system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Video Games are the best medium to tell complex stories

**Stipulation**

Not all stories demand complex mediums, some stories are meant to be digested in a simple form. These mediums also save you time, which i concede. However, if the primary goal is to explore a world/story in the fullest and most rich manner, video games are by far the best way to do so.

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**More Substance to Create Theories**

* All of the best video game stories I can think of utilize their worlds to tell a story, alongside the actual story itself. As the story is progressing through *Bioshock*, the player is exploring Rapture, listening to tapes, and creating theories of their own. In *Silent Hill 2*, you explore Silent Hill and discover clues in the world, and even in your own inventory, completely seperate from the cutscenes themselves. The cutscenes and the explicit storytelling are *complimented* by the video game medium.

**Exploration/Mystery**

* Exploring a world on your own, at your own pace, is a more engaging and thought-provoking way of exploring a setting/world than watching at a predetermined pace.
* There is more to digest and explore in a game than in a 2 hour movie, or even a TV Show.
* Exploration lends itself to a differing experience for each individual if the game designers choose to. One player can pick up on clues one other player completely walked right past. This is also the case in movies, but you can allocate more time for exploration and theory crafting in a game.

**Decisions/Split-Storytelling/Diverging Stories**

* While I'm aware there are "shows" that implement choice based decision making, I would argue these are *actually* video games. Ill explain why.
   * Video games are a medium that allow you to interact with the story itself, Tv shows and movies are predetermined, on rails. If you can make choices to change the ending of  a story, your actions are changing the story.
* This allows writers to create scenarios where a player can explore the possible "what-ifs" of a story. While I concede that not all stories should have this, Its a nice feature for select few stories. *Heavy Rain* is a good example of this.

**Common Criticisms**

* While I concede that, yes, most of these games do require constant action. You can't just lay down and enjoy most of these games; you have to be actively involved. I do, however, think that there are various levels of storytelling in video games. Some games, like the previously mentioned *Heavy Rain*, along with all of David Cage's games, do allow you to more casually explore the story without the stressful action gameplay.
* Many will argue that these complex video games actually are the worst form of story telling, because they don't give you much direction on what things mean or where to go (think *Bloodborne).* This is a strawman of the position I initially made. Just because one complex game tells its story in a very nuanced way, doesn't discredit the medium as a whole. Games like *Sekiro,* from the same studio, streamline a series of games known for complex storytelling.
* I kind of think of the Book/Movie/Video Game as a spectrum of storytelling mediums. On the far left we have books, with the least amount of information, most rooms for personal exploration, and most room for fillling in the gaps with your own imagination. On the far right we have movies and TV Shows, where everything is deliberately shown and illustrated. Even the more complex/visually confusing shows are still delivering more "information" than the books. They also are time constrained/streamlined. You can't really reread or read at your own pace, without stopping and restarting and sort of escaping the medium itself. Books allow you to jump back and forth, read slowly, etc. Video Games offer the best of both worlds, allowing you to visualize and explore, all while the creators deliberately can show you certain areas or certain themes at various points.

While I think books are far superior to films to convey deep messaging, they don't have the depth and capabitliy of video games. I will concede though, that in 2022, Video Games are FAR less explored as a medium than Books, which have had hundreds of years of growth in this endeavor.

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The only way that Movies are better than video games at telling a complex story is through ease-of-use (saving time, lack of involvement)

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EDIT:

**After reading a lot of your comments (too many to comment to each) i'll use this space to clarify my new position. The primary error i made in this post is labeling (any) medium as best. This falls in line with the orchestral issue of "what is the best instrument?". The obvious answer is there is no "best" instrument, because each instrument has its individual utility. Even though one can be used more often than others, doesn't make it better, just more versatile.**
gpt
>Exploring a world on your own, at your own pace, is a more engaging and thought-provoking way of exploring a setting/world than watching at a predetermined pace.There is more to digest and explore in a game than in a 2 hour movie, or even a TV Show.Exploration lends itself to a differing experience for each individual if the game designers choose to. One player can pick up on clues one other player completely walked right past. This is also the case in movies, but you can allocate more time for exploration and theory crafting in a game.

All of these qualities apply to books which have the benefit of putting the story front and center without having to worry about ancillary qualities like gameplay loops.

Those ancillary elements make video games a very limited medium for storytelling since there are many stories that are fun, compelling and important to read, but would not be fun to play. It's no surprise that most video games are limited to genre fiction like science fiction, fantasy and horror because those are far easier to market as games than something like Anna Karenina or Ulysses.

Video games are also costlier to produce. The more resources you invest into a video game, the broader the demographic it must appeal to - which necessitates taking time away from story to focus on making a game that is fun to play. Anything that isn't in a blockbuster genre in the world of video games is going to be lower budget.

The printed word doesn't have this limitation. The biggest hurdle for creatives to jump through is getting published. For a creative in the games industry, your narrative is just one piece of a larger puzzle and it will be compromised if it doesn't fit with the other pieces.

>Video games are a medium that allow you to interact with the story itself, Tv shows and movies are predetermined, on rails. If you can make choices to change the ending of a story, your actions are changing the story.

The stories in video games are predetermined as well. You can't do anything a developer didn't intend for you to do. Any choice you have in the narrative was programmed in.

TV, film, literature, theater explore multiple endings to one story when it suits the story to do so. But video games don't include multiple endings because it's better for the narrative, they do it because it benefits the gameplay loop.

Having the option to explore multiple endings isn't necessarily superior. Would To Kill a Mockingbird be a better book if it was choose your own adventure novel? No. That would just muddle the real story that's being told.