Quote:
Originally Posted by TFeldt
These days it's almost like there's a stigma attached to it, mostly because the term invokes the rather archaic vision of 14 year old boys playing atari games. Or rabid xbox/playstation fanboys. Everybody who buys and plays a game is a gamer from the industry's point of view, and that's the view I subscribe to.
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I thought that stigma had been around for a while, though my understanding of the stereotype is 'greasy men in their 20s living in their mums' basements'. Yet at the same time I don't think some gamers do themselves any favours by insisting that people who play The Sims 3, for example, aren't real gamers because such games don't require typical twitch or fast reaction skills. Honestly, I think the Sims franchise is one of the best examples of what games are capable of in terms of storytelling, and I expect more game adaptations of novels, films, whatever, in the future to have more sandbox elements rather than painstakingly follow narrow, linear narratives borrowed from those mediums.
I've long been interested in finding games that balance good storytelling with good gameplay, hence my preference for a 'good game over a good book' -- it's rare enough to find the former, in my experience! Nowadays, I tend to think that's it's not so much the story of a game that's important to me but rather how the story is executed. Treating a game as a story with interactive elements, like those Japanese visual novels, is tedious. With a game, for me pacing, balance, and involvement is much more important than the actual story. In the case of RPGs, which are typically the most story-heavy game genre, I'm willing to put up with a run-of-the-mill or mediocre storyline if the game does a good job of making me become immersed as the protagonist. The Mass Effect series, with its convo choices and fully fleshed out personalities despite a bog standard storyline, has a good 'storytelling' experience. The Witcher was similar, enough that I was even willing to put up with its silly 'conquest cards'. (That's a pet peeve of mine, that currently the games industry in general seems to think that 'mature storytelling' consists of 'realistic' tits and gore, but that's a topic for another time.)
As for complaints about poor scripting, voice acting, etc... Well, gaming is still a very young medium compared to films and reading. Games are already much more sophisticated than ten years ago though, and as the budget and experience of making games grow, I'm sure games will become more sophisticated.