Poll: Games vs Movies

[dscross]

I'd like us to discuss the merits of each really from our own subjective points of view. How do you prefer to spend you time out of the two? Which do you find more valuable in your life? Which is more entertaining?

This is only a hypothetical question, so for the people already thinking they'll post 'I can't choose between those' - think of it in terms of if you were forced to ditch one for the rest of your life, which would you rather have access to.

I don't want to explain about my choice at the top of the thread and influence your decision so I'll put mine further down.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I fucking love movies.

But a three hour session with 3 other friends playing Gloomhaven is way too much fun. Everything from the passive aggressive discord caused by the secret battle goal cards and the fact you only get treasure/gold if your mini ends their turn on a space with them (or special ability cards) ... and you don't share treasure or gold (unless you say so). Moreover to fight the compulsion not to use abilities that grant XP in favour of abilities with more utility that would be better choices.

So not only can players not communicate exactly what they're going to do each turn, but there are gameplay reasons why the players may not be altruistic or effective when you need them to be, or even openly invite more danger as part of their battle goal rewards for doing so.

And that expose of human deception, selfishness, chaos, confusion, and somehow--somehow manage to complete the objective, is just wonderful. It's just great... just great. It creates a wonderful depiction of human frailty, self-interest, and manufactured excuses that let you argue; "But I needed to do that to get my skill perk upgrade..."

Movies are great, but I like other people more.

And people are most interesting when they're kind of jerks in a structured environment where everyone is given an excuse to be jerks and will rewarded and hurt by that mutual anti-heroic jerkyness... in a setting that subverts your expectations given the saturation of high fantasy. Where it turns out adventurers and mercenaries are probably not nice people regardless of their world, and the game gives you everything you need to justify your worst, most selfish aspects of your nature while recognizing you still have to nominally get along.

And board games do that better than anything else.

That and pen and paper games, but that always feels like being contractually obliged to partying together. Whereas with Gloomhaven, characters retire when they complete their hidden goals, mysterious characters are unboxed in the process that you won't know anything about until you open them up, you can easily tweak diffiulty for more or less players, and the A.I. is just great.

I will say Tails of Equestria is a fun P&P system that is incredibly simple and cute, yet surprisingly fun because it's justagroup of friends being a group of friends solving problems with elements of friendship without needing a metric fuckton of lore you have to buy into...

That being said I prefer movies to singleplayer only games more often than not.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

Movies are a hundred percent better, it's like playing a game except you don't have to do all that work, a bunch of conventionally attractive people do the punching and shooting and kissing and stuff!

[That was a joke but my real answer is movies because movies have done multiple generes well from drama to comedy to action to horror to period pieces to documentaries and while video games are starting to branch out I think they still have a long way to go to offer the sort of varied experience that movies do (unless we are talking about pen and paper games because those offer the most variance in experience)]

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Definitely games because movies have dropped off quite a bit in the last 10 or so years and TV has taken over. Most of the time when I watch a movie now, I just feel like that time would've been better spent watching a few episodes of a great TV show instead.

And games include board games as well like Addendum_Forthcoming mentioned and I play board games 5 hours every Monday alone while I probably at most watch one movie a week if that. So even when I think video games are pretty shit there's still glorious board games and PnP RPGs; there was a 3-year span (ending November of 2016) where I didn't play a video game I'd rate an 8/10 or better.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Movies are a purer art form, if that makes sense to you. But if I had to give up one of those two I'd give up movies. Games simply offer far more entertainment value. Besides, I think video games are just now starting to develop into something more. As technology advances, it will be interesting to see what they'll become. Technology might enable games to surpass movies in every conceivable way.

 

[Zombie Proof]

I couldn't live without either. The merits of a passive storytelling experience are just as valuable as an interactive one. They even compliment each other due to movies having set the higher bar for literary merit while games are in this entirely new category with their interactive nature.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

Obviously gaming. games are longer, you can play instead of just watch, you have full control. plus you can get best of both story and gameplay. while in movies you just have to see what the actor is doing.

lot of gaming characters i like better than movie counterparts. for example Agent 47 is much better character than james bond.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The merits of a passive storytelling experience are just as valuable as an interactive one.

