What videogames lack: Deeper Intent

Tonight a watched a fantastic documentary named Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, and it was a accurate emotional roller-coaster ride. The film is a about a film-maker starting to make a movie in memory of his murdered buddy, when some unexpected developments ensues. It is an expertise, straight from reality, that swings you in between laughter and heartbreaking despair. I urge you all to see it.

The cause why I want to bring this up, is because this film has some thing that video games lack: it has been created with the intent to share something deep and meaningful. It is has not been produced to generate a exciting expertise or for commercial acquire. It has been created from love and with a really significant aim in thoughts. The passion that was place into this films seeps through each frame and it actually brings the movie home. Kurt Kuenne, the maker of the film, has anything he is genuinely emotional about and pulls no punches in driving that point house.

This sort of point just is not found in games. Practically all games start as some type mechanic, which is then iterated till entertaining sufficient, and anything resembling a deeper meaning is slapped on afterwards. Sure, there are games like Shadow of Colossus, that strive toward creating a battle with gigantic creatures, or Everyday the same dream, which fairly certainly go beyond its low-level mechanics. But these nonetheless lack the type of emotional investment that is noticed other media. I comprehend a film like Dear Zachary gets a lot of emotional weight from getting a true story, but that is not the point. What I am soon after is the motivation that drove its creation, the passion behind generating it and uncompromising attitude in the way which the meaning is brought forward.

The motivation I am seeking for does not need to have to be the gut-wrenchingly sad story that Dear Zachary tells. It can be whatever emotional knowledge that lies the creator close at heart. Sad, funny, stunning, aweinspiring, exciting, disturbing, educational, it does not matter. As along as the end aim is not just to give the player a fun past time, it is a step in the correct path. Screw developments in storytelling strategies, writing, facial animations, full body input, and so forth. When games are a made with only a fraction of the passion that went into Dear Zachary, the videogame medium is on the path towards true greatness.

(For these interested, two a lot more posts discussing related themes are found right here and right here).