To Mr. Schrader: Videogames and the Illusion of Narrative Non-Contrivance
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Story-telling, in it’s poetic form of plots and characters, has few masters. Buy a 1000 books, watch a million movies, follow any award-winning drama - the difference in impact and immersion becomes obvious, even as the medium fluctuates with each passing decade. It’s that same menangerie of story-telling that allows for so many stories to be told, again and again, at times with little to no variation to an audience playing the illusionary part of the “eager” in it’s consumption. I agree with legendary screen-writer Paul Schrader when he speaks on narrative exhaustion in today’s contemporary cinema. This same man penned scripts for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull (both Martin Scorcese-directed films). He knows his story-telling well enough to be called a master, if not the master of screen-writing. In an article for the Guardian, Schrader presented us with his categories of “counter-narrative” entertainment - mediums that employ completely different means of story-telling. Videogames found a mention since, “the ability of the viewer to participate in the storytelling process creates an illusion of non-contrivance”.
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