Good point, and well made. Still, Mario Karts has a plastic steering wheel. Can't beat the literary value of that.

Do you really want me to list books that are considered classics depsite having flat characters?

I mean, i could do it... but there is more to a story then simply the characters.  Plenty of good stories have been told with flat characters and with static characters.

Heck look at the bible.  It's full of flat characters left and right.  I mean can you find a more flat character then Jesus, the main character.  None of the characters change at all.  Not even Judas who is always considered as such in the traditional gospels.

What is so great about the story then?  Why how everything is.  How everything plays out.

The bible does not contain good writing of any kind. Sorry, but it's true.

You don't become one of the largest religions in the world with bad writing...

at best you end up like sceintology.

So many movies, books and other forms of literature borrow from it like crazy.

You might as well as I was crazy enough to sarcastically say that GeoW 2's story was deep and insightful.

Well for a quick four

Animal Farm 

The Odyessy

The Importance of Being Earnest

Harrison Berngon (or so i hear.)

Care to call all four of those bad stories?

Not comparing L4D to those stories of course... but no videogame has yet reached even close to the storytelling potential of even most pulp fiction.

we used to worship the sun, and that book was probobly pretty bad.

scientology is definetly better written than the bible.

and you shouldnt believe either one of those books if you know whats good for you.  

For another example however.

Say you want to tell the story of the life of an everyday person who has been stranded on a desert island for 3-5 years now.

Just because they don't change their perspective at all because they're used to the lonlieness and living for sustenance the story is suddenly not good?

Is the story bad because there is no sudden plot twist where captain good guy runs in and saves the day, or because the person ends the movie in the same miserable place they've begun?

Isn't there a message just in the "I am a person. I have been reduced to simply surviving... feel what i feel?"

Isn't conveying to a person exactly what the main character is feeling the most important aspect of storytelling?

Well in cases where the characters aren't being used simply as objects to prove a greater point... in which case flat characters are actually more prevelant.

Ok fine.

Animal Farm.

Oddessy

Importance of Being Earnest.

Tell me why these are bad stories.

Games whilst improving greatly don't even approach the cinema in terms of narrative and emotional impact. Let alone that of novels.

Just like the cinematic experience has its own advantages so do games, but its still early days yet, games have a long way to go.