Your thinking is so antiquated name me a good novel and I'll give a video game that matches it in narrative content. And playing music and gardening? Please.
While I don't agree with any attempt to see games as lower form of culture, I don't think that story telling/ narrative is something that games do well.
I personally find narratives in games actually detract from the experience, and many games are better from having no or only minimal story built into it, and more like being sandboxes:
-Cities: Skylines
-Just Cause 2
-Prison Architect
-Kerbal Space Program
-Pool Nation
-Blood Bowl
-Hexcells
-Sins of a Solar Empire
-Elite: Dangerous
-Dungeons of the Endless
-Rocket League
-Sonic Allstars Racing
Literature has immensely more complex narratives than it is likely possible for films and games can hope to achieve. But to be able to provide interactive sandboxes with unlimited possibilities is perhaps one that only games can provide.
Nier Automata,
Deus Ex,
Destiny,
The Witcher,
Stanley Parable,
Undertale
If anything I think games with the right attention can have better narratives than literature because they aren't limited to words in assisting the narrative with visualization and depiction of events / emotion.
Much like pulp fiction and early sci-fi were treated as second class literature games range the spectrum as well. I think we can likely both continue to find examples to fit our points and it just shows the range games have as a medium.
That literature does not use visual images is its advantage: it isn't contstrained or restricted to a single visual realisation; every on who reads it's reconstructs in their own unique manner, also same reader may imagine it in a different manner at a different time. Also that mental image is out of the bounds of normal space and time; such freedom is what makes it special in that regard.
Take witcher for example, the games offers a single model of Geralt of Rivia, while someone reading the Witcher novel is free to construct their own model, their own landscape,..etc.
My point is that narratives are not a strong point of games, rather it might even be a weak point; they are not what makes games unique or different from other forms of culture. The more games move away from a narrative structure, the more unique and compelling experiences they are able to offer, is my view of the matter.
Or maybe I should edit to sound less dismissive because that wasn't my intent.
How little can you say and how much work should the reader/viewer/player have to do before we stop really considering it a narrative? And if those gaps exist, couldn't we argue they aren't really part of the narrative? Unless, of course, the gaps are intentional but I'd argue as one example that vague character descriptions are a lack of fidelity in written language rather than intentional.
Do you also think narrative is a weak point of movies and TV? Everything is constructed (filmed) for the viewer there, too.
I also enjoy the visualization and imagination involved with reading books, but if you are limiting the definition of "narrative" to how much visualization is involved, then I don't think it makes sense to directly compare books to movies and games.
Yes I do believe movies and TV offer lesser narrative scope than literature. When you read you get your own visualisation, when you watch a movie/tv series you get somebody else's and often simplified visualisation/construction.
If you get the chance (it is exclusive), I consider Bloodborne to be a contender for narrative excellence in games.
There is complete mechanical proof of the player's knowledge and understanding of the narrative and there is no wrong way to play. You simply get a different interpretation of the story depending on how curious you are and how closely you examine the textual evidence they elude to.
The storytelling can seem obtuse. I argue it works in support of the world design. You are the narrator.
The Souls series in general. I'd argue the world is the main character, but you have to pay attention to learn about it. And no matter how hard you try there will be gaps and conjecture.
From those I played Deus Ex (I decided to not play games anymore) and narrative in that rather average ordinary scifi book with rather normal storyline. I am not saying bad book, but it is not some kind of narrative masterpiece.
I can only speak to the reboot, and I found those fantastic, but we are now in the realm of opinion which ultimately is where the conversation is going to wind up anyway so I'm not going to push back on it just that we had different experiences.
I think the important distinction is games that have a story in them, compared with those that use the medium to tell the story in a way that other mediums cannot.
I can't attest to Destiny and my memory of Deus Ex is hazy but all the other games you listed are firmly in the second category.
Can you elaborate how the themes in this game map onto themes in Brothers Karamazov? I tried doing that myself, based on plot synopsis in Wikipedia, but was not able to.
Not to mention that just equivalence of narrative content does not mean anything in terms of work of art's quality - i.e. one could write the most wretched version of Brothers Karamazov, with technically the same content, but just no substance... The true value of work of art reveals itself in how deep it is - i.e. how much it can deliver to its reader (in terms of richness of characters, jumping points for philosophical thought etc.). BK were studied for over a century now, with countless articles and PhD theses from different angles written about it - a true testament to its richness. One can wonder how deeply "Nier Automata" will be studied.
I actually love this comment, because personally, Dostoevsky doesn't rank very highly in terms of literature for me.
Maybe because I feel like his examination of human nature or the bleak reality of things feels less impactful now that its such a common thing to write about. I can recognize his historical importance but in modernity his work I believe falls behind.
Gardening and playing music are both timeless activities, what do you mean? Kind of unfair to jump down the throat of someone who’s only offering friendly advice.
Both are equivalent leisure time activities that I would never say improve your life as the OP claimed. They improve your life in so much the same way games do, leisure, so their comment is purely "I don't like them so they can't be good" which is complete crap.
I do think, say, acquiring the skill to play piano or guitar tolerably well gains one more general social standing (not just with a subset of gamers) than "I'm fairly good at Rocket League" and also builds a better understanding of music generally, which can be useful and/or pleasant, and gardening produces good food and also carries more social benefits than "I caught all the Pokemon".
I'd agree they're not wildly better. Though if I put as much time into one of those activities as I have into games I'd probably be really really good at them, which I bet would open up some doors if I went looking for them, rather than just being alright at games and knowing some stuff about them, for whatever that's worth (nothing at all).
I think pursuing leisure for some end goal loses the point of leisure itself and is an unfortunate side effect of the times we live in.
That said I'm a workaholic with my job and 2 active projects outside of that who likes to lift and go outside so I can't really take fault with that mode of thinking since I've never quite captured my own idea of how I should be doing leisure.
Yeah, that's totally fair, I believe I'm just in an earlier stage of my life where I don't have a family yet so I can sometimes burn the time like that versus prioritizing my social relationships.
