Movies. Books. Video Games. Those are probably the three most common entertainment mediums – and they are all bear very distinct characteristics.
I would argue that movies are the most effective form of entertainment – but for the same reason they’re also the worst, at least in terms of intellectual stimulation. Why, you ask? Because both visual and aural components are entirely controlled by the director. You only see and hear what they want you to experience. As an entertainment medium, this means they have great potential for everything from heart-stirring epics of love and loss to gloomy claustrophobic thrillers. For this reason I say they are the most effective form of entertainment – sure, different things are more scary for different people, and so on, but the same element of subjectivity is present in all mediums. So film as a medium has the potential to provide the most optimally-entertaining experience.
But this quality is a bitter pill. At the same time, movies also leave little to no room for viewer contribution. By this I mean how a viewer might use their own imagination to ‘fill in the gaps’ – to construct the film’s reality in their own mind, filling in any holes in the presented environments or events.
Next up we have video games, a relatively young entertainment medium. Video games, like movies, are presented through both visual and aural channels, but with the added aspect of player interaction. This is a great thing, because it means we can’t just vegetate on the couch while engaging in one (well, for the most part, anyway) – it keeps us engaged, on our toes, and involved in the experience. But is our imagination in top gear? Well, no. Some video games play out like an interactive movie; on the other end of the scale, like arcade games or twitch-games (named for the reaction times they require). The end result is the same – we see and hear things and respond to them. We might use some measure of creativity in determining the manner in which we respond, but that’s about the the limit of how we use our own imagination while playing them.
And then we have books. Reading books is, by far, the most productive pastime when it comes to entertainment mediums. While reading a book, your imagination is in full throttle – you are constantly imagining the scene and events in your mind, with no direct visual or aural cues as to how they should be constructed. You’re weighing up decisions and consequences, analysing behaviour and making predictions about how the story will unfold. That is to say, while reading a book, you are in fact creating more than you are consuming. And for the most part, you feel more fulfilled after a satisfying session of reading than you might after watching a movie.
But because the act of reading is so different from watching a movie or playing a video game, there’s a notable hurdle to the activity. It’s very difficult to immediately transition from a mindset of consuming – of passively watching a movie, for example – to a mindset of creating and actively engaging your imagination. There’s a hurdle when you try to transition from browsing the web, using your phone, or watching TV… to engrossing yourself in a novel’s fictional world. Reading doesn’t engage your senses like other forms of entertainment; it requires you to visualise things; to convert the words on the page into thoughts and images. Comparatively, other mediums deafen and blind the senses and make it nigh impossible to enter into such a state of serenity. This is a hurdle that few people seem to be aware of, and thus many disregard books entirely as being “not their thing”. Yet as the old proverb goes, those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot.
But games still have a powerful advantage that books do not. As an entertainment medium, video games have decent potential, if not as decent as films. As an educational medium, they have somewhat more potential, as they employ learning-by-doing techniques in addition to the obvious visual and aural elements. And by “educational medium” I’m not just talking about so-called educational games, but rather any game that might teach a useful skill or mindset. For example, many RPGs teach inventory management, which can (often subconsciously) be carried across to managing workloads or prioritising the use of your time.
As an ideologically provocative medium, however, games have immensely more potential. Games can present ideas and ideologies through the player’s own choices, and in doing so, force the player to actually think about their choices within the context of the game world and the consequences those choices have. For example, in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the entire game world emulates a reality in which society adopts human augmentation. How do augmented individuals fit into the rest of society? What are the moral implications of being physically or mentally enhanced where others are not? What responsibility do corporations have to regulate the use of these augmentations? Are augmentations the next step in human evolution – a technology to be adopted as widely as possible, or simply a personal lifestyle choice? The game explores all of these questions, and through the player’s own actions, no less. It is then only natural for the player to consider the implications of these ideas in the real world. A game could just as effectively explore any other topic, prompting its players to think deeply about the issues portrayed. And that’s powerful.
I’m not going to contrive any sort of conclusion here, because there are always many factors in the worth of specific works of literature, film, or games. This entry serves more to explore the various strengths of each medium, which hopefully I’ve now done. (Each of those three mediums, anyhow – there are others I haven’t mentioned, like board games, physical games, and comic books.) That said, as a game designer my views are inevitably biased, so remember to have some salt.
The last three blog posts I’ve written have now all been about video games to some extent, and while that’s certainly not a bad thing (good things do come in threes, after all), this blog is at risk of becoming too focused on a single topic. So I’ll make an effort to write about something different next week. Until then, stay frosty!
Observations 