Movies tell a story. Books tell a story. Television tells a story. Even music tells a story, and it’s not something we even have to consider, it’s simply expected of these mediums. X will happen in Y place for Z reason, en masse.
But what about video games — do we expect them to tell a story? I think more often than not that we don’t and engage in video games for entertainment, but don’t always care about why we’re shooting X guy for Z reason.
Videogame development is a respected and profitable industry, but when it gets down to the art of constructing character models or the physics of a grenade explosion, many developers, and players, consider narrative to be an afterthought.
And why shouldn’t they? This is a medium where, 20 years ago, the biggest plot twist we could expect was Princess Peach being in trapped in another castle…again.
But as technology has evolved, the art form has reached a point where it can accommodate plot and character development. And video games are an art form, or at least I’d like to think of them as such.
Of course the inevitable “why” always rears its head here. Someone once told me that if they wanted to hear a story, they’d go read a book, and that they played video games to escape from those kind of stories, and that video games just didn’t need it. I disagree, but bear in mind I’m not calling for Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft to turn on their heels and decide to give Ash Ketchum from Pokemon a drinking problem, or for Mario to start cheating on Peach with Daisy. I suppose what I really want is for people to respect video games as an art form, for I fear that if people don’t expect the industry to do something long enough, it will stop trying to altogether.
And despite this, there are many series that defy the stereotype with compelling plotlines and narrative. Final Fantasy, starting in 1987, has told tales involving every concept from predestination paradoxes, to the encroaching of technology upon nature, to the state of human souls before and after death. While there is always a sword-and-sorcery twinge to these tales, they are exquisitely-told dramas of self-discovery.
More recently there was Killer7, a surrealist tale involving a group of seven assassins, all of whom are actually facets of one man’s personality. The story itself is almost completely nonsensical at times, moving from a team of murderous Power Ranger knock-offs to nuclear war on Japan to teenage suicide at the drop of a hat, and holds a great deal of philosophical and symbolic significance for those willing to take the story apart piece by piece.
Even more mainstream series like Halo, along with its novel counterparts, offers a sweeping sci-fi military story, and though it opts for slow reveals so as to extend the story for as long as possible, it maintains an almost irresistible intrigue and style with its many almost allegorical characters.
Next year also promises the fourth entry in the very topical Metal Gear Solid series, which has discussed everything from the proliferation of nuclear arms, to genetic engineering, government censorship and the fate of soldiers who rely on the changing times to tell them who their enemies are. This latest, and possibly final, entry shows the dangers of relying on an economy of war generated by Private Military Companies.
In 1911, Italian film theorist Ricciotto Canudo published “The Birth of the Sixth Art,” in which he attempted to outline the many forms of art (drama, dance, song, sculpture, etc.) with film being the last of the arts. In discovering the narrative potential of video games, I believe that there will come a time where we’ll actually care whether or not video games are on that list.