On his site Magical Wasteland, Matthew Smith ruminates about the disconnect between modern game mechanics and the stories they attempt to tell. He’s responding to a Taylor Clark piece on Kotaku that argued that mainstream games are just “dumb”.  At least in terms of story. Clark laments the simplicity of mainstream game plots and calls for a leap forward in the intellectual capacity of game stories.

This is where Smith argues back, by noting that the plot of games are historically at odds with their mechanics, using the recent Uncharted as an example of where the plot makes a character likable, while the gameplay mechanics turn the character into a cold-hearted killer. Clark argues that this dichotomy creates the impression that games are dumb, even though they’re created by intelligent people:

What was the point where it broke down? There was no evil executive coming in from on high telling us to make the game more lowbrow. The team was not a bunch of sniveling adolescent boys (a couple were, to be honest, but most were of the aforementioned good type). I think instead that the problem was structural— deeply structural to the product itself, at a level where no amount of “smart” versus “dumb” choices can really change things. One of those games centered around shooting aliens with guns and lasers. Another was about navigating an environment and punching people until they died.

The article is a good read, and I think a lot of developers are reaching beyond merely combative gameplay and focusing on using these mechanics in the service of the story. Once games start getting past the violence, then they can start focusing on telling more complex stories.