what is a video game

[Ben]

Books are seen as a more "intellectual" hobby, compared to movies; and moreso than video games.

Yet, a video game can do everything a book can (i.e. give you words to read).  It can do eveything a radio can, and also everything a movie can.  And more! It has more power than any other medium.  However, despite all that power we (by which I mean the average joe) also expect video games to be "dumber" or more of "a waste of time" than books.  Are we wrong in our assumptions, or are we right and most developers do squander that power to make "wastes of time"?

i think that this has to do with intention of the artist. i feel you cant read a book without bumping RIGHT into the artist's intention. they are getting these exact ideas across to you via words. a film is the same except less so- you are being faced with similar characters and ideas but you CAN kind of zone out and have it play in front of you. a game is weird in that you can play it without giving a shit about what the intellectual content is. i play tons of games that are reduced, to me, down to the pure mathematics and mechanics of it and i totally forget about the... point. what princess am i saving, again? who am i? i just want to avoid the obstacles so that i can reach the end state. the end. this is how you CAN play it. the idea that games are "dumb" is cynical because it assumes that those that play the game are playing it in this way when there really is good, rich intellectual content present (sometimes)

as far as boundaries go, I'd probably say the most glaring problem is character development. in a novel, a character's personality is explored and explained over the course of hundreds of pages, (generally speaking) through exceptional and sometimes obsessively reviewed use of language. it is actually pretty difficult to read an entire novel without being somewhat emotionally invested in some aspect of it, whether you like it or not. in a video game, I think it is sort of an inherent, maybe mostly unavoidable problem for character's to be so complicated, simply because you have to build a story in a way that it is purposefully interrupted (repeatedly) by gameplay, loud noises, music, graphics, etc, thus removing the consumer from an emotional scene at the blink of an eye.

yes this is my thinking as well