Telling a story

Disclaimer: I don't think that this is the right forum for this, as it isn't strictly about writing novels, but I have no idea where else to put it... Anyway:

I was just reading this thread, and it got me thinking... About the way that we tell stories.

I guess in the past, people told stories to each other, literally. They spoke to each other. I don't know about you, but there's no wonder they killed each other all of the time, I'd get bored of listening to some bloke natter on about Jesus all day.

Of course, in those days there was the written word too, in the form of ludicrously expensive books, all hand written, strips of bamboo linked by string and rolls of parchment made laboriously in scriptoriums.

Thankfully, with the invention of the printing press, written books became much more accessible to people as literacy increased. More people could read, and more books could be printed. The printing press ultimately replaced all other primitive methods of printing, and through constant improvement to the machines and the materials, led to the common every day paper and hard back books.

Now there's also theatre to mention, which is also a major form of entertainment, and has remained so. (Live music concerts work the same way. Logically, you can listen to a CD at home, but it's just not the same as hearing it live). Theatre has advantages over "that bloke next to the fire" telling the story:

• Multiple people means that each character can be acted out by a different person. Rather than one person just telling the story.
• The audience can see things happening, they can see the story as well as listen to it (a precursor to film).
• The people telling the story are probably trained to be clearer speaking and generally more communicative. The audience can therefore gain a better understanding of what's going on, compared to "Then the beardy bloke drank some wine and stuff".
• The chance to make money was very good encouragement for people to invent much better and much more interesting stories.

Then comes along film, which is basically a pre recorded form of theatre. It pretty much is for a while, but worse. It's black and white, and silent. It sucks pretty bad, but it's MAGICAL MOVING PICTURES! Hence people love it.

(Note, there is one crucial advantage: film lasts a lot longer than a play, it preserves a show to be watched again and again and again. Therefore offering a snapshot into the past. But we're focussing on story telling here)

However, things improve after a while with both colour and sound. That removes the key disadvantages. Film is great because:

• Things do not need to be planned to a strict and rapid time schedule. The filming can take place over a great amount of time, therefore you are not limited to what is practical. You are not limited to whatever crappy props you can fabricate and whatever backdrops you can paint on sheets of fabric. You can go anywhere you want and spend as long as you want filming there. (Theoretically, businessmen don't like "as long as you want". Time is money)
• Access to completely new methods of showing stories, I'm talking about cartoons here.
• Special effects open up a whole treasure trove of cool stuff you can do. From subtle post editing to give a film a sepia tone, or making it entirely black and white save for a girl in a red coat. You can have massive explosions, models and CGI that lets you blow up entire cities. Things that are otherwise utterly impossible any other way like massive horde armies of horsemen fighting giant elephants.
• No mistakes. If you make a mistake, you do it again until it's right.
• The possibility of mass market. The audience size is strictly limited in a stage production because the size of the theatre is strictly limited. There are a lot of cinemas across the world, and they can all watch the same show at the same time with film.
• This makes it a LOT more profitable.

I'll make a quick mention of comics, they only became viable with mass production of paper and high speed automated printing presses. But they allowed a story to be shown through illustrations and text. This allowed less mature readers to enjoy a story, rather than face a huge 1000 page monster book.

Now I want to move onto what I think is going to become the next film. Computer games.

I would like to explain to those who do not have a great understanding of games that not all games are shoot-em-ups. There have been the odd few games that have had a really brilliant story. (The final fantasy and zelda games come to mind.) Now, here's why games are so good:

