Chapter 2. The World of the Game Artist

The video-game and electronic entertainment industry of today is much like the motion picture industry of 1910. At that time, movie makers knew how to use a camera and how to cut film. They were experimenting with camera angles, stunts, sets, locations, and special effects, but they were just beginning to put it all together.

The video games of today are like those first movies. Video games tend to be based around one or two key activities, locations, or effects. The stories are rather limited, designed primarily to justify the use of these activities, locations, or effects. There are certainly a few exceptions, but the video-game industry has not yet seen its D.W. Griffith or Walt Disney. Every year, a new generation of video games takes another step forward from the one-reel shorts of the early 1900s toward the two-hour artistic and technical masterpieces that eventually followed.