The (Modern) Art of Storytelling

Let me toss this out there: Anyone who doesn't believe modern video games are a viable form of art and storytelling is simply stupid.

Look at what sits at the heart of a story, what has made up the central essence of stories since man first sat around a campfire and came up with the reason night fell. Stories are meant to engage us, to teach us (not necessarily the truth), to show us the way and threaten us with what happens should you stray from the light of camp and into the night. They are there to tell us of the greater powers that hold our world together, in whatever form those powers might exist.

It doesn't take a book to do these things.

I just beat Mass Effect 2. I won't spoil anything, but holy crap, did that game every throw me a curveball towards the end. So did Dragon Age: Origins, when I played through it the first time. Final Fantasy X was like playing through a modern fairy tale (and I don't care that it was linear). So was Kingdom Hearts, and it even tossed in a plethora of recognizable, modern icons of age-old fairy tale and mythological characters.

Some of these games let you choose, some of them make you think. Take them seriously enough (as I do), and you can end up agonizing over a decision for ten minutes, even though this decision has no impact on your life. That's because this decision can have an impact on your reality. In the same way the morals of fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood or the Bible (hey-oh!) teach us right from wrong, a game can. A game can teach us the meaning of sacrifice, the power of the human spirit, the depths of love of friendship, and it can do it all while pitting you - YOU - against impossible odds and challenging you to win.

Is there anything at stake should you lose? No. But then, there was nothing at stake for you when you read your first Greek myth or vampire novel (a category that does not include the Twilight series, by the way) or story about a kid wizard (keep holding out for that owl, it'll be here any day now).

Too many people rag on video games as the death of creativity. I've read Stephen King feels video games are the death of imagination. But if that is true of the modern video game, it must also be true of all other forms of media. Plenty of people spend hours staring at paintings and sculptures, letting these works "speak" to them, and no intellectual mind trashes on them for it. Significantly more people spend hours upon hours with their noses in books, absorbing stories like they were air, and receive no noise over it. And still more people are allowed to waste a third of their lives (this might be an exaggeration, but I genuinely don't care) in front of a television, watching any number of stories - most of which aren't worth the time, cost, or effort put into watching them, let alone making them.

Sure, a lot of video games are utter crap, but so are a lot of paintings, television shows, and novels. So why do those media get excused?

Why the hate against video games? I'll never understand it, it's hypocritical.

Video games are the media of the next generation. They are the stories of the next generation, they carry the morals that will guide the next generation, they show your children the way.

Now, I understand that this is a terrifying thought: "Video games show your child the way." But is it any scarier than reading your child Grimm's Fairy Tales? Any worse than the Bible (yeah, I'm back to that comparison)? Most people would say yes.

Most people are wrong.

It isn't important HOW you teach your children what you believe in your heart they should know. What's important is that you do it.

All stories have power, this cannot be denied. Perhaps the power of an interactive game is greater than that of other media, for the simple fact that it is interactive. And, sure, some games are just a waste of time - I'm looking at you, every MMO and almost every FPS ever. But such is evolution. At least, when your child learns a lesson from this story, it will mean that much more to them for the fact that they came to this lesson themselves.

None of this, of course, touches on the fact that video games are also art. But this post is already pretty lengthy, so I'll leave it here.