Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The last thing I'm going to write about videogames...

...for a while, at least.

Some of you may remember that this blog used to be specifically about videogame journalism. I wrote a lot about my desire to see games become a legitimate art form, an expressive medium supported by a thoughtful and skillful print media. Although that is no longer where my professional aspirations lie, I'm still an avid gamer and I care a lot about the state of the industry.

Throughout this blog's first incarnation, I felt like the essence of what I was trying to say about games, about how storytelling and gameplay needed to work together, continually eluded me. Well, Leigh Alexander recently linked to this brilliant article and it suddenly all became clear to me.

The biggest obstacle I see to games telling great stories in an interactive medium is the inherent conflict between giving players freedom to do whatever they want in a virtual universe, and forcing players to go from one predetermined plot point to another until they are forced to stop at the end credits.