> This author has it spot on: our standards for story telling in video games are really low.
Are they? I would say that they are, but not for video games, but for all things in general.
Sturgeon's law [0] states that "ninety percent of everything is crap." And it was supposedly originally about sci-fi novels! “Fifty Shades of Grey” was completely criticized on all fronts by reviewers, but still became one of the top bestsellers.
If you look at ancient myths, we have things like a series of myths with a central plot resolving around a god raping humans of all genders (significant chunk of Zeus-related mythology), Loki changing into a mare and getting impregnated, because gods wanted to prevent a builder from getting rightfully earned reward [1].
Most of the stories created today are low-quality ones. And that was always so. Only when we look at the past creations, we can only experience those that were good enough to be preserved. The same will probably happen with video games if various DRMs will not prevent that.
> “Fifty Shades of Grey” was completely criticized on all fronts by reviewers, but still became one of the top bestsellers.
> [...]
> Most of the stories created today are low-quality ones. And that was always so. Only when we look at the past creations, we can only experience those that were good enough to be preserved.
I'm pretty sure that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't successful for its story, but for discussing sex and specifically BDSM in a more open way than what was previously seen in "mainstream" movies.
Overall, a lot of works that, on the surface, aren't very impressive by current standards, but still managed to stand out in a novel way. Fifty shades and Half Life are two examples, but you could say exactly the same thing about Minecraft, DOOM, most of the classical movies, most of the old "legendary" cars and a lot more. Things don't become classics by standing the test of time - if you discount nostalgia, a lot of "classical" stuff is crap by todays standard -, but by founding the genre they're later beaten in.
> I'm pretty sure that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn't successful for its story, but for discussing sex and specifically BDSM in a more open way than what was previously seen in "mainstream" movies.
And because it feeded from the Twilight-Hype, on which it was a juicy twist. For itself it probably would never have become such a success.
> but you could say exactly the same thing about Minecraft, DOOM
Can we? Minecraft feeds mainly on its powerful sandboxing and modability, which other games still can't really match today, while also still getting regular updates. And doom as a franchise continued to move forward and created new games. They don't remain successful just because their first versions were awesome at the time, but because they continued to output awesome successors.
This is very different from classics which are usually frozen in time and stay classics despite getting no updates at all.
Are they? I would say that they are, but not for video games, but for all things in general.
Sturgeon's law [0] states that "ninety percent of everything is crap." And it was supposedly originally about sci-fi novels! “Fifty Shades of Grey” was completely criticized on all fronts by reviewers, but still became one of the top bestsellers.
If you look at ancient myths, we have things like a series of myths with a central plot resolving around a god raping humans of all genders (significant chunk of Zeus-related mythology), Loki changing into a mare and getting impregnated, because gods wanted to prevent a builder from getting rightfully earned reward [1].
Most of the stories created today are low-quality ones. And that was always so. Only when we look at the past creations, we can only experience those that were good enough to be preserved. The same will probably happen with video games if various DRMs will not prevent that.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sva%C3%B0ilfari