I distinctly remember it being the very first game that treated me like an adult and not like a little moron with a short attention span. Its story covers politics, war, power, greed, deception, betrayal, religion, family, love. It fits the very definition of epic.
A lot of my favorite memories from college center around gaming. Marathoning Ocarina of Time every semester, voice acting the dialogue of Final Fantasy VII and Fire Emblem, creating Sim breeding programs. Gaming was a very social event for us, and we just nerded it up.
First goes the speed and agility, then the athleticism. Strength was never there. Finally you’re just a scrawny grad student with a mediocre mid-range jumper, getting blown out on the B-court every other week. It would be a sad game.
Games with great graphics are cool, sure, but I want something that’s going to take me deeper in and give me an emotional reaction to it. Inspire me to feel something, whatever that might be. The Last of Us was the last game I played to do that—to put the story absolutely first, in my opinion. And it was incredible. And I try to remind myself of that: that storytelling, in any form, in any medium, can be a powerhouse.
I do wonder, however, if a writer wrote about, say, 1940s Hollywood, if someone would ask them, “How do you balance watching movies and writing?” It’s just that, in terms of time commitment, I devote as much time to playing games as some writers do to watching TV or reading blogs.
We think video games are literature, and so why shouldn't there be literature about video games? That's the question we're hoping to answer here. Read more.
