For gaming to progress as a superior medium it needs a superior, progressive audience
Is there any other medium that has progressed as fast as video games? If we compare it to film then at an equivalent point in its development we'd have just got colour and have had sound for less than a decade. (taking the release of Pong in 1972 and the invention of the first motion picture camera's in the 1890s as starting points, arguable I know)
Games have gone from static screens to scrolling levels to full 3D worlds. Within video games, for the first decade any kind of storytelling was nearly impossible, for the second decade storytelling became possible but relied on text. It is only relatively recently we have been able to create games with audio and 3D character models that are capable of expressing some degree of nuance or emotion. (For all that David Cage gets mocked, it is good that this area of technology is improving). Storytelling in video games presents unique challenges as the audience is generally involved with one specific character/avatar at any one time; these leads to questions about whether the protagonists should be silent, how much control over events players are given, and whether the audience should be able to customize the main protagonist's looks as they desire or whether the creator should create a distinct character for the game. These are all complex questions that were not really much of an issue before at least 1993 say (Doom released in this year doesn't really have any characterization at all). Creators have the additional difficulty of constantly having to interweave story and gameplay in a natural way; some think cut-scenes are an acceptable way of doing this, Half-Life showed a complete story could be told without breaking first person perspective. And so on.
So gaming has progressed as a medium. Perhaps it is possible to argue that it is stuck in a rut with too many Modern Military Shooters. Actually if you look at the top games for 2013 they are there but there are not as many in the top spots as you might think
http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/16/100-best-selling-video-games-of-2013-revealed-4265929/
Take this list and compare it with the top movies from the same year.
http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2013
(These are not necessarily the best references, I'm just grabbing something quickly to refresh everyone's memories of what was out last year, the video games chart doesn't seem to include mobile gaming which I'll get to in a second)
Guess wha: t there is a lot of...well what shall we call it? Retrogressive/Inferior entertainment or just big dumb fun entertainment . It might be argued that there are 3 films with strong female leads in the top 10 (Frozen, Gravity and the Hunger Games), and it might be counter-argued that since women are a much larger audience for movies than they are for console games this is to be expected. In any case I don't particularly see that movies (a genre which is more than twice as old as video games) is any more progressive, in it's big hits, than video games are.
Looking at the list of games, from a story point of view the Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, and Tomb Raider could be said to be progressive in terms of story, if not gameplay, and could be classed as 'superior' experiences. Minecraft can be considered progressive in terms of gameplay. (The Walking Dead from 2012 is a rare example of a game which is progressive in both storytelling and gameplay). When talking about story-progressive games, I class them as such because each of them was trying to do something interesting and different in their narratives. Gamers, by and larger, seemed to be moved by the main characters relationship with Ellie in tLoS, Bioshock tackled big themes like racism and attempted an unusually involved and complex plot, the developers of Tomb Raider was brave enough (although probably prompted by falling sales of previous titles) to take a beloved character and try to make her more believable/relatable/interesting.
It is debatable how far these games succeeded, but being 'progressive' means doing something new and when you do something new you are not guaranteed to hit a home-run on your first swing. Aspects of Bioshock and Tomb Raider were both criticsed: However great Elizabeth was as a character she was still a damsel, was Tomb Raider essentially 'suffering porn' etc. Its fine to ask these kind of questions, but even if you decide that there were problems with the narratives in these games, I still think they were attempting some kind of progress.
I could go on, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to wind up this post now as I have somewhere to be. In short, I think gaming does have a 'superior audience' to use Bob's rather unfortunately elitist phrase, including anyone who bought and enjoyed the story of Bioshock Infinite (say) or even those who didn't and can give deep reasons why not, my cousin and the millions of other children who are enjoying Minecraft, a very different game from the ones I grew up with. Hell even those who can talk about CoD and explain why the good games in the series are better than the bad ones. Here on the Escapist forums people are constantly talking about issues with games; be it the narrative, design, technical or social issues (whether they fall on the pro or anti-GG side of the issue)
