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Senlis on 15 January 2010
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Kenryoku_Maxis said:
Senlis said:

I wont mention genres in this statement, since there are games that try this from more than JRPGs. (MGS4, really)

There are many games out there that try to be a movie.  You have player gameplay (often, nothing special about the gameplay (not a MGS4 remark in particular)) through a dungeon or something, then you are shown a non-interactive 'movie'.  Basically, there are a lot of people out there who will play these games just for the story, not the gameplay, and I think that is stupid.

So Kenryoku_Maxis, your second sentience is true, for most games.  But there are games out there which try to be movies.

Really, is there any game which can compare to these movies? http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/11655-top2002 (sorry, couldn't find the embed link).

Again, you didn't get the point out of my post.  I wasn't saying games are inferior to movies.  I was saying they are completely different mediums that do completely different things and have completely different variables and shouldn't be compared.  Movies for the most part only have a few variables.  Which most people boil down to the generic things such as plot, audio and 'direction'.  Games have many more variables, which all influence each other (including the story) and the persons perception of the story.  You may think Uncharted 2 or MGS 4 is the 'best story ever'.  But the game also has presentation, gameplay, audio content, etc that the player interacts with and yes, influences the story as well. 

In games, its not so much the writing that delivers the story like in a book or movie, but how you see and play the game.  Whether its through cutscenes like in Final Fantasy, getting drawn into a battle and a story develops such as in Company of Heroes or just being told 'the princess has been stolen' and discovering over the course of the game who took her as in Mario.  'Plot' is a completely different medium in a game than in a Book or Movie.  And no matter how much a game tried to emulate a movie in graphics, they still need to make the player feel connected to the game interactively.  Otherwise, you're just pressing A and watching a Movie.

After you realize this, its just your personal opinion if you think one medium is better than another.  Personally I have yet to find a game come close to the writing of many of the better movies or TV series I've seen.

I'm not saying video games are like movies, there are completely different.  I'm saying there are games that have bland gameplay and people only seem to like them for their cinematic like story.  To me, these are video games trying to be movies.  These certain video games fail at with their main strength because there is another medium that does what they are trying to do, but better.

Once again, games are not movies.  Only some games pretend they are.