Almost everyone has played one or witnessed one being played. Video games are everywhere: on our phones, plugged into our TVs and downloaded onto our computers. They come with our modern-day, technologically advanced culture. Most people who take part in the hobby of playing video games will likely agree with that since their creation, they have been an art form, and the evolution of technology has only allowed for more advancements in this field.

When you are playing a video game, you are paying homage to the combined work of hundreds of workers’ countless hours sitting and communicating with each other about how to perfectly connect the parts of programming to form this or that experience. Everything needs to be contemplated beforehand: the colors that you see, whatever you hear, animals, whether the weather is sunny or rainy, if other characters will be present at certain moments.

Keeping all of this in mind, the most simple thing that creating an immersive video game world can be compared to, is the filming of a movie. Many video games, regardless of who they’re made by and what kind of budget that they have, are trying to tell a story.

But unlike movies, these stories last much longer than a few hours (generally, if they’re well done). It is not uncommon for the story of a game to last for upwards of 10 to 15 hours, and for those completionists out there, the game doesn’t have to be put down after that one point. Today, many games are rife with collectibles and achievements to be found and unlocked.

That being said, some make the statement that games, at least the ones that tell stories, are playable movies. While it’s nice to draw this comparison in order to better understand how it is video games are made and their scope of who’s involved, there are some differences that should be marked.

One of which comes in the storytelling itself; one of the problems that some people have with movies is that the director or writer will make the decision to spoonfeed the backstory and history of characters and the world that the movie takes place in. Within a video game, the creators have the ability to better utilize indirect storytelling, which is using things like the environment and not using direct dialogue to tell the audience, or in this case, the player, what he or she needs to know in order to get the most possible out of the experience.

As previously mentioned, games are different from movies because of the fact that they tend to run longer and most have replay value and, therefore, their stories are looked at with a certain amount a scrutiny. Because of this, it can be said that video games whose focus is on telling a story are likely to have had that story gone through many times before the game has been released – this can also be said because the best way to make sure the game is working right is to play it.

Along with these few differences, the line between video games and movies has been blurred lately, largely thanks to the development of new graphics and animation systems. These allow the characters that gamers play as and interact with to look more realistic, forming expressions and having textures like freckles, scars, wrinkles, etc.

In addition to the scientific advancements, there have been some famous faces that have shown up in video games to perform voiceover and motion capture work for companies. Hayden Panettiere starred as a part of an ensemble cast in the 2015 horror game "Until Dawn" while Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe both held starring roles in 2013’s interactive drama "Beyond: Two Souls."

With so many people playing video games and with technology allowing for more involvement in the stories that game developers are trying to tell, there should be no doubt that, regardless of what one thinks, the popularity of using video games as a way of telling a story is growing. And with the telling of a story, there is the need to develop worlds for them to take place in and people to write these stories and act for the creators.