Some have argued that video games as a narrative lack any real story, emotion, and character development, but this is not the case. To be more specific it is not always the case, as there are dozens of hundreds of thousands of games that do concur to at least one, if not all of the three categories. It is pretty hard to find a sports game with a strong narrative, or a fighting game with emotion, or a racing game with character development. Yet there are games out there with these things.

Scott Miller was right, he claimed that people needed to start giving games narratives, and as the creator of a game like Max Payne (2001), one of the first shoot-em-ups with a strong story, it is understandable why he thought this. What Miller didn’t realise is that people have been always been trying to do this, such as Fahrenheit (2005), a game driven by its story, that uses game play to help create the narrative, rather than forward it.

Then there is emotion. Where there are definitely games that fail at creating an emotional narrative (Prince of Persia, 2005), there are also games that feature highly emotional events, such as the death of one of the major protagonists in Final Fantasy VII (1997), a game that has garnered such support around the world that people are desperate for spin offs, merchandise, and a look at what happened to the characters after the game ends.

As far as character development goes, there are definitely games out there that do in fact have this, heck, the Sims games are all about character development, it is a world wide phenomenon which has people entranced in developing there characters from a nobody into a success. Other games, such as Final Fantasy VIII (1999) also feature character development in a more narrative sense of the term, as the lead character starts out as a cold, rude loner and developing into a heroic, dependable leader and lover as the story progresses and the trials he faces change him.

So those theories that games had no narrative, emotion, or character development were wrong in some sense, as there are defiantly exceptions to those claims, out there amongst the millions.