Could games be as good as movies?|COP2

 As part of this module we were asked to write a review of texts - minimum 500 words.

    In this short essay I have decided to look at fragment of text that comes from book titled Trigger Happy: the inner life of videogames by Steven Poole. He is a British journalist and author, had publications in many newspapers, e.g. The Guardian. Currently he is writing a monthly column in the Edge magazine along with some online publications. With that being said, we can consider him as specialist (or perhaps more practitioner?) in technologies and games.  
    Trigger Happy was published 14 years ago, which, with fast technological improvements, make it a bit out-dated. It is good book for basic information’s on videogames, history, but there are few statements that could easily be argued. My main problem with it was where author doubts in the fact that games could be as good as movies.
    Nowadays, with eighth generation of consoles available in stores, we are used to beautiful graphics and complex stories. Vast, open game words require years of work from hundreds of people - artists, animators, scriptwriters, programmers, and developers. Moreover, the cost of production and promotion is nearly same as the money spent on making a Hollywood movie. Grand Theft Auto 5 could be a perfect example; it cost roughly £170 million, which made it the most expensive game in the history. It also was a fastest selling game in many countries, with over 32 million copies sold worldwide.
    However, GTA V created a lot of controversies with it's violence and, apparently sexist, story. Yet, blaming a game, that for years concentrated on gangsters and bank heists, for violence it's at very least ridiculous. It is like blaming Saw, horror movie series, for glorifying pointless gore and tortures. Nethertheless, there are other games that also had an international success. Beyond: Two Souls is a game developed by Quantic Dream and its genre could be described as an interactive drama action-adventure. Similarly to previous games created by David Cage studio, Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain, players main task is to watch wonderfully rendered cut scenes and enjoy interesting and engaging story. In Beyond: Two Souls motion capture technique were used to film actors and collect enough data for animators. Ellen Page plays role of Jodie and Willem Dafoe is Nathan Dawkins. Typically for Quantic Dream titles, player is a mere observer and actual gameplay is limited to needed minimum. With it's amazing visual, Beyond reminds more of interactive film than actual game. In this sense, it's innovative and unique, but sparked a large discussion on forums and in magazines. The question that need to be asked, is whenever or not, productions similar to Beyond, should be still games, even with a lack of actual gameplay. Every move made by player outside the scripted and carefully planned story, ruins an illusion of open world.
    Summarising, with today’s technologies, games can possibly be as good as movies. From graphic point of view there is not that much difference (if there is any) between these two, same goes for interesting stories that are being told across these two platforms. It's down to players to decide which game do they prefer and what their expectations are.