Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

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I think that's close to the mark, but not quite there. To quote Sid Meier, "A game is a series of interesting choices." It's hard to make a good game with a great plot: the better the plot, the more you restrict the player's choices. It's not impossible, but it's hard.

Plenty of games have great characters and excellent world-building. Quite a few pose interesting questions, make you face hard dilemmas and leave you pondering long after you're done playing. Several make you immerse yourself in the world and identify with the characters so much that a particular event in their plot will provoke very strong feelings.

But none of those have a plot you can take and make a good movie out of it. Hollywood could very likely pick one of these games and make a great movie based on it, but not by focusing on the plot.

For example, I would be thrilled to watch a movie based on Dragon Age or Fallout. I might like a movie based on Borderlands, perhaps. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy a movie based on The Last of Us or Uncharted or The Talos Principles. And all of those games are among my favorites precisely because I enjoyed their world, characters, themes and choices.

I think BioShock Infinite probably proves your point, too. Compared to the other two entries it limits the player's choices even further and simplifies gameplay even more, but has a much more compelling story. Unfortunately, the story would probably not be as compelling were the player not led by the nose through it.

FTR, I had the most fun playing BioShock 2, but I still like Infinite the most.

Especially with the DLC, Infinite is a classical tragedy, so of course the player character doesn’t get to make any meaningful choices.

There are plenty of good games that dont give all that much choice to player. Which is why I dont like the "A game is a series of interesting choices." framing. It is true only if you limit definition of games to rpgs or strain definition of "choice" to pretty much anything.

Whether games have great characters is of course subjective, but I have to say that I did not seen them. The best ones tend to be comparable with average book character. (Which is ok, I don't play games for writing, I play them for playing.)

I think that restricting the word "choice" to narrative choices is an overly narrow interpretation of Meier's definition. I see no strain in applying the word "choice" to gameplay choices.

Maybe the solution is to have a video game movie that highlights the choices taken by the character. Make the decision points important to the movie, rather than remaking the overall storyline.

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