What Makes Gaming a Unique form of Entertainment?

Many people would answer that interactivity is what makes gaming a unique form of entertainment. However, I believe it is what the interactivity leads to which makes gaming unique. The possibility of forming stronger emotional attachments to characters through direct participation in their actions is what truly makes games and the act of gaming unique. No other form of entertainment lets you have some control over the heroes actions. In movies and television we are nothing more than passive observers in the action. Games let us control the action.

Gaming has changed a great deal in the last twenty years. As a form of entertainment it has grown and developed in a way in which cinema and television can not. The basis for participation in the event of gaming as a form of entertainment is what makes it unique when it is compared to the other forms of entertainment. As the technology has developed in gaming so has the notion that gaming is also a relevant and unique voice for telling a story. In fact, whereas the primary notion of gaming was, at one stage, seen as a user involved in a number of repetitive tasks (ie Frogger) it has developed in to a rich and respected form of narrative device. However, being a story telling device does not necessarily differentiate the medium from other forms of entertainment in a way that would make it unique. Having said all of that there are still developers who make no attempt to push the realms of story telling beyond the cliched walls defined by gaming and its simple origins.

To start with the restraints of gaming hardware restricted the ability of developers to create stories which were interactive and, some would even argue, that with the advancement in hardware stories in games have remained relatively simple and unrefined. Space Invaders is a good case in point. The game is simple and so is the story. You have to save the world from an alien invasion. Hence, you go about your task blasting a small collection of pixels assembled in rows to pieces as they descend on your character. Then consider a game such as Prey. The game and story is simple. You have to save the world from an alien invasion. You go about your task by blasting a large collection of pixels apart, oh, and rescue the girl (nearly forgot about that). This cliche has been an undercurrent in games for a long time. Either developers aren't good story tellers, or they lack the ability to hire good story tellers, or they just don't see themselves as telling a story to begin with.

Gaming has the opportunity to present the viewer/gamer with a unique opportunity. Gamers can make moral judgements in a game which can positively or negatively reflect the outcome of the hero. There have been a number of games which have done this. Fallout, Silent Hill and Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines are 3 different games which have gone about this process in a different way. Fallout offered the gamer with a myriad of different decisions which eventually shaped the nature of the character they played. In this very way video games differ completey from other forms of entertainment and provide the gamer with an opportunity to be involved with the telling and shape of a story. The only other type of entertainment which made an attempt to let this happen was "choose your own adventure" stories.

Without the interactivity we would not be able to be involved in this process. Yet, some developers choose to make these decisions for us. The solitary hero who saves the world does not place a gamer in the position where they can make a moral decision as to whether not to save the world. Maybe the world isn't a place worth saving to start with, what other form of entertainment would empower the viewer to make that decision?