Comment by pdpi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdpi | Hacker News Reader

We've had theatre and literature as narrative art for centuries. Film has been around for a tiny bit over 100 years, and it took them decades to find their own voices distinct from their predecessors.

By comparison, video games are in their infancy. We've been at it for only a few short decades, and having the audience directly involved with the narrative is a radical shift from what we had before. We're looking at a new art form finding its identity.

Right now the industry is drowing in AAA games that stick to the cinematic style of storytelling (and "cinematic" is still used as praise for storytelling in games), but there's also lots of (mostly indie) games out there that are trying to push the boundaries. You have games like Braid, Brothers and Hades exploring how to strongly bind narrative and game mechanics together. You have games like the first Bioshock, which abuse your understanding of genre conventions. You have games like Return of the Obra Dinn doing amazing work with non-linear storytelling.

It's a good time to be into video game storytelling.

Journey and Abzü are great examples of what video games can do with just exploration of the environment telling you a story with zero dialogue/exposition that by definition can't be done in other mediums

I would argue that what you're describing is close to an interactive version of the sort of storytelling you can achieve in a painting (also - you piqued my interest, installing Journey!).

It's a really great game and I think by the end you'll be awestruck by what it successfully evokes in you, but a painting, or a silent movie for that matter, are by definition not interactive environments unless using your imagination/interpretation is equivalent to a video game. In the games I describe you can miss things by not exploring. I won't miss anything in watching a silent movie or the opening sequence to Up because there's a definite set of frames and they run one way. A painting is even more limited.

I haven’t played either game but any sort of visual medium is capable of story telling without dialogue or exposition: visuals can tell a story at least as effectively, if not more so, than words can. For a somewhat recent, very well regarded example, see the opening prologue of Up.

All other visual mediums lack interactivity which changes things. I can't press something in a painting and unlock another experience, in Up the camera is controlled by the creators. You can play the games I mentioned and miss things by not exploring with your camera and interacting with the environment.

Video games have existed for over 50 years now. Video games have had as much time to mature as film had had by the early 1940s. And by the early 1940s film had produced numerous mature works of art displaying mastery of the medium that are still avidly watched and viewed as masterpieces today. The excuse that video games are a young medium may have held 20 years ago in the PS2 era, but it does not hold any longer.

How many movies does your avg movie goer know or can name movies from the 40s? Maybe, maybe half a dozen (it's a wonderful life, casablanca, citizen kane, Disney Fantasia and Pinocchio, and his girl Friday. I'm pretty sure your average person can name an order of magnitude more video games from pong to mario to sonic to modern day AAA games. And over time, some will have staying power, like I hope Breath of the Wild will.

Half of those games you listed are actually game series. Most people can probably name Mickey Mouse, a movie character from the 30s.

I’m not sure the recency bias of a contemporary average person is a good proxy for the artistic achievement of a time now three generations past. If we were to enumerate the list of major, artistically significant films released in the 30s and 40s, we would produce dozens of titles that even the average person has heard of, if perhaps not seen themselves. In the same vein, the average person would struggle to identify Plato or Cicero, let alone have read any of their work, but the names would at least ring a bell.

Video games are in a weird place because they arguably reached maturity of design with 1985’s Super Mario Bros. But as wonderful as SMB is, it doesn’t mean anything or have anything to say: it is just the first game to truly nail 2d platformer mechanics to a transcendent degree. Indeed, as the OP mentioned, the best video games seem to be able to do as of yet with respect to depth of meaning is the equivalent of a mid-grade zombie film (The Last of Us), and the industry is such a grind that the writers burn out before really developing their craft. Maybe video games will eventually bring a depth of meaning and insight equivalent to their refinement of play mechanics, but they’re not there yet.

I wonder how long it will take for someone to pull off what Chris Crawford been trying to do, that is find games own style of telling stories.

His own attempt was to make AI that writes the story as it interacts with the player, but lastest blog entries of his suggest he is unsure if that path that took him many years (he started the attempt in 1992 I think?) was the right one.

I think the medium is still in such infancy that even the cinematic style games are still pushing the boundaries. Naughty Dog is making incredible experiences in that format.

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