ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the differences of motion pictures and television, and to a large extent the different mindset that is needed when thinking about video game storytelling. Many video games have been licensed as motion pictures in an effort to take advantage of the brand notoriety of the original material rather than the narrative quality. Interactive storytelling produces an interesting quandary for the property creator. The story written and the story played are video game stories. As one just said, the story and the gameplay have to work together to create a great game; the story has to support the gameplay, and the game-play has to support the story. Agency and affordance are both fairly academic concepts, but they have real importance in video games and they have no equivalent in motion pictures, television shows, novels, or any other non-interactive medium. The localization process is usually spearheaded by a localization team affiliated with the publisher and based in the region the game's to be released in.
