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Forums - Gaming - Which tells the better story for a game?

Reasonable on 12 May 2009
Non Sequor said:
The Ghost of RubangB said:
el_rika said:
From a pure storytelling perspective, cinematics are light years ahead.

You don't spend years at the film school just because it is fun or cool, you spend years because cinematography is one of the most complex forms of expression, as it incorporates most of all others.
Cinematics in games allow you to have complex narratives with multiple points of view, cinematic framing and lens effects, sometimes fully interactive (Shenmue) sometimes both interactive and non-interactive at the same time (MGS4 microwave scene), which can even be considered an evolution over standard film storytelling as it allows to both keep the cinematic storytelling tehniques intact 'and' create an unprecedented level of connection between the player and the character.

Sure, if you want to keep moving the character while the other characters talk to you, it may be a better approach from a pure gameplay continuity perspective (which some will rightfully argue that it is what gaming is all about), but as a pure storytelling method it is rudimentary and limited to a single perspective, though it also has the advantage of beeing incredibly cheap to produce.

In the end it all comes down to what one wants. Good storytelling "for a game", or good storytelling [period].

Cinematography is just moving photography!  The most complex form of expression is editing, because that's where you control time and space and montage all at once to create a narrative!

Sorry... film student here.

 

I think the most important lesson in filmmaking is to show somebody the story rather than tell them the story.  If your film relies on narration and/or text, they are listening to the story and/or reading the story.  That should be avoided when possible, and the story should be shown through action, camera movement, and editing, the things that only cinema can do.

I think the most important lesson in game narrative is to let somebody play the story rather than show or tell them the story.  If your game relies on narration and/or text and/or cutscenes, they are listening to the story and/or reading the story and/or watching the story.  That should be avoided when possible, and the story should be experienced through gameplay, the thing that only gaming can do.

But there are exceptions to both those rules.

You can get away with reading signs and symbols in film but a wall of text an hour into a film can ruin the mood, like a 45 minute cutscene would ruin the mood for a game.  We'll definitely keep getting both kinds of films and hopefully we'll get both kinds of games.  Figuring out how to tell a story without controlling the perspective is a struggle for most developers.  It's really counter-intuitive, but when done correctly it's awesome.  You really get to feel like you are the story, which in my opinion is the main goal of game narrative.

I guess you can put me in the "good story for a game" category, although I don't feel that either game narrative or cinema narrative are inherently better than the other.

I agree with everything you said (although I'm not going to venture an opinion on the editing versus cinematography debate).

I think there's a bit of film envy among gamers. Film is the most respected medium to develop in the 20th century and gamers want games, an even newer medium, to have that sort of respect. So I think that people have this idea that in order for games to be respected, it must emulate film.

While it's good to borrow elements from one's predecessors, I think that games have to do things that film can't in order to gain wider respect. If games don't do things that film can't, people will only focus on the things that film can do that games can't.

 

Two good posts guys... said the film fan.

Thinking about it, the key challenge, I feel, is for games to justify why you'd pick that medium to tell a story vs a film or a book.

In the end if videogames never evolve (as film did) as a medium in their own right, then they will simply ape other mediums conventions to convey a narrative.

Of course not all games need a narrative, but for those that chose to, I hope one day to see a creative lead who really looks for the way to use the medium in a way that film/books couldn't match fully.



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Cheebee on 12 May 2009

Well, that really depends on the cutscene and the image on the wall.
I mean, to people who know what the image means, know the background and all that, it might tell a complete story, but if someone's not familiar with the sign, they're not gonna understand a thing. Whereas a complete cutscene will tell anyone an entire story.



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Non Sequor on 12 May 2009
twesterm said:
hatmoza 2.0 said:
If a pictures worth a thousand words, a motion picture = n Frames * 1000

 

But you don't have time to take in an entire frame like you have the time to sit in a scene and take in the entire scene.  :-p

 

It's worth noting that this trade off is much older than gaming:

http://books.google.com/books?id=3FGZ_gOJIRwC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=nebeneinander+versus+nacheinander&source=bl&ots=bbnH4uqeDu&sig=egBmkVlNB_-cvdw-pfw8QZKqwrQ&hl=en&ei=H6wJSqePOYustgeFzsTjCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#PPA87,M1

Video is capable of both modes, but it's worth noting that you can't fully achieve both at the same time since the viewer's attention cannot be fully focused on both the development of the scene over time and the full visual detail of the scene.



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The Ghost of RubangB on 12 May 2009
Reasonable said:
Non Sequor said:

I think there's a bit of film envy among gamers. Film is the most respected medium to develop in the 20th century and gamers want games, an even newer medium, to have that sort of respect. So I think that people have this idea that in order for games to be respected, it must emulate film.

While it's good to borrow elements from one's predecessors, I think that games have to do things that film can't in order to gain wider respect. If games don't do things that film can't, people will only focus on the things that film can do that games can't.

Two good posts guys... said the film fan.

Thinking about it, the key challenge, I feel, is for games to justify why you'd pick that medium to tell a story vs a film or a book.

In the end if videogames never evolve (as film did) as a medium in their own right, then they will simply ape other mediums conventions to convey a narrative.

Of course not all games need a narrative, but for those that chose to, I hope one day to see a creative lead who really looks for the way to use the medium in a way that film/books couldn't match fully.

Great posts gentlemen.  We're all on the same team here.

@bolded: This is exactly what film had to do!

Early on it was treated as a way to take a play on tour.  You could film a play and show it on screens around the country.  All the first actors, directors, and writers went from theater to film.  For film to really evolve we had to wait a few generations for people to grow up with the medium and study it in film school and then have radical new film-only ideas.  (Exceptions to this were the guys who really early on started playing with special effects like Georges Melies.)

Now people think of games as movies that you play.  Now we're having people grow up with the medium and study it in game school and have radical new game-only ideas.  So games should actually be getting crazier, but most of them are getting more boring.

What's weird is that this history is kind of backwards for games.  Early games were very original and amazing and not comparable to anything else, from Pong to Donkey Kong and the rest.  Aside from originaly games, there were games inspired by pen-and-paper games, board games, and interactive books.  It wasn't until the graphics got good enough for 3-D visual storytelling that everybody started hopping on the cinematic bandwagon as if it was the only way to play.



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