I kinda feel TV has taken a lot of talent that used to be primarily in the film medium and there's so much good TV now that I don't have to watch it all. TV also doesn't have the time limits of a movie so characters and storylines can get developed more. I'm not sure if that's cheating in this particular poll by picking games and still having TV as your visual passive experience. Even something like my favorite Marvel TV/movie property is Legion, that show is just so fucking good.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Not gonna vote, because there's no option for liking both pretty equally.

If anything though, these days, I'm probably more of a movie buff than a gamer. I'm at least genuinely excited for a bunch of upcoming movies. There's basically nothing on the horizon for games that have the same sort of enthusiasm from me. At this point, most of the games I'm still actively playing are several years old (mostly bouncing back and forth between an XCOM 2 Legend-difficulty Long War campaign, playing alts in Path of Exile, and playing CoD:MW3 multiplayer with friends).

 

[dscross]

I couldn't live without either. The merits of a passive storytelling experience are just as valuable as an interactive one. They even compliment each other due to movies having set the higher bar for literary merit while games are in this entirely new category with their interactive nature.

Not gonna vote, because there's no option for liking both pretty equally.

If anything though, these days, I'm probably more of a movie buff than a gamer. I'm at least genuinely excited for a bunch of upcoming movies. There's basically nothing on the horizon for games that have the same sort of enthusiasm from me. At this point, most of the games I'm still actively playing are several years old (mostly bouncing back and forth between an XCOM 2 Legend-difficulty Long War campaign, playing alts in Path of Exile, and playing CoD:MW3 multiplayer with friends).

Such a cop out.

Just imagine you HAD to get rid of one or the other in some hypothetical life or death scenario. There is no option to take them both in this scenario. There are always people that say 'i can't choose' but if someone was holding a gun to your head over something, you would choose (and yes I know that wouldn't happen, before you start picking holes in it - the point is there's always a preference, no matter how slight).

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I'd give up films, definitely, I think I've watched about 4 films that I hadn't seen before in the past 10 years.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Right now games give me pretty much the same experience movies do, except longer, on a grander scale, and playable.

Used to be games consisted of large pixels and characters comprised of cardboard boxes, but now games easy compete visually with the biggest blockbusters, if not surpass them. The last movie blockbuster that had me visually exhilarated was Mad Max: Fury Road, and that was an extremely rare treat. Games like Uncharted 4 and God of War do more for me spectacle wise than any of the Marvel movies combined.

Movies are becoming more and more fake, while games feel like they're becoming more real.

 

[jademunky]

Different formats, I can't say I objectively love one more than another.

I will, however, say that there are things you can only do with games when it comes to delivering an emotional reaction. For example: Heart of Darkness does not really convey the intended weight and sense of guilt to the reader or viewer that it's video-game version (Spec-ops: The Line) does.

Reading it, my response is just "yup, colonialism is bad alright" while playing spec-ops gives you this "What have I done?!?!?!" moment you can't deliver with a passive medium.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Movies. I've always loved movies and there are tons of good movies if you're willing to give them a shot. Most people stick to superhero/fast and furious/oscar movies and that's about it, which is fine, considering the average person doesn't watch that many movies in a year. Of course, there's tons of great games too if you're willing to look, but in my case, most games I enjoy today are smaller games that can be played in short burts and/or you don't need too much time to beat them. AAA games haven't REALLY caught my interest in a long time. I played some, but nothing memorable. So much of the stuff found in AAA games makes them unnappealing to me. Not to mention so many of them trying to be movies, I'd rather watch an actual movie.

Games are great at action and in that area, I'd say they're better than movies. You're in control, you're the badass, the hero, the one making things go boom, and while I've played my fair share of actiony-things-go-boom games, it was never my favorite genre, and collecting gorilla ballsacks and shark nipples to craft a new gun only serves to slow the action and that's bullshit I can do without. Anyway, back on track, I gravitate towards slower stuff, strategy games, adventure games, RPGs, etc. And it's the same with movies. I've seen a bunch of actiony-things-go-boom movies, but just like games, they're not my favorite genre. And if games are better at action, I think movies win in every other category. I'll say they're 50/50 when it comes to horror, though.