• Games naturally exploit all of the advantages of film. Since they are essentially an interactive film. But:
• Games are even more free than films. You can set a game ANYWHERE. Computers mean that impossible is not impossible. Computer games allow a story to be set absolutely anywhere. And the cost of doing so is indistinguishable to the cost of setting the story on Earth. You can go into space, impossible future cities, vast sprawling historical landscapes, underwater cities. Even land. The only limit is your imagination, and your processing power.
• Stories can be told in completely new ways. Rather than merely reading a horror story, or watching a horror story. You can be in the horror story. It is YOUR actions that determine the fate of the hero. It gives you control, some games exploit this to give alternate endings to a story.
• This leads naturally to the whole interaction thing. YOU control the story, you control the pace, you control the fate of the character. In some open games like grand theft auto and the elder scrolls, you are essentially thrown into a world and left to your own devices, there is a story, and you can enjoy it in your own way and at your own pace.
• Excitement, it's cool watching an explosion on screen, but when you have to run for dear life to escape said explosion in a car that you are driving, it's a lot more exciting. The last level of Halo 3 puts you on this massive artificial construct called the Ark that is falling apart around you, and you have to drive a Jeep across this collapsing and exploding terrain to your escape vehicle.. Quickly! While avoiding massive structures tumbling into your path and jumping over bottomless chasms.
• The potential for even greater interactivity. Virtual reality (I don't mean Tom Clancy Net Force style, I mean helmets with screens in them, which is extant technology) promises to further integrate a player into a story. Rather than controlling a character on a screen, you become the character, and your body becomes theirs.
• Regarding timescale, games have a crucial advantage over film and theatre. There are no time limits. The longer a game lasts, the better. A writer using a game has up to a good hundred hours or so to tell a story. The Final Fantasy games are good examples here. They can combine the cinematic grace of film with the sheer depth and duration of a good book. Plus by the fact that a computer can show you anything on the screen, games can incorporate massive amounts of backstory and very literal infodumps that do not impinge on the game. The elder scrolls games are fantastic examples of this. There are literally hundreds of books scattered throughout the game that you can read that have information on mythology, history, current events and all sorts.

There are some disadvantages, though.

• Graphically, games are constantly evolving. This means that old games date extremely fast. Because the graphics of reality don't change, films do not date much. For an example, I'll show you the graphical magic of 1997, compared to 2006. Now, I have to admit that this is a bit unfair since computers are a quite recent invention, and computer games have had a very short history, compared to film that has about 100 years. Perhaps once games have had 100 years to evolve, graphical differences will be minor. But for now, and the next decade or so, graphics will evolve dramatically.
• Because of interactivity, a lot of games are NOT good story telling mediums. In a lot of cases, the story is completely discarded for the fun factor. Of course, this is perfectly fine in things like racing games. I'd like to make a rather interesting point here. In the past, people were obsessive about graphics and how fun a game was, but now that people have seen everything, they're going back to the story. A game without a good story is now considered sub standard. Note that this can ruin some games. Super Paper Mario isn't supposed to have a story, but some idiot decided it should, and it ruined the game.

Now, not to belittle the humble book, I'll return to it. Books won't ever go away, I don't think...

There's no real environmental reason to not make books, and until we get fusion power working, it's much more environmentally friendly to buy a book rather than use an electronic format.

Books don't mess your eyes up. Staring at what is essentially a lightbulb can give you a headache after a while, and computers dictate posture to an extent, you have to sit in a chair. You can't exactly lay down on the beach and play a few rounds of Call of Duty 4 on holiday. Whereas there are few things more relaxing than reading a good book outside in the sunshine.

Books let you use your imagination, and a healthy imagination makes the story unique to you. In every other medium, the makers decide what you see, but in a book (unless the author over indulges in descriptive writing) what you see in your minds eye is open to interpretation.

Books generally tell you a story in much greater depth than any other medium. Somebody who thinks Halo is a great story will have read the supporting material. It's only a good story because of the reams of literary work that expand the fictional universe. If you take the games themselves, they're just a bit of running around and shooting. But it's the books that expand the universe and give it real depth and meat.

Books can be unimaginably addictive. There's nothing better than finding a book that you cannot stop reading, it's a great feeling. Addictive games are good, you can get addicted to a film, I guess, but a really good book beats them all. There's many a time that I've been sat in our conservatory at 4AM thinking "oh sod sleep, I need to know what happens!"

Long story short, we can tell stories in some very interesting ways these days, and I am really interested in games as a medium for story telling. But the story telling has to be of a high standard. A game that's fun is no longer good enough. Take a look here. In the top twenty, I've played 13 of the games, and all of them are known for their stories as well as their gameplay. A game isn't a great game just by being fun, because a game that has a great story can be just as much fun. The story is key.

What have you got to say?

Not really, I was rambling madly.