Can We Finally Take Games Seriously?

Terminal Gamer - "What the media fails to recognize is that video games are no longer the arcade and Super Nintendo titles from the 80s and 90s that we all love and remember fondly. Today, games are storytelling mediums that have an ability no other medium has – to put is directly in any situation the developers want to put us in."

[Tony P]

The maturity of gaming is a really slow thing, I think. Gaming hasn't really caught up with network television even, let alone the film or the novel in pushing mature themes. In my experience, buying a game with a "mature story" gets you a disc packed with cliches. It often feels like pubs and devs aren't quite ready to pull the trigger on exploring much beyond saving the world and boinking a teammate.

[Excalibur]

Some Devs would break their silly Mature rating mold and actually make more adult oriented games and not just add the F-word to every other sentence and call that a mature game.

Give me a thought provoking, in depth (mature) story line.

Give me more games like MW2

[Prototype]

I'd say gaming already reached its maturity once Mortal Kombat first entered the scene along with Night Trap on Sega CD (for those of us who was around back then). These days its mostly based on "what can we put in here to help the game sell?" when back then it was more based on new technology and pushing boundaries no one else ever tried.

[Tony P]

Night Trap and MK aren't what's meant by "mature". Well, I could be wrong about Night Trap since I never played. But to me those games are exactly what you're describing as wrong with today. It's just shock value. The presence of peppery language or nudity or gore doesn't mean it's actually worth a damn.

And I think gamers don't get it because although many adults play games, an overwhelming chunk of gaming is kids. They think that stuff equals being grown up. Devs sell to that like it's real maturity and depth when it's often laughably shallow to anyone who's ever written a book report.

[paul0388]

If Modern Warfare 2 actually had a decent plot like the author mentioned in his article, then maybe "No Russian" could have passed as an effective plot point.

Children of Men had terrorism in it, yes, but it didn't have a story that could have come from Tom Clancy's 1985 trash can.

No Russian was included for shock value alone and that is the reason why the media doesn't take gaming seriously as a storytelling medium.

[George Sears]

Sadly, this media of entertainment just isn't accepted as much as of now compared to the likes of music and movie. There is still the sterotype when it comes to gamers and that is one of its main issues. I'm pretty sure that over time people would recognize and respect the industry a lot more.

I blame the baby boomers!

[GarandShooter]

Gaming will never reach it's storytelling peak until we, as gamers, are willing to accept story-intensive games that don't involve killing people and blowing stuff up.

The requirement of interactivity and demand for combat of some sort really limits the types of stories that can be told.

[Rocket Sauce]

Modern Warfare 2 was more like a collection of explosions than a real story. The whole time I had no idea what was going on or why, but the loud noises kept my attention and I laughed when they told me to protect the Happy Burger.