Cultural discourse is always in a state of flux, established viewpoints try to discredit upstarts. You can see this in the satanic panic around Dungeons and Dragons were newspapers around the US attacked the game for corrupting youth, the same with music from rock and roll, to metal, to rap. Then later video games like Doom were framed as inciting gun violence. These opinions draw from the same well as those that rank art such as literary fiction as somehow more valuable than other types. Games have now become ubiquitous enough that they’re no longer over blamed for gun crime or murders but mostly places where the idle waste their time. Where possible it’s good to push back against these establishment narratives and this article does a little a of that. What we now call games are going to eat the rest of the arts.
We love reading and watching movies, they let you enter someone else’s head and see the world from a new point of view. Sometimes I hear business guys in interviews mentioning how they don’t watch films or read fiction - ever! There’s something sad about depriving yourself of such wonderful experiences. Far more people never play games. Games offer something quite different to books or film, they can surprise even the creator, games are a system with a small spark of life!
Books, Movies and Games
Many game makers seek to emulate books and film, it’s natural, games are still emerging and most inspiration is sourced from books, films and board games. We have barely begun to explore. Writing is 3000 years old, film over 125 years old, games are at most 50 years old - we’re at the very start, the best is ahead and it’s for you to make.
Games are more powerful
No one wants to say this out-loud but games are better than books and film. We only see glimpses of it but they have far more power and potential. Games can already captivate far more powerfully, people rarely read books until they die or lose their jobs but this has occasionally with games. The medium is far deeper, sound, sight and perhaps later more of the senses, it can open up experiences that haven’t existed before. The written word has the power of leaving more up to the imagination but that too is in the realm of games, they run the gamut from text to pixel accurate simulations of 3D worlds.
Alive
Book and film are not dead mediums but they may as well be. Yes books benefit from new words, film benefits from new special effects but these changes are minor and slow. Games are alive; fundamentally linked to the accelerating development of technology. Games can rewrite their DNA. In 20 years we’ve gone from stick figures to almost realistic renderings of characters. Fidelity has improved much faster than the underlying art of game play or creating a system that allows player to create an intriguing narrative. Games are technology.
Interaction
Games are interactive, ignoring choose-your-own adventure type books, that’s the main difference. Players influence the environment and are an actor in the narrative. To make decisions that pull you through a story is to be more invested in it.
Longer
Games, as a rule, are longer. People spend hundreds of hours playing a single game. This emerges from the nature of a game being a system for a player to interact with. A system can generate new experiences, while a book or movie can only give out the same experience everytime - though the reader’s interpretation will change.
Social
It’s fun reading in the same room or watching a movie together but the act of playing a game together is to create an experience together. This can be done with a friend on the couch or with people from around the world.
Join the Wave
Just like writing, if you’re literate, you can make a game. You can make a game right now, the tools are only getting easier and more powerful. You can shape the future of the medium. The vast majority of interesting games are from solo-creators. Jump in, start with something simple like Twine. What do you want to do, how will you scare, touch or delight your player?e The opportunities vast.
Learn the Rules to Break the Rules
As a medium there haven’t been many stars, so whatever rules we’re following at the moment can safely be ignored. Express yourself. Be aware and conscious of other people’s rules. You don’t need to make a platformer or any “genre” game. Try thinking more about about something that would be interesting to model or how to evoke a feeling in your players. Games don’t need scores, goals, levels, avatars they’re just cool things we’ve stumbled on so far but there’s much more to discover.