Video Games

            Even as a kid I could never fully get into video games. I had a PS2 and played it a bit, but even when I did I didn’t follow the story too often. That’s why I liked cra games, because I could just drive around and crash and win races, which required a short attention span. But narrative games I would either get frustrated or bored then would just wander around the game doing random things. A prime example is when I got Grand Theft Auto Vice City, I begged for it because it was a mature game and when I got it all I really did was steal fast cars and run over people. Eventually my friends would come over and play it and follow the story.

            Last year I lived with three guys who were all obsessed with video games, and each played their own game for the most part. Every game involved shooting somebody for some different reason, but it was interesting to see how many stories they could come up with on why you were shooting the other person. Call of Duty was the main game, and as we all know this is a war game fighting terrorists. But the story was about a soldier brain washed, not able to remember previous missions and trying to piece everything back together, very similar to the Bourne Series. The other main game was Saints Row, which is very similar to Grand Theft Auto, you’re in a gang and it’s your job to expand your territory and sell more drugs for more money, and of course you have to kill the other gang members for their territory and to earn respect points.

The newer the games are, the more movie like they become. You actually watch short clips from what you think could be a real movie, and then play the game to keep the story going. I don’t think this makes them literature. Video games are open worlds, you do follow a story but the player is in control of where the character goes and when, it has too much freedom to be literature, which is more structured and tells the reader everything that happens exactly as it goes. A story is told through playing the narrative game, but I don’t see it as a literary experience. Maybe future games will have more of a literary type feel since games are now much more like movies, but as of now I don’t see the connection.