Nottingham Trent University Doctor: Video games as good of story tellers as books
“Video games have outpaced all other media in growth charts in the last three years and the industry is one of the few that hasn’t taken much of a tumble in the recent credit-crunch. I believe a major reason for their popularity is their storytelling experience, as players of game ‘blockbusters’ like Half Life 2, Assassin’s Creed and Bioshock will tell you. Though often unfairly dismissed as toys for children, computer games are far more complex than that. Most gamers, adults and children alike, play these games because of the stories they tell. So, whilst many focus on the violence in video games, the narrative potential of these games should also be explored.”- Dr Souvik Mukherjee, a researcher and computer game narrative expert from Nottingham Trent University
This is something I have thought about and debated about for a long time. Video games as entertainment are, by popular belief, purely recreation and not much for art or story telling the way that novels or movies are often considered. What more and more people are beginning to believe, however, is that video games are a completely new outlet for both storytelling and artistic talent. Games are not always for recreation anymore; many developers are overstepping a boundary and using them to criticize modern society, or to tell a heart-wrenching story. In this respect, they are most certainly an area that needs to have some light shed upon it by writers, artists and filmmakers as a new outlet for their creative talents.