There's also the fact that most people I know can't talk about games without turning into assholes, adopting a BUT YOU'RE WRONG OMG ARE YOU RETARDED mentality. I don't notice that when we talk about movies, even when I say I think superhero movies are boring or that I don't care about Star Wars.

 

[CaitSeith]

I prefer to play games than to watch movies (or TV series or Netflix). Right now I have a huge list of games pending to play (from several different genres and generations), and every month it gets even longer with new releases.

 

[Trunkage]

There's also the fact that most people I know can't talk about games without turning into assholes, adopting a BUT YOU'RE WRONG OMG ARE YOU RETARDED mentality. I don't notice that when we talk about movies, even when I say I think superhero movies are boring or that I don't care about Star Wars.

Strongly disagree. I don't know if your talking about your friends interactions but you can just look at this site for examples of assholery when it comes to movies

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Such a cop out.

Just imagine you HAD to get rid of one or the other in some hypothetical life or death scenario. There is no option to take them both in this scenario. There are always people that say 'i can't choose' but if someone was holding a gun to your head over something, you would choose (and yes I know that wouldn't happen, before you start picking holes in it - the point is there's always a preference, no matter how slight).

Gun to my head, forced to choose, I'd go gaming. Not because I actually like it better, but because it consumes more time. If I pick up an action RPG like Path of Exile, Diablo, Titan Quest, etc. or really any MMORPG out there I can have my time occupied by the loot grind for a whole lot longer than watching a movie, even if the overall enjoyment is lower. Seems like the logical choice, if the goal is using up my free time.

Though I suppose if I chose movies, that'd give me a lot of newly acquired free time to go hit the gym or something...

Nah, I'll stick with games in this hypothetical.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

There's also the fact that most people I know can't talk about games without turning into assholes, adopting a BUT YOU'RE WRONG OMG ARE YOU RETARDED mentality. I don't notice that when we talk about movies, even when I say I think superhero movies are boring or that I don't care about Star Wars.

Strongly disagree. I don't know if your talking about your friends interactions but you can just look at this site for examples of assholery when it comes to movies

Yeah, I meant friends, friends of friends. Most of them are more passionate about games than other entertainment. The poll here disappeared but I suppose that makes sense, last time I saw it games were beating movies 19 to 3. I can't remember the last time I had an internet "fight" but it was many, many years ago, not really worth it imo.

Speaking of things that disappeared: avatars, quote notifications won't even stay on anymore no matter how many times I try. Wondering if there's anything else.

 

[jademunky]

Just to follow-up on what I said earlier, it occurs to me that I might also prefer video-games because of their ability to deliver a more intimate and personal emotional experience than movies.

While I have walked away from plenty of films feeling sadder than I went in, there has yet to be a film that made me feel like I was a worse person than I thought. There have been plenty of moments in video-games where I did (and no, I don't mean because of any multiplayer-dickery-related-remorse or anything).

 

[COMaestro]

I would have to go with gaming. For one, generally a single video game can provide more entertainment than a single film, or even a number of films. I'm nearing the end of Persona 5, and I have 95 hours put into it, and there's very little of that time which I found boring (mostly Mementos). Being in the action is often preferable to me than just being an observer. Plus, having an element of control over your pace can be nice. While the Uncharted series is mostly known for its action set-pieces, there are times you can just stop and look around and marvel at the environments (especially in 4), something you can't really do in a film unless the director chose to do it for you.

Factor in tabletop gaming, and now you've added a social element of hanging out with friends and having fun, which provides much more interaction than when you all go see a movie together. With the wide breadth of game mechanics out there nowadays, there's no shortage of possibilities. Co-op or competitive, casual or crunchy, short or long, there are games for every group.

Don't get me wrong, I like movies too and would miss them in this theoretical situation. I just like games more.