I was scrolling through Twitter earlier today when I came across a series of tweets from people discussing their fondest memories with the Sony PlayStation. Naturally, I had to read all of the tweets because I too have fond memories of the PlayStation. It was the second video game console that I ever owned, and one of its games was the first video game I ever played. As I was scrolling through the tweets I saw people talk about several moments in those classic games I remembered and some I did not, but one other thing caught my eye. A lot of people had several instances where they had completely different experience with the same part of a video game. This made me realize that is the true beauty and art of video games: player experience.
With video games, the player is directly in charge of the progress of the game. There is really no other art form like this. Sure, with movies and TV, people can have a difference of an opinion, but the movie or TV show itself will always end at the same time regardless of the viewer. That doesn't happen with video games. Some people can plow through a video game in one weekend, while others may take years to beat them, and that is okay because they are building their own experience.
One of the most famous examples from the PlayStation era is the player's encounter with Pyscho-Mantis in "Metal Gear Solid." If the player has any other Konami game, such as "Castlevania" saved on their memory card, Pyscho-Mantis will "read the players mind" and show them what they have been playing. It is a really cool feature that Hideo Kojima (the game's director) threw in. This also led to many players never seeing this at the time because it doesn't really happen if the player does not have any of those games on the memory card. Then there were players going back and forth saying things like "He knew what games I played!" and "I never had that happen to me. He was just a tough boss fight." It is those types of conversations that really make video games shine as an art form.
Video games have gotten even better at crafting unique experiences since then. As technology has increased, the scale of games has grown massively. Just look at a game like "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." This game is completely open for the player to explore and complete missions at their own pace, and it leads to most everyone have an experience unique to themselves. Some players might want to be a thief and rob from everyone they see. Other players may want to experience the story. There are even some players who may want to save the game, murder an entire village, and then reload the save file and try to not be a cold-blooded killer.
Everyone gets to, in a sense, make their own story with the experiences they have had. I have had many conversations with my friends where we just discuss the different things we have been able to do in a video game and the different ways we tackled missions. It is that level of experience that really makes video games an art form like no other.
