One of the most interesting experiences in reading The Medium of Video Games was the comparison of the development and the evolution of video games to other media such as film and television. Many aspects of this comparison are interesting. Technological developments for the display of graphics and other technological developments are very interesting. However, I found the discussion of narrative and genre the most interesting. The development of characters in video games so they are character-based means the medium entered a period that the initial fascination with simple moving objects was finished and audiences demanded more interesting games. In cinema initial interest was with moving objects as well. The characters developed and storytelling became the central interesting aspect of film for audiences. The character-based game known as Pac Man showed that the appeal of these characters could be broad, so this game was interesting to both male and female players (as Wolf shows). The complexity that narrative brought to the videogames is another interesting point. I always wondered why the some of the videogames in arcades when they were not being used would have a mini narrative run in a loop. After reading Wolf I realized that this was done to give backstory of characters and other elements of the narrative. What separates video games from other media is the degree of interactivity that the medium allows. The development of narrative and interactivity seems to be two opposing trends. How do we have a game that has a specific narrative but then it is open to change by the interactivity? As Wolf says one way to handle this was to reduce the amount of narrative that could be placed in a game or to have no narrative at all. The discussion of Space Invaders, Super Breakout and Gadget is very interesting in this context. Wolf shows that interactivity does not have to work against narrative if, for example, multiple lines of narrative are present.
