6 Video Games and Film: Understanding Interactive Cinema
6 Video Games and Film: Understanding Interactive Cinema
Understanding Media to Foster Innovation
Lily Matt
Innovation of interactive media is fostering the convergence of video games and film, two intrinsically different mediums.
Interactive Cinema: A New Frontier
Interactive media has been embraced as the next great forefront of entertainment. Following modern innovation in technology, interactivity has begun to permeate throughout all facets of the entertainment industry, blurring the inherent distinction between video games and cinema. Netflix, once exclusively providing movie and tv streaming, announced that it will now be home to a line of Netflix exclusive video games as early as 2022 (Shaw). Streaming platforms will no longer serve as a distinction between content types. Since 2018, Netflix has invested in interactive entertainment with a series of movies. Bandersnatch, an extension of the “Black Mirror” franchise and coined “an interactive feature-length film,” will be referenced throughout this paper due to its unique video game characteristics and ambiguity when it comes to an entertainment category.
It is paramount to understand the differentiation between cinema and video games in an ever-evolving entertainment industry. Not to keep the mediums separate, but to better understand how to best integrate the two mediums and develop the convergence between film, video games, and the human experience.
1. Preface: Cinema and Video Games
Society breeds an inherent understanding of what cinema is. Although the term may sound pretentious and outdated to the average viewer, for the purpose of this argument it encompasses “a recording of moving images that tells a story and that people watch on a screen.”(“Cinema”, Webster). The context of “cinema” (as interpreted in layman’s terms) is indicative of the Hollywood Golden Age (Ryan). Cinema is known as feature-length films that are created to be shown in the theater. Following the advent of modern streaming services, cinema has come to encompass media that can be watched on handheld devices as well. There is an argument to be made about if home movies and Youtube videos can be truly considered cinema, but for the purpose of this essay TikToks, YouTube videos, and home movies will be excluded from the discussion. Although amateur cinema is often a leading forefront in cinematic innovation, these mediums are too ambiguous to be considered “cinema” without proper research and analysis. In the context of this essay, the word cinema will reference modern cinema and the body of work that is being created today along with traditional cinema classifications.
Arguably, video games are the easiest to identify. Interactivity has been a distinct characteristic of video games since Pong and Tetris (Pai). Other aspects such as viewing medium and environment also play a large role. While cinema is often created to be experienced in a group environment at a theater, video games are inherently isolating. Even when