The Compare of Two Art Forms --
Video Game and Movie

What kind of art can compare with movies? Maybe the best answer is video games. Times are changing; video games became a kind of art nowadays. Playing video games or computer games became a universal way and a kind of fashion to kill time. However, may people doubt that computer games or video games became a kind of art. In fact, comparing with the movie, they share many similarities.

One important similarity is the original stage of them. When a new kind of art appears, people do not know what it can be used for, and they will try many ways to find the use of it. For movies, in original stage, early inventors and film industry workers carried the video camera and went everywhere to film everything that can be recorded. They just did it for fun; they did not even know what they wanted to do. For example, the first move called The Arrival of a Train; it was filmed by Lumiere Brothers in 1895. This film was just filmed for no point, and it just a humdrum video. In the article TO A NEW ART AND ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY, Christopher P. Jacobs said, “The earliest films ran from several seconds to a minute or two in length, and ranged from mundane subjects documenting everyday life, to views of exotic foreign locales, to newsworthy events of the day, all of which could now be seen in motion.” This supports that earliest films always filmed for no point, but people attempt to find the use of films by trying in various ways. Similar as movies, in this stage, developers of video games have lots of fancy ideas; however, because of the technology, most attempts were failed. The early video games are monotonous and unplayable. People always feel bored when they play a game many times.

After original stage of development; there is another similarity between movies and video games. When directors found the ability of movies, they began use movies to explain emotions and values. For example, filmmakers use stories of roles to explain the importance of characters that people have, and give people lessons of values. In the film Spiderman, the story of Spiderman shows the importance of responsibility. Filmmakers also developed new ways to describe different things, such as close-up, foreground and long shot. Similarly, video games let players to play a role of a story, and use stories and missions to lead players experience the stories by themselves. A good video game can use the story to move people, and teach people a lesson. It could also view as players are acting a real movie by themselves. For instance, there is a famous video game called Call of Duty, and it is an FPS game (First Personal Shooting game). That game let players play a role in a war story use missions to lead player experience the battlefield and ties of battle companions. That game interpreted duty and sacrifice for players. Sometimes, many video game companies employ directors and scriptwriters to make their stories of games be more attractive and playable now. In the article Movies vs. the Video Games, Ali Nazifpour points out, “Many games have been called ‘cinematic’ either as a praise or as a condemnation, and many games have been called interactive movie.” In fact, in other words, video games evolved into another kind of movie after many years of development.

Though video games are tending to another kind of movie, video games and movies do have something difference. Video games have interaction, which means in video games, players can communicate with the virtual gaming world. It makes players feel like they are a part of that world, and the story is their own story. In movies, communication