Even at the end of this ongoing project, the question, comment, or attack will arise that video games aren’t art, video games can’t tell stories, or video games are incapable of being anything more than murder simulators.  It has been my goal, and will continue to be, to dispel the immediate dismissal of games as narrative.  I will stand by the fact that, no, there are few examples of ‘artful’ video games, but perhaps ours is not a medium best suited for the art genre…not yet.  But I believe the many games I’ve drawn attention to, the narratives embedded in their discs, and the unique ways they go about telling their stories should do more than prove their narrative worth.

Tom Bissell said it best when it came to video games telling stories, especially against cinematic and textual heavyweights: “I am uninterested in whether games are better or worse than movies or novels or any other form of entertainment.  More interesting to me is what games can do and how they make me feel while they are doing it.  Comparing games to other forms of entertainment only serves as a reminder of what games are not.  Storytelling, however, does not belong to film any more than it belongs to the novel.  Film, novels, and video games are separate economies in which storytelling is the currency.” (Bissell, 2010)

Before a final conclusion, I recognize that there are many games that may have fit into the sections given here that weren’t mentioned.  For this project, I possessed an Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 1, Nintendo DS & 3DS, Nintendo 64, and Super Nintendo Entertainment System; as such, many good examples on the Sony Playstations 2 & 3, among others, are notably absent.  If the opportunity presents itself where I can experience some of the Playstation’s other games, I will gladly take it and add the knowledge that comes with it to this project; I’ve been looking for a chance to try Last of Us (2013) and Journey (2012) in particular.

As with any medium, any story that can be told, we must take in the idea that there may be many interpretations of a single experience, the same as there might be with books and movies.  This project, I hope, has covered the structure of the games, how they tell the story and with what tools, generally exclusive to games.  Theorists have long since applied different interpretive theories to written stories and cinema, based on different tools and methods at their disposal, in order to find meaning.  I wish only to educate on how games do with their tools what books and movies do with their tools, and that there can be deeper themes and messages within.

Storytelling is trending in video games, and in the best ways: we’re making character creation an ongoing task, not just an avatar customization at the beginning; we’re creating larger and larger worlds, still managing to be accessible and tied together; our open worlds are getting more open, and our linear narratives are using their structure to hit all kinds of players with the same punch; games are beginning to make players think, questioning between the good and bad or, better, the gray and gray.  I personally could never ask for a game to try and plug everything into one experience; just as with other media, when video games pick the strongest tools for telling the story at hand, it all works out for the best.

So where does the future take us and video games?  We don’t know for sure.  With the Oculus Rift and other Virtual Reality hardware becoming a feasible concept, we may be taking another step towards total narrative immersion.  That’s the closest thing to a sure thing I can provide. 

Stories may change, and the ways of telling stories may change and evolve, but there will always be the consistency of narrative: people will always have stories to tell.  This mindset, as illustrated, has taken root in video games.  Once tools of entertainment and amusement, video games have shown themselves to be narrative devices in their own right, to say nothing of the methods and techniques discussed.  Time will pass, technology will advance, and we can only speculate where that will take us, where it will take the medium, and where it will take storytelling as a whole.  But if where we’ve come from in the past to where we stand in the present is any indication, the future looks bright indeed.

I welcome comments on this project, be they positive, constructive, or suggesting, and will be continuing to add to it and change the project as time goes on.  Thank you for reading all that you did, and if you contact me via comment with your email contact information, I will let you know of updates to the project in the future!