It's like a minefield out there. I can't swing a cat in this game without hitting one of these [cutscenes]. In fact...I can't EVEN swing a cat. I can't swing a fist. I can't swing any goddamned thing at all. Apparently, I didn't buy a game about playing a game. I bought a game about walking from one contrived cinematic to another. You know, I can buy a really good movie for like twenty bucks. That twenty bucks even gets me extra discs, with director and actor commentary, and maybe even a good plot. Instead, I just gave these asses FIFTY dollars to watch a really bad movie!

I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with Mr. Rodriguez' views. I wholeheartedly support his disgust at seeing games become vaguely interactive Hollywood b-movies. Simply trying to shoehorn Hollywood attitude into a videogame is essentially a doomed proposition from the start. There are very few game designers that really know how to tell a story--that's why they're game designers, not movie directors or screenwriters--and trying to stuff incompetent static sequences into a game in order to tell a story that's only as deep as a petri dish to begin with can really be a painful thing to watch as a gamer.

That said, Mr. Rodriguez also seems to believe that games simply shouldn't be telling stories whatsover. This is a view that is understandably held by many designers who are more focused on largely exploratory games or sandbox games (such as Will Wright), but to me one of the best things about games is how broad they can be in scope. For somebody who is the game equivalent of well read (well played?), it is almost astonishing to be able to appreciate such a broad range of works as Half-Life, Sim City, Grim Fandango, Super Mario Bros., Rez, and Quake. It's not just an issue of stylistic difference, it is an entirely different approach towards what a game is; this is a divergence that even such wildly differing films as Dr. Strangelove and Pulp Fiction could never hope to touch. In my mind, if a game has a reason to be telling a story--and when I say telling a story, I mean a preconceived one by a designer, not an emergent one like the time you ran over eighty seven guys using a bicycle in GTA--and if the designer is able to competently integrate the story into the game, so much the better.

This can take many forms. The story in Half-Life is essentially transparent and fairly mundane; what makes it so brilliant is how well it is integrated into the gameplay in such a natural way. It enhances and enriches the game rather than being bolted on in any way. By contrast, the story of Grim Fandango essentially is the game. However, the game is very up front about that. You'll never find yourself blindsided by a cutscene, because the cutscenes are actually very well directed and are placed such that they compliment the flow of the game rather than constantly break it up.

Of course, despite my defense of story in games, I wish more designers had the balls to simply dispense with it altogether. While I support storytelling games as a very feasible endeavor, there is something inherently gamey that is much more difficult for them to achieve compared with a game that makes absolutely no illusions as to what it is. For another example from above, take Rez. Sure, there's some kind of story about fighting some kind of self-aware cyberspace thingey--I don't know, it doesn't really matter. The point of the game is the game, the integration of the gameplay with the insane presentation in a way that only something that focused on being a game could achieve.

It's a shame to see so few designers these days try to explore that space, really pushing gameplay to its limits. Then again, with the growing attention being paid lately to smaller-scale independent development, we'll start seeing more designers who do truly fascinating things with the pure form of gameplay. After all, there's room for both approaches, as long as it's done well.