Sure, but doesn't it work pretty differently? With books, you're just given words and your brain has to fill in the gaps and actually do some work. With video games and movies, your brain is directly stimulated; shown what to see and hear.
I wouldn't say that video games are quite as stimulating as reading a good book, but I think we underestimate how much our imagination works to "fill in the gaps" to make games feel real and rewarding.
I played MUD’s for a few years when I was younger and in hindsight it was amazing: while the writing wasn’t typically as good as a book, you still filled in the world and characters with your imagination and it was both interactive and social. I still have some vivid memories of it that are as clear as if it had been a modern game or movie, despite that in reality I was reading text.
Check out https://www.mudconnect.com/index.html
The issue for me nowadays is that AAA studios seem to demand certain things. One of which, is fully voiced dialogue.
This sounds good, people talking lines to me is great right? But the problem is, each of those lines costs time and money, and adds rigidity around what can be changed as you need to get voice actors in and pay money, take time to record the lines, sequence the lips, etc. etc.
Having a purely text based experience (see the character, but have the conversation be purely in text) allows for better variability, imagination on your behalf and way more dialogue because they aren't constrained by time and money as much.
I can't remember who said it, but It puts me in mind of the concept that sometimes the most creative things happen when given the least tools to work with - if you give an artist all the tools to work with in the world, they can often find it harder to focus. Give constraints and creativity is given bounds and scope to work with. It's a bit counter-intuitive but I really think it can be true.
Yeah, I 99% hate this[1]. Doubly if it's from the person I'm supposed to be playing - let me have my own thoughts about what's going on!
[1] There are some games which have excellent voiced dialogue as part of the world building, e.g. Albino Lullaby
If, on the other hand, the game has little or weak character building around the player character then please let me create my own character (let me choose gender, looks and name) and don’t have the character voiced at all — let me play the character I like to imagine they are instead.
Also the pacing. There are games that weren't action based, and required contemplation (shadow of colossus for instance, there were a few others). There were also sim city like games, or flight simulators that required some focus.
Even games like Resident Evil, they did capture your mind like a book a bit. That said a book requires a lot more than a game.
If the ultimate purpose is to "do some work", movies and videogames definitely do:
- movies require (in theory) around 90 minutes of undivided attention, which is definitely "work" (how many people can watch an entire movie without peeking at the phone?); additionally, they can be intellectually and/or emotionally stimulating - videogames are essentially, in general, structured challenges, which is "work" again: analytical, creative, reactive...
I'd say that quality of an escape, if we want to set this concept, could be better defined by the human experience added by it.
Alcohol doesn't really add any valuable experience (assuming one even remembers it).
Books, in average, may give the most valuable experience because they may be the most selective medium (due to the attention required).
TV, in average, may give the least, for the opposite reason.
Movies are definitely an infinite human capital. There's lots of garbage, of course.
I find hard to make any generalization about video games, as it's a very diverse medium. Farmville and co. "fare" in the ranks of trash TV, however, games like "Papers, Please" make a very significant experience.
Reading a book is a bottom up process. A movie/comic is top bottom: from visual/sound info you parse what’s happening, characters motives, what direction everything is going.
People argue the top-> down approach is “lazier”, but hearig from viewers who couldn’t understand the point of even simple movies, I don’t think it’s true, it’s just that people who don’t “get it” are left on their own as there is a forced timeline.
In that sense, video games bring two major mechanics to the table:
- interactivity: you need to understand what’s going on and take action to move forward. Also you can assume your choices.
- retryability: you can redo any part you didn’t get, the mechanic is baked into the game where for a movie it’s a PITA. I see my kid playing RPG and asking again and again NPC for info, because he didn’t get it the first time. It’s a very powerful mechanism.
Take the time to develop this skill when you aren't in need of escapism and you can reap the benefit when you are in dire need.
There are other benefits as well. Developing your visualization skill is one that benefits pretty much everything in life. Visualization greatly aids learning and understanding.
hand-eye
Books are in the same class as movies and TV. Games are a different class.