English Atestat by OTL

Introduction
Video games has been an ever-growing medium in the 21st century, but it is a casual
outsider's general opinion that these video games' aim the aim of these (hence game is part
of the nomenclature) is to satisfy the needs of a child. Traditionally speaking, games are
meant for children, but not only. That's why gaming is degraded to an act of a childish
individual - as far as the stereotypes go - who is an overweight, unemployed person in the
basement of his/her parents. Naturally, this concept has nothing to do with reality: the
statistics say that in the year 2016 nearly 53% of U.S. citizens played video games at least
monthly. And only 27% of them were under 18 years old. Most of these gamers were 18-35
years old.1 It is also worth mentioning that older people also tend to load up a game and just
play, which is actually a very good way to reduce the chances of dementia. But it is also
visible in the data that nearly half of the U.S. citizens do not play video games at all, that's
why video games are so criticized - they have never played actually good video games, so
they tend to judge many games based on their experience with a bad one. Or they just tend
to see the more controversial aspect of games.
The purpose of this research is to popularize promote a newer concept: video games as a
form of art. This means presenting those sides aspects of gaming which are often left behind
the scenes of mass media interests: ……… (give a few examples) I would like to present
video games from a not-so-popular view: as a form of art.
This word is often used for poems, for books, for stories, for dramas, for photos or for
paintings, but it rarely appears as an adjective of video games, which is a bit of a shame, as
there is close to infinite potential in this medium, which can even bring back for example
the great classics of literature to a more modern, and immersive medium, which is also
interesting for the youth, and can provide a deeper understanding in the story.
My research consists of three main segments: The link between video games and the Arts,
Video games as media a form of storytelling, and Character building techniques in
Video games. The first part will focus on proving that video games can indeed be
considered a modern form of art, the second part will deal with the narrative, and
story-oriented elements of video games, while the third section will present the different
ways in which characters are constructed in these games.
In my paper I will be mentioning some AAA / Blockbuster games (use foot note and explain
what this is), as well as indie games(use foot note and explain what this is), and it might be
containing major spoilers for these. The alphabetical list of mentioned games can be found
in the appendix.
1
https://www.statista.com/statistics/189582/age-of-us-video-game-players-since-2010/
(use footnotes only if you want to add some more info, which you consider extra, and has no
place in the text of the paper. For references only, please use short parenthetical citations!
E.g. (statista.com) )
Video games as media of storytelling
In this part I will be focusing on the narrative and story-oriented aspect of video games.
This topic will be analyzed in different subtopics, which will be going from the general to
the special cases of storytelling in video games.
Interactive storytelling
To present this concept, we have to start in the history. Our first known medium of
storytelling were cave paintings. They were compact, and simple. They described a story, or
an event visually representing motion, characters and animals. Fast forward to the
Medieval Age, most of the stories spread "from mouth to mouth", so by speaking, or rumor.
It was an auditory narrative, which had more complexity to it, but it was harder for
someone to imagine the action. Then came books, which provided a more accurate and
detailed description of a story. But the message of the books was transmitted through
written language, which became accessible for more and more people, especially in the
Renaissance. Later, the invention of printer made distributing books easier, but it was still a
hassle and precious time to read a book cover to cover, even in the modern age, by
audiobooks. So a rather new medium started expanding - movies, films and TV series. This
medium was made popular by such names, as Alfred Hitchcock, J.J. Abrams, Cristopher
Nolan, etc.. They were fresh, and modern, as they did not only use written words as
medium, but images, visualized emotions, sound design, music, lightning, camera angles,
camera movements, and the list goes on. This became an accepted form of art, and people
win awards for making those films. That is quite a large leap from books. And finally we got
to video games. As it can be seen, new medias borrowed some aspects of older medias, but
expanded them, making the new one more adequate for the time. So is with video games
and films: games have everything a film has, but what makes them different? The key word
is interaction. It not only presents a story, but it also gives the player the possibility to
interfere with the story, and to change the outcome - in the case of an open ending. Or it can
provide an inner point of view of the presented story, a deeper understanding of the
characters, their actions, their intentions and their backstory. If we expand our point of
view to the new generation (the world of UHD, Custom-Built PCs, and YouTube Let's Play
videos), we can see that this medium is already expanding further, by VR (Virtual Reality) -
devices such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Samsung Gear VR are creating the
path for a new medium to emerge, which will enable games to be fully immersive, by having
access to the whole field of view of the player, to their emotions, and it can provide more
focus for the story lived by the player.
The way in which video games are written is fully accessible for anyone - computer
programming has never been more accessible. But what is so good in programming? It
improves logical thinking, because we start to think as the computer itself - which is not
that hard. It is just a simple formula: IF this THEN that. It is just a series of logical
instructions. And this is the core of video games: IF I go left THEN something will happen. IF
I go right THEN I die. Simple as that. But these little functions can be stacked on each other,
making a complex set of IF statements. That is what happens in video games.
Let's look at an example: The Stanley Parable. A simple game with a simple story: there
was an employee named Stanley in an office building. His job was simple - pushing the
buttons of a keyboard as prompted on a computer screen. But one day all of his coworkers
disappeared. The main concept here is the narrator (who has a quite pleasing, British
accent). The player is in fact Stanley - the confused employee, who dropped into an
unexpected adventure. And he has the possibility to cooperate with the narrator, doing
what he says, or go against him, in which case there is a possibility that the narrator breaks
the so called "fourth wall", he starts speaking to the player. At one point he even offers the
player other, popular games (Minecraft, Portal) to play with - inside a game. But this is only
one known ending for the game - this game is a multiple-ending game (the loading screen
also references this by the text-art THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS
NEVER THE END IS LOADING). There is a choice-based narrative. This freedom of choice
starts the moment the player exits the initial office, because while exploring the empty
offices, he may come across some easter-eggs, hidden by the developers, which can actually
conclude in an alternate ending. The first major choice though, is the one where Stanley is
facing a set of two open doors. The narrator prompts the player by his narration: "When
Stanley came across a set of two open doors, he entered the door on his LEFT.". This is the
first choice: does the player want to see the scripted ending of the game, or is the player a
non-conformist?

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