Video games with its interactive possibilites possess a unique mechanic device which books or movies simply don't have. So, in a way stories in a game do not se

Video games with its interactive possibilites possess a unique mechanic device which books or movies simply don't have. So, in a way stories in a game do not serve the same purpose. And if you delve deep into literary theory itself; "stories" do not exist without its form. This dichotmoy is frankly quite misleading. I personally prefer to use another vantage point for examining "video games" borrowed from the strucuralists: What is the difference (to other games)? This quote from Viktor Shklovsky, a Russian Formalist, can be easily translated to the art form of "video games": "And so, in order to return sensation to our limbs, in order to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony, man has been given the tool of art. The purpose of art, then, is to lead us to a knowledge of a thing through the organ of sight instead of recognition. By "enstranging" objects and complicating form, the device of art makes perception long and "laborious." The perceptual process in art has a purpose all its own and ought to be extended to the fullest. Art is a means of experiencing the process of creativity. The artifact itself is quite unimportant."