Where do stories come from? How much about the games we play is made up of our sense of cultural identity and how much is driven by creative urges?
In the end the issue of where these stories come from comes down to where in us they come from, they're not products of a conscious national – or international effort to enforce a certain interpretation of world events but rather it's just the fact that what entertains us most is usually what resonates most with us – i.e. the things we think about a lot tend to be the things we buy products to do with, and the things we tend to think about the most tend to be our biggest fears, so they end up making 'good' stories. The shame is however that we miss out on a lot of potentially interesting stories, simply because they don't resonate with the state of politics today.
I quite like military shooters myself, despite their failings, but I still feel as though they, like most games, revolve around a very closed market, in which very little change actually takes place, too many ideas are left to become stagnant then used over and over again because they still sell and because nobody wants to try something different. I imagine things will change in time, no doubt more independent developers will spring up to tackle the gaps in the market and consumer tastes will change, which will lead to wanting fresher stories from their games, but what we really need most of all is new ideas. And for that we'll need a lot more creativity.
LOOK WHO CAME: