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I don’t know Justin Marks, but someone retweeted this thought of his into my stream this morning:

Difference between a video game hero and movie hero: a vidgame hero is expected to do what he’s told – a movie hero is supposed to defy it.

We haven’t done any questions on Gameplaywright for a while, so let’s rectify that:

Is that true? Is a video game hero expected to do what he’s told, and a movie hero to defy it?

Poking around, I found this follow-up tweet Justin wrote:

This is the biggest difficulty when adapting games to film. Only the game heroes who question this relationship are actually “dramatic”.

Justin’s follow-up suggests that he thinks the unquestioning video game hero lacks some dramatic spark. I agree with that. Gameplay isn’t necessarily drama, but part of our overarching point here at Gameplaywright—if we have one—is to suggest that games and stories can each be improved by the other.

What do you think?