You hear a lot about various video game "genres," such as FPS, RTS, action, adventure, action-adventure-FPS-MMO. But we don't hear much discussion about video game "forms". Now, I'm no film major, so I may be misusing some terms here (please correct me in the comments), but here are some "forms" of film I can think of: Music video, commercial, TV show, feature film, news, sports, etc.

Currently, video games mostly cover two of those forms analogously: feature film (AAA titles), and TV show (sort of with smaller releases). Of course, we do have some forms that I can't think of any film analogy for: Pure game-games, like Tetris. But how about articulating some of the other forms that video games can take?

Why is this a useful way to think about video games? Well, ever since the beginning of time, people have debated what games should and should not be. Is story important? How should game play and story interact? And the answer to all this really is: In every way imaginable. Can you imagine if people were to debate how film and music should interact? In a feature film, music typically complements the movie. But in a music video, the film complements the music! Ahhh what freedom they have in film! Why should games be any different? In some games, story complements the gameplay (Portal). In other games, gameplay complements the story (To The Moon, LA Noire). And yet other games are somewhere in between.

So, I think it's time we start forming a vocabulary for this kind of thing. This way, we can better communicate what exactly a particular game is - what "form" is it? If you watch a music video and expect a story, that's really your problem. But if I just tell you, "This is an action game", you don't really know whether or not to expect a solid story or not. This may lead you to regret your purchase! So, how about we start talking about games like this: "To the Moon is a story-driven adventure game." Or, "Uncharted 3 is a story-complemented action-adventure game." To the Moon's sole purpose is to tell you a story with some small interactive bits here and there, so it's "story-driven." Its interaction mechanics are largely about exploration and light puzzle solving, so "adventure" describes that. Uncharted 3 is an action-adventure game - it features cover-based shooting and light platforming. It is "story-complemented" because the story isn't really the point of the game - it's just to make the overall experience more enjoyable. Just as "Requiem for a Dream" wasn't made to showcase Clint Mansell's epic piece, it still made the overall experience more intense. And of course, there's a special art to film scoring, just as there will be a special art to game-story-writing.

If someone just wanted to write a song, they wouldn't go find a movie to write it for. They'd just write the song. But, maybe a movie inspires them to write a song, and then they tailor the song to really fit the movie. And that makes for a cool experience. Or maybe someone writes a song for a movie, and then it's just so good that it can stand on its own in the form of a soundtrack album. I think that's how we should be treating story in games (shit sorry I got off on a tangent): it's just one form of story, and games that have stories are just one form of game. And it's quite the challenging form!

OK sorry I got off a lil tangent there. But I hope this was coherent - off to bed now. G'night.