Games shouldn't be more like movies.

[thejboy88]

It's an issue that's been on my mind for some time now. With every passing generation, game developers keep trying more to make their games like Hollywood movies, with obvious examples being the tripple-A titles like Call of Duty, or the creations of David Cage.

My own personal theory about all this, which is something I'm sure many others have thought about this issue, is that it's all a case of wanting respect from more mainstream audiences. They know that games by-and-large don't have the same respect as other mediums, like literature and so on, so instead of simply trying to make better games they opt for imitating other forms of media, like movies.

If it's true then it's an ideal I oppose, because it's basically saying to the world that they're pretty much ashamed of their own medium and would rather be doing something else, which isn't helping gaming in the slightest. Games aren't movies, nor should they be. Game developers like the ones I've mentioned, though certainly not exclusively them, need to embrace the fact that games are different from other forms of media, regardless of how other audiences feel about them.

Games will never be movies and they should stop trying to be them.

 

[Zhukov]

I think it's just because movies always look better than games. So game-makers aim for something like that.

Personally, I'm not really against it. Sure, it can be taken too far when it starts interfering with functionality, but I'm fine with things like the camera getting fancy whenever I'm doing something that doesn't require my input for a couple of second (finishing moves, climbing a ladder, whatever).

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any games that were ruined by their desire to "be more like movies".

 

[Rutabaga_swe]

In a sense i guess i agree. I don't think that games lose much for being cinematic, but i do think it is quite often taken too far with AAA title. It's more about delivering a bombastic, uninterrupted experience than it is about taking advantage of the medium. The unique thing about games is...well, gameplay. I think a lot of the time gameplay suffers because of the will to shove big set-pieces and long winded cutscenes in there. It also seems that as soon as a game offers a bit of challenge these days, it becomes a niche hard-core game.

But that's just me. I'm not overly fond of the Uncharteds, CoDs and what have you from this gen. They don't really offer interactive storytelling, just bits of shooting shoved in between the cutscenes.

 

[Lucyfer86]

I like movie style games, i like games with no even a hint of movie style. Why can't we embrace both? I know i do.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I like movie style games, i like games with no even a hint of movie style. Why can't we embrace both? I know i do.

The concept of there being more than "one right way" to make a game seems to be a tough one for folks to wrap their heads around.

I don't mind that we have games like Gone Home sharing a medium with games like Dwarf Fortress. Variety is the spice of life.

Actually, scratch that. Cinnamon is the spice of life. Mmmmm. Cinnamon.

 

[Rutabaga_swe]

I like movie style games, i like games with no even a hint of movie style. Why can't we embrace both? I know i do.

In my case it's because the "movie" games are just not the experience that i'm looking for in games. If i want a solid cinematic experience, i usually find that a good movie is by far more enjoyable. Usually has better writing, more interesting characters and by FAR better pacing. What a movie or a book can't give me, that's what i'm looking for in a game.

I don't mind the AAA games existing, but i don't particularly like them myself. Also i think it's fairly evident form the current state of the games industry that the huge AAA titles aren't really viable. Again, let me refer you to Tomb Raider taht sold over 5 million copies, yet that was not enough to count as a success. Sure, people still want these types of games but it seems to me that the market for making them is VERY small as you need to get pretty much every damn gamer out there to buy the game in order to be profitable at a satisfactory level. Unfortunately, not every game has the audience of GTA. Also wouldn't that mean that any larger publisher releasing a huge AAA game, that needs huge sales to be successful, essentially willfully cannibalize their own sales of other titles when the game goes on sale? I mean if Square hopes for TR to sell 6 million copies, how the f**k do they expect anyone to buy their other titles during that window? Maybe i'm wrong, this just popped in my head while writing.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I think the movie aspect is meant to sucker in new consumers into gaming, since the film industry has a larger consumer base than the game one. You can't really blame devs for trying to be more "cinematogaphical" so long as it doesn't interfere with gameplay.

