Games have learned from films – but can films learn from games?

By Kate Gray

Main image: The Walking Dead games from Telltale Games pushes filmic narrative to the fore rather than fast-paced action.

There is nothing like a video game. Not in the way people say “there’s nothing like a warm bath” or “there’s nothing like home”; there is, literally, nothing like a video game. They aren’t like films, or books, or music, and yet those are the only mediums they’re ever compared to.

But games require active participation, in contrast to the much more passive consumption of going to the cinema or reading a novel; they can never truly tell a story in the way other stories are told.

Films have a beginning, a middle and an end; games have all of that and a continue.

Shaping the story

With most games, the player can play differently to every other player, leaving with a unique experience and impression of what they’ve just seen. They can choose to abandon the game halfway through; they can reload an old save file; they can play it 10 times over, and each time they’ll do something new, see something they hadn’t noticed before.