Last night I watched a documentary about the history of video games. The documentary did more than just chart the history of video games but it explored individual elements. One particular element of modern gaming being story. Games like Skyrim, Halo and many more, are very much story driven games.
As humans we have always sought escapism, due to the horrors of reality. As intelligent being we comprehend the world more and have far more complex thoughts. We like to try to escape anxiety by taking our minds out of this reality and into an imagined reality. In Ancient Greece you had the Greek myths and Homer's epic poems telling the story of Gods and heroes. The Enlightenment and the industrial revolution led to the growth of Romanticism and the human desire to re-connect with nature.
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings was a novel for lovers of pure escapism. Beautiful landscape and forests were described by Tolkien, which for me and many other readers helped ease my mind. Is the Lord of the Rings fantasy or is it a representation of the old world; a world governed by folklore, belief and love for nature. Looking past the orcs and trolls and one can see that the Lord of the Rings is much more than fantasy.
Books have been a popular source for escapism for over 200 years, though the 20th century is more significant due to higher levels of literacy across the social spectrum in the developed world. Movies have co-existed with books for a century, but now the video game industry has become a bestselling medium to tell stories. Moreover, video games have got more interactive, with the option to make decisions that effect the story.
RPGs are primarily story based but other genres of video games are starting to rely on a creation of a fictional world with history to create an amazing game. There is world building in games like Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, Halo and Mass Effect. I have not played all these games but I am aware of what game developers have achieved. Moreover, despite fears the video games would prove too addictive, there are many people who enjoy playing video games but also are avid readers of books.
Book sales for books aimed at younger readers are growing and the growing booktube community shows the extent of the popularity of YA fiction. Human imagination is being stimulated more than possibly ever before, so there is hope that solutions to the world's problems could be found and that human society could function better.
No comments:
Post a Comment