My Love Affair With Video Games

A few years ago I purchased a second hand Xbox 360 slim unit, Microsoft’s proprietary gaming console. Even though I was several years late to the party and the Xbox One was in the latter half of its life cycle this was my induction into the world of gaming. This served as my first proper introduction to the multibillion dollar video game industry. Even though I had gamed before I was not particularly enamoured by video games. While I liked car racing games, primarily due to my love of cars and the automotive industry, I never really tried my hand at other genres of games. The first purchases I made for the Xbox 360 slim unit were Alan Wake from 2010 by Remedy Studios and Tomb Raider 2013 by Square Enix. These games introduced me to the concept of the video game movie and from then I was head over heels with this medium of art.

Fast forward to present day and I find that for me video games hold the same importance and value as films. Whenever I think of video games I like, the immediate comparison I make is with films I’ve purchased and appreciate purely for their artistic value. As an example, when I first played Call of Duty WWII I kept referencing Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s war epic because I felt the experience I had while playing through the single player campaign was very similar to watching Nolan’s film. Video games and video game developers have given us this beautiful marriage between art and story telling all the while making strides and advances in artificial intelligence perhaps unlike any other industry. They have been able to wed cinematography and gameplay elements and open up video games to a much wider audience. This in turn has enabled video game developers to grow in their ability to tell stories and fully immerse us in the worlds they create.

I present to you some brief thoughts on this matter below: