The future may hold ideas, technology, and concept that no one can imagine at this time or It may seem impossible imagining it now. We only can speculate and discuss what the future may be for video games as interactive narratives. However, looking at the current trends and asking the professionals, we can give some suggestions of the question ‘What the future may hold for this type of video games.’ In an interview with The Guardian, Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, clarified the Xbox’s future, especially what they could offer that would attract more and more people to the Xbox brand. Phil Spencer talked about subscription games “Subscription services might spur new story-based games coming to market because there’s a new business model to help support their monetization.” What we can understand is that this subscription services, such Netflix, allows us so much content to be produced and consumed and all of this by paying a subscription. Applying the exact same structure, but to a video games streaming services would be possible the same to happen with storytelling in video games, which means that more content could be produced and consumed, which on the other hand will allow more stories to be told and experienced. In San Francisco in 2015, video games writers were interviewed regarding narrative in video games and what they think of the video games as interactive narratives will be. Jenova Chen, who is a creative director at Thatgamecompany, also mentioned story streaming. “Maybe everybody is going to have different versions of a story in future games, and somebody’s going to have a very amazing version that we’re all going to want to watch. That could come from dreams, maybe.’’ Chen also mentioned more interactivity between the player and the game. “Video games are still in the era of silent movie. The equivalent of sound and words is the ability of AI to understand what we are saying. Imagine that you are playing a game, not only pressing buttons but actually talking to the game itself.” This for example is, in Life is Strange, instead of controlling Max and making decisions and choices based on multiple choice, you as the player are Max, can make any decision you want when faced with a choice. Which makes us think that the future of video games as interactive narratives would be even more interactive and probably would break down the biggest barriers between the player and the game: the screen, and interface. That being said the future of video games as interactive narrative will certainly involve Virtual Reality (VR). VR refers to a computer-generated simulation, which allows users to experience as if they were in the fictional world themselves, through headsets with two screens, each for one eye and a stereo for sound. VR is still a new medium, like the early games we have discussed, but there is no doubt that it’s a future of the video games.
Conclusion
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n conclusion, we have discussed and analyse the video games as storytelling, the evolution of the video games, we have discussed what types of video games are not narrative and the reason they are not narrative, also we learned how video games evolved and the different type of structure, when comparing Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, a game 40 years ago with a nowadays game ‘Life is strange’. We can say that video games have evolved so much throughout the years, from using a linear structure embedded narrative to branching structures with emergent narratives. Video games now allow players to take control of the game, by making decisions and giving them choices with consequences that affect the end of the story. We also have talked about how does interactivity impact storytelling in video games and take a look at the experiment by the Department of Journalism and Communication, and lastly, we have a look of what the future may hold for video games as interactive narratives, we have seen that story-based games may become even more popular and may contain a subscription for more content, such as Netflix. Video games as interactive narratives have evolved so much in the last 40 years so
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