 

[Rutabaga_swe]

i mean games are ment to be fun not ment to be films i mean come on

See that kind of attitude is why games still are where they are in terms of narratives and interactivity. Games should be fun, yes, but they don't have to be "just fun" either. In the same sense that a good movie doesn't have to be "fun" to be good. It can have a worth while message and do something beyond simply being entertainment, and i think the same goes for games. But i think the general public still view games as toys for grown men, more than a medium that can bring very interesting experiences. I mean, this is obviously changing over time, but i think the medium as such has a long way to go before we get there. I suppose my main point with that in relation to this topic is that copying films is not what will get gaming to the next level of recognition and evolution.

I'm sure it does draw in a lot of players though. The sales numbers don't lie.

 

[NihilSinLulz]

About 100 years ago, some movie directors were considered crazy for arguing that films should not be like theatre. Its just part of a young medium growing up.

 

[King Billi]

I think developers should be allowed to make whatever they want and in turn be allowed to take inspiration from whatever they want including films.

Simply saying that "games that are like movies" are just all bad without giving any specific reason why and dismissing anything that tries to be like that out of hand or accusing them of being "ashamed of their own medium" seems to be a much more harmful attitude for the industry than anything else.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

It's good when you get games like the Lord of The Rings games on the PS2. Two Towers and especially Return of the King were outstanding games. I realize that this isn't the spin you're taking, but it can be done right.

People like The Last of Us. Uncharted is a great series despite its quirks. I think the presentation is important, but if you purpose to design a game that looks like a movie, I don't see how that would make a good game. You'd have to know how to do both things equally well.

Movies are not all live action - movies are sometimes cartoons or digital. It can become problematic whenever there's a polarizing view on what a game should be like. I feel that drawing from multiple media sources or art forms is the way to go - which is why games like Return of The King for PS2 was so great. It's a book that was turned into a movie, that was turned into a game.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I like movie style games, i like games with no even a hint of movie style. Why can't we embrace both? I know i do.

Agreed!

Games can be anything a developer wants them to be. It can be a text based adventure for all I care. As long as whatever pops out the other side of the esembly line has quality, I don't care if it's cinematic or just strictly gameplay centered.

The OP brings up David Cage, then I'll counter that with Tell Tale. A company that makes nearly the exact same kind of games, except competently executed, well written and with engrossing characters.

It's this 'We must preserve the pure aspect of our medium' attitude that I can't help but laugh at. There's room for everyone.

 

[balladbird]

I think the medium's big enough to encompass all types, as others have said.

though I'm a tad biased. I wouldn't use "cinematic" but story driven games, or games where story is at list a very important component, are the only ones I truly enjoy.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I like movie style games, i like games with no even a hint of movie style. Why can't we embrace both? I know i do.

In my case it's because the "movie" games are just not the experience that i'm looking for in games. If i want a solid cinematic experience, i usually find that a good movie is by far more enjoyable. Usually has better writing, more interesting characters and by FAR better pacing. What a movie or a book can't give me, that's what i'm looking for in a game.

Of course, movies and books can't offer interactive stories like The Walking Dead can, nor can they make you feel like the actual star of the film like Call of Duty does. These are just two examples, but numerous games that go for a more cinematic experience make it very clear that they are trying to deliver an experience like one of these two. Maybe you don't like that kind of experience, but saying that they don't offer anything books and movies don't is also ignoring what they do offer to many, many gamers.

I don't mind the AAA games existing, but i don't particularly like them myself. Also i think it's fairly evident form the current state of the games industry that the huge AAA titles aren't really viable. Again, let me refer you to Tomb Raider taht sold over 5 million copies, yet that was not enough to count as a success. Sure, people still want these types of games but it seems to me that the market for making them is VERY small as you need to get pretty much every damn gamer out there to buy the game in order to be profitable at a satisfactory level. Unfortunately, not every game has the audience of GTA. Also wouldn't that mean that any larger publisher releasing a huge AAA game, that needs huge sales to be successful, essentially willfully cannibalize their own sales of other titles when the game goes on sale? I mean if Square hopes for TR to sell 6 million copies, how the f**k do they expect anyone to buy their other titles during that window? Maybe i'm wrong, this just popped in my head while writing.

That's bad business unrelated to the cinematic game design. OK, it has some relation, but it is mostly due to businessmen expecting a larger audience, failing to realize that games like CoD and GTA just have unusually large audiences for the medium, and going on a spending spree on the game's visuals, voice actors, soundtrack, and every other "flashy" thing that they ultimately have trouble making it up. Games can be cinematic and still make a return. Just look at The Walking Dead, a game that last we heard sold only slightly over 4 million complete copies (21 million episodes in a 5 episode Season) at a fraction of the cost of Tomb Raider ($20 vs $50) and still was considered a massive success, regardless of coming shy of Tomb Raider by over $100million in gross profit (both sold about 4 million copies). Why is that? Because Telltale actually budgeted properly and got an unexpectedly high audience, while Square Enix budgeted poorly and got an audience that could have been good if they had just had more realistic expectations.

Ultimately, you can't just blame attempts at being more cinematic or "like movies". The Walking Dead was even more like a movie, yet it still managed to turn a profit. It's really about having realistic expectations and budgeting appropriately.

OT: There's no harm in taking influence from movies and playing to the strengths of a video game, most notably that games offer the possibility of an interactive experience. After all, movies have taken plenty of inspiration from both books and theater (and games can to) while playing to their own strengths compared to books and theater. I don't see why games can't do the same, just adding movies into the inspiration. We have all this history of artistry in other mediums. It would be foolish not to use some of it for inspiration.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Games will never be movies and they should stop trying to be them.

I wouldn't mind if story-driven games tried a bit harder to tell stories that are as good as they are in many movies though.

It's this 'We must preserve the pure aspect of our medium' attitude that I can't help but laugh at. There's room for everyone.

Well said.

 

[viranimus]

I am inclined to mostly agree with the consensus. There is really no practical reason why they cannot go in divergent directions. It does make it harder to pigeonhole into neat groups and what is classified as a "game" but that is simply not a good reason to justify limiting what "games" are. If such division is so fundamentally needed then you can divide them as needed to match the demographics for which they serve. It is more logical to call divergent types of development by different names, or better yet adopt a more encompassing name for what "Games" are so it better applies itself across its entire spectrum. For example, adopt say Interactive videographic software, or IVS (Eye-Vee's for short). That more accurately represents the scope of ranging from an overly photo realistic combative or highly competitive FPS like CoD or Halo all the way to "barely mechanical" narrative driven, decisive/exploratory experiences like say Walking Dead/Dear Esther.

It is really just about the same as the more common assertion that "Games should be fun" when a game could be one long narrative exposition on having to cope with the consequences of emotionally draining choices that are still just as much games as anything else.

 

[LaoJim]

I'd also tend to agree with what people are generally saying about this topic.

I would like to add however, that for me, story is far less important that what I would call a 'sense of place'. I love games that copy a real world location, so what matters for me is not so much what Niko Bellic or Ezio Auditore are getting upto, but the fact that I can explore modern New York, or renaissance Rome which appeals to me. I much preferred the Call of Duties before Modern Warfare, not because they were set in the Second World War, but because they didn't want to tell a connected story of villians and global plots, but because they gave you a simple mission of the type you could reasonably expect to have taken place during the war and then let you get on with it. The series hasn't lost that completely (for example the slums of Rio level is one of my all-time favourites, because regardless of the story, you could imagine a battle between a SWAT team and gangsters going down there and it had a unique sense of place we hadn't really seen much of before)

When it comes to stories, most games are always going to have problems. Consider a James Bond movies for example. There's probably going to be four or five big action sequences. He's going to be in a fist-fight, a shoot-out, a car chase, maybe do some skiing or scuba-diving and this keeps the story interesting. Games, especially movie tie ins, used to do this a lot, but it never worked very well, especially since it involved creating four or five different game-play styles welded together. On the other hand in CoD all you are doing is shooting, which maybe fine gameplay-wise, but is always going to make it difficult to tell a good story.