Sometimes I see articles comparing movies to video games and arguing for which one is better. Perhaps it’s simply because video games are big money now or that video games often have cutscenes that are pretty much exactly like scenes or sequences in films/movies and TV series. Prime examples of this being the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series of games and Sleeping Dogs.
In regards to which medium is better, I’ll first start with something more specific. Which medium can do the most things? Clearly the video game can do more because by definition is it a game that requires direct interaction from the player in order to progress. No interaction is possible with movies, it just plays from start to finish. If one uses this criteria then video games are objectively more versatile and by someone’s criteria that could automatically mean better/superior. It would be possible to essentially create a movie in a video game. But you could not create a video game in a movie. The only limitation of video game is that graphics cannot replicate photorealism particularly for humans. But graphics are so good these days it’s not really much of a limitation. This is something that continually improves and develops over time as technology progresses. It will be very interesting when we get to a point in time where a video game screenshot cannot be distinguished from a still frame from a live action movie.
Continue reading “Movies vs Video Games: An irrelevant debate I will engage in anyway”
Film Beats (from the East) 