[Aqwis]

Video games are an active form of entertainment, while movies are passive. There is a spectrum from forms of entertainment requiring a great deal of active involvement and attention to purely passive entertainment: playing physical sports, board games, competitive video gaming and stuff like day trading, single player video gaming, casually dancing, watching sports with some friends (heightened attention due to emotional involvement), reading a book, watching a movie or a play, listening to a podcast (roughly ranked by how actively involved you need to be to participate).

Activities at roughly the same level of required attention can to some degree replace each other (like how watching a play went from an everyday activity to a niche after movies appeared) but I think we have seen throughout the past century and a half that this doesn't happen when the activities require different levels of attention. The day only has 24 hours, of course, so when a new popular activity appears it may steal some attention from existing popular activites, but I think humans will continue to participate in activities at all the different levels of required attention.

Just like good books continue to be written every year despite not being as culturally dominant as they were in the 19th century and before, good stories will continue to be expressed through the medium if film in the future. It's common to say that video games and movies are suited for different types of stories and while that's true to some degree, I think it's simpler to say that people will continue to make good movies because there will still be an interest in that kind of passive entertainment.

As a side note: I use movies as a shorthand, but I might as well have said movies/TV. As ekianjo said below (above?) "movies are not at the forefront of anything for a long time already" -- not sure I'd fully agree with that, but a lot of attention and storytelling talent has moved to TV because the two mediums have been on a path of convergence in the past 20 years. As TV and movies are roughly the same from the perspective of required attention, it might be that TV comes to dominate and feature-length movies dwindle to a niche scene. Similarly, the popularity of sports and e-sports (one or both) could be threatened if a hybrid (like one of those sci-fi American football 1000 years into the future concepts) appeared.

[GDC7]

This is exactly how I feel about it.

Humans were wired to be told stories and videogames just don't do that.

It's active participation, it makes sense because videogames are essentially the evolution of board games.

The most successful videogames as a category are the ones which are competitive, without any storytelling (again the modern evolution of boardgames).

If we want to name names of course Fortnite comes to mind but also the FIFA saga, Madden NFL, 2KSports. We are talking about the same game being sold every year over and over again and they post records for sales every single year.

I think everybody is aching to try and guess what's beyond movies for passive storytelling.

They have been around forever and are still unrivaled as a passive form of entertainment.

[account42]

> Humans were wired to be told stories and videogames just don't do that.

What??? There are plently of video games that are all about telling a story. Less mainstream than shooters sure, but adventure games and "walking simulators" are hardly unheard of at this point.

[ASalazarMX]

Sometimes you want to relax your mind and be entertained. Playing a game would be like Ironman pausing the Civil War movie mid fight and asking the spectator "Hey bud, where should I punch Captain America?".

It wouldn't change the outcome because the game is telling a story, but the experience of being an observer or a player is very different.

[GDC7]

So much this. I think that is something that the proponents of the "metaverse theory" don't get.

The rise of videogames has been predicted for ages , but if you look at total-hours of entertainment enjoyed by the population they are still lagging compared to passive mediums.

I also think that when adulthood comes around that's the time when the preference for passive storytelling really emerges in a crystal clear manner.

[GDC7]

But they aren't passive. GTA for example isn't passive storytelling, the person who is being told a story is an active participant in it.

GTA tells a story the same way the "Monopoly" board game tells a story, you have your avatar, you move him around and there are development in the story.

But it's not the same as passively watching a movie, even though there are cinematic sequences.