From the newly released Dante's Inferno, to classic games like The Hobbit and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, developers have been using books as inspiration for video games. Games, like movies, draw on thousands of years worth of literature to provide depth of story and character. But what of original gaming titles? Can they compete? Are they capable of achieving the same scope? Can a video game be considered a work of literature?
Skewed and Reviewed have written an Opinion Piece covering issues in the gaming industry, how current issues were issues years ago, and what can be done to help restore consumer trust.
Nothing. It's up to the gamers to stop consuming content from companies that they don't agree with.
How do you know if you agree with it or not unless you play it? Which without conventions forces gamers to rely on trailers. Perhaps Demos should be made more frequently. But companies need to do better as well.
But is that not what they have now? Tons of gameplay or are you talking about watching actual gamers play it versus the trailers and streams? The big issue is that some companies pay streamers and influencers and they create content but for me; that is hardly a fair, unbiased, and factual look at a game.
They usually are attached to the money sadly. It would be nice to have gamers in charge but you have so much money invested that business people are needed. Hence the issue; you need people who know business but are also gamers who know have an eye to the community. It sounds simple in theory that if you give gamers quality games that they want to play; money will be made. But that is not always so.
Marie Dealessandri speaks to Borislav Slavov and Gustavo Santaolalla about “the new golden age of games music”.
A famous actor from Starship Troopers has showered praise on Helldivers 2 and said he is open to the idea of playing General Brasch.
Games can be considered a narrative form but not as literature: literature relates to written works.
And yes, if novels and films can tell good and powerful stories with meaningful characters, then a game can as well.
The only difference is how you partake in each activity.
Books you read.
Films you watch.
Games you play.
It is just a different form of entertainment but neither is less more capable as being a meaningful narrative form then others. Novels just have the pedigree of being the eldest of the three whereas games are the youngest.
Games also suffer with being stuck between making content rich games and context rich games. My point here is that many developers feel that need to add things a game because it will help make them commercial (same with books and films) instead of focusing the features of the game on its context.
Take Dead Space.. it works because the player is a solo entity alone in the journey of survival. Add in co-op (for commercial reasons) and it makes less sense contextually as the story is meant to unfold for a single character. Of course if the context can be adapted then sure co-op can be made to make sense contextually.
Context is very important since it is on this entity of a narrative that everything else works: stories and characters can mean very little if the context is not established to support them.
It all comes down to how developers choose to see their games... games can be both context rich and content rich but many choose commercialism and profitability over trying to mature industry because many titles that strive for context (say like Team ICO titles) get quickly relegated to niche status.