Games for Games Sake

...and movies for movies sake.

OK, so this is purely a personal opinion, but I don't think a game can "immerse" you into some kind of storyline better than a movie can.  Video games allow you to interact with the world on the screen (which is cool), but when you base a game all around a story, I feel like the "game" in "video game" is lost.  Storytelling should be the sole job of a movie, because when it's thrown into a game, it feels like there's two completely unrelated aspects to the game: you have the actual gameplay side, and then you have the narrative side.  Though I'm not a gamer (as you can probably tell), from my limited experience, a narrative in a game just slows things down and prevents you from actually playing the game.  No doubt, the trailer for the game "Left of Us" looked pretty cool, but it looked like the trailer for a movie.  When you play out a storyline in a game, it puts you, the player, completely in control of the storyline, even if you don't know how it goes.  I understand there may be a few surprises along the way, but nothing beats sitting in a movie theater completely unable to control what you're watching.  The way I said that makes it sound bad.  What I mean is the best movies are the ones that are unexpected.  If you can make a game like that, then great.  But as it stands so far, it seems that games are currently caught in an uneven balance between story and gameplay.  So, what can you do?  I say play the old arcade games.  Those were always the best.  Why? Because they were purely games for games sake.  They didn't need complex stories.  They were extremely fun and addicting to play because they were only focused on objectives.  I think to add anything more to a game puts it in a weird space squashed between a game and a movie.

That's all you need.

Now, it you want to make some nice looking graphics, I have no problem with that because it's art.  And video games today do have some pretty stellar art.  But they lack the story simplicity of Galaga.  Heck, Galaga doesn't even have a story.  So, simplicity is key in a  video game.  But again, I'm not a gamer.  This post makes it look like I'm very into this "debate", but I'm not really.  The bottom line is that video games should be designed for fun (read my post "On Gaming").