrument, how to play it, the composer of the piece, and finally the musician.
Art isn't simple, or easy.
There are also lots of famous examples of one person (or close) films. They are not necessarily more complex or involved than any other art form, although often are, it's not necessarily the case.
I agree with everything except the wagons of money: special effects are the biggest driver of costs now, so a regular drama or comedy can be made for very little money -- indie films are usually under $1M, and plenty are made for under $100k.
If you have a strong script then you're most of the way there.
Yes and no. Yes for big blockbusters like Avatar and Marvel movies. No because CGI tech is being rapidly democritized and lower cost houses are increasingly able to do amazing things. Movies like Distric 9 and Chappie have shown you can make an effects driven movie for far less that is a critical and commercial success. Check out Corridor Crew in youtube to see what's possible now out of your garage. It's amazing, there are so many fun fiction type movies being made today that are equal or higher quality to commercial movies from 10 or 15 years ago.
> Movies like Distric 9 and Chappie have shown you can make an effects driven movie for far less that is a critical and commercial success.
District 9 had a budget of $30 million, Chappie had a budget of $49 million. That is a big chunk if money. These are serious ventures.
Compared that if Blomkamp‘s choosen art form were poetry. He could have made his art for a few hundreds of dollar.
Don’t get me wrong! I love those movies. I love that they made them. But they are fundamentally a business. Somebody had to ask “are we going to make this money back?” Because you don’t get that kind of pile of money without answering that question with a very confident yes.
> Check out Corridor Crew in youtube to see what's possible now out of your garage.
Absolutely. I love them too. If you haven’t heard of him yet I also recommend Ian Hubert’s Dynamo Dream movies too. It is incredible what is possible nowadays “on the cheap”.
> Lucas and Spielberg also spoke of vast differences between filmmaking and video games because the latter hasn’t been able to tell stories and make consumers care about the characters
This definitely wasn’t true at the time and it isn’t true now. Just goes to show how hard it is to predict the future.