What makes video games different from all the art that has come before it? Paintings make better visual art and books can tell a story very well. Theater can act the story out with breathtaking clarity. A live music performance can be better than even the best game soundtrack, and movies beautifully combine all of these elements into one package. So what do video games do differently? It's simple, games are interactive. Video games can tell a story, but they tell your story.

So why is it that the only art on the planet that can interact with you increasingly decides not to?

Dear Xbox Live,

I know I haven't seen you in a while, and I wanted to explain. It's not you, really. I've just been off doing my own thing, with the zombies in the mall and all that. Really, it was Dead Rising all the way with me. I wasn't off hanging around her again, I just wanted you to know. I know the PC has always had her hooks in me, but I wasn't cheating on you. I've just been going through a rough bit, and I've been into my own single player thing for a while. But I wanted you to know, you and me and some Gears of War? Baby, I love you.

It's a typical late night session at the computer.  I'm rounding up my game before I hit the sack.  A startling noise comes from the hallway.  Should I check it out?  Nah, it was nothing.  I'll just keep staring at my monitor.  It certainly wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  I mean, who else would be in the house to make noise?  The dog is sleeping at my feet, I'm in here, who else could it be?  Certainly if there was someone else in the house, my dog would notice.  Then again, the intruder could be almost silent.  Maybe it doesn't have footsteps?  Maybe it doesn't have feet?  If I turn around, will I see some horrible creation float into view?  Or maybe it drags itself along the ground, waiting for me to look down before it shambles up my leg in order to devour my still beating heart!

This is why I can't play horror games.

Lego Star Wars II has been a recent favorite of mine. I adored the first game, the gameplay was that perfect balance between simple and fun while the cutscenes took the Star Wars Prequels and distilled them to their purest essence, a bunch of plastic men shaking their fists and making angry noises. Plus, no dialogue, which puts it leagues above the real Prequels. The second Lego Star Wars focuses on the Original Trilogy and while the gameplay has some new welcome additions, I'm still addicted to the cutscenes. Unlike the Prequels I actually enjoyed the original Star Wars movies, yet the Lego versions are still just as much fun. As I was playing, I caught myself wishing I could see the entire Star Wars movie redone with Legos. That's when I realized, I just saw it. I just sat through the entire Star Wars movie redone with Legos. Wait a minute, a movie? Wasn't I playing a game? What just happened? I felt like I had been tricked. Then I knew I had been tricked.

Cutscenes, we meet again.

"Whoa, wait.
I have to do what?"
"You have to jump over each octopus. You can't stop and you can't make a mistake. That egg that's normally a powerup actually means instant death in this instance. You can't tell beforehand. If you're too slow, you die due to time running out. If you're too fast, you die due to enemies coming out of nowhere. Some platforms fall, some do not. You're given no warning. If you die while near checkpoint 3, you'll start there without a hammer and it will be impossible to proceed. All jumps require perfect timing, or you die. Also, the hit detection is buggy. Your character is fat and slips around all over the place, and even when you pass this level you've still got 11 more to go before you beat the game."
"Why am I playing this game again?"
"If you don't want to play ..."
"No way, you wait your turn."

When Roger Ebert's proclamation that games were inherently inferior to other art forms rang out, the gaming community derided him almost in unison. I know, for I was one of the many gamers berating his general ignorance of the art form from the safety of my keyboard. "What was he thinking? How can he say things like that? Has he played Planescape: Torment?" While the gaming community generally considered his remarks uneducated and thoughtless, his proposition still sparks some discussion in my spongy little brain. Do games not need to control the player's actions in order to tell a meaningful story? Do games fundamentally lack the ability for authorial control that is found in traditional narrative? Do games have any form of authorial control whatsoever?

My emphatic reply would definitely be "YES". It's so emphatic, it may involve swearing.

I've been hearing about something called Â"emergent gameplayÂ" from developers for years. The theory goes, you give the player the tools to affect the world, obstacles to overcome and a simulation rich enough and they'll come up with their own game as they play. It's one of the signs of a great design under this theory is that the player will end up playing the game in ways you'd never expect. As a player, I've been doing this for years. I always thought it was called Â"jackasseryÂ".

Do you ever feel like you're just wasting your time playing games? I rarely do myself, but I get the feeling that I'm supposed to. People aren't supposