In his provocative article, HV’s enfant terrible Max Bosch argues that the impact of video games on storytelling is overblown at best. He makes a pretty good argument. Ok, we’re probably biased. But it was always a trendy contrarian position to assert that video games were going to become the dominant narrative medium. Sure, it’s fun to poke a finger in the eye of stodgy old cultural gatekeepers claiming that only works on the level of Shakespeare and War and Peace have artistic value.

Max makes a few main points. Video games have been around long enough. Why haven’t they revolutionized storytelling the way film and TV did in the first part of the 20th century? It’s not that the level of graphics and gameplay have been holding these games back. In fact, most of the games we’ve canonized in our culture started out as 8-bit masterpieces. There’s also a challenge to the idea that video games create empathy at all; in fact, by forcing us to adopt the protagonist’s point of view, they distort empathy. If we have to be someone to understand them, that’s not going to keep us from blowing up the earth.

That said, the article leaves us wondering. What will be the future? The example of immersive theater is interesting. Given the isolating effects of technology and the epidemic of loneliness, these types of theater experiences and narratives could become the new standard. What about film and television? Here it’s a little harder to see. TV evolved artistically in the last 30 years by becoming more cinematic. So did video games, for that matter. Ironically, film stagnated by becoming more influenced by TV and video games. Yet maybe there are new ways to tell stories on film. Francis Coppola has talked about “live cinema” as a way to tell stories like the conductor at musical performance. Harmony Korine’s polarizing Aggro Dr1ft has also presented an intriguing model for experience driven film storytelling.

Then again, maybe we’re missing the obvious answer. With all new media storytelling and technological innovations, porn has always been at the vanguard.