The Home of the Cyber Shark(s)

There has been a lot of talk recently, and for a while now, about video games vs. movies.

As a gamer (and someone who considers herself a hardcore gamer, though that definition caries from person to person), I can see the trend of comparing video games to movies as troubling: video games are inherently different from movies, and I’m not very comfortable with the idea of comparing them to one.

As someone who studies, and consumes, media however, this comparison seems natural.

Video games, in their current iteration, are necessarily visual mediums. The graphical capabilities of these machines is tremendous, and video games have always been moving in the “more realistic” direction, under the simple idea that a human should look like a human, and the  better something looks, the more immersive it will feel.

This is, of course, not a universal approach, nor should it be. One of my favorite games, Psychonauts, uses a more surreal/cartoonish approach to its characters, allowing a game that should look graphically dated today, as clean and fresh as when I first played it, on the XBox… before the 360 was even announced.

Anyway, back to the point: Video games are a visual medium in today’s market. Because of that, and because we are humans, it is only natural to compare to whatever medium is closest to it. That medium is, of course, movies.

Tags: art, movies, video games, video games compared to movies