Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  Why video games shouldn't be like the movies. (27 Jan 2005) In my more cynical moments, I think this whole pursuit of narrative is the industry's sneaky way of forcing gamers to buy more products. When a game has a story that "ends" after 40 hours of play, you have to throw it away—and go spend another $50 on the next title. That's movie-industry logic, not game logic. Chess doesn't "end." Neither do hockey, bridge, football, Go, playing with dolls, or even Tetris. Worse, by selling "narratives," game publishers can cover up the fact that they rarely create truly new forms of play. In any given year, I'll play a dozen first-person shooters with different stories—Save the world from Martian devils! Penetrate an island full of genetic freaks!— that are all, at heart, exactly the same game. Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2112744/ Read 39 more articles from Slate sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Educational Games Don't Have to Stink!     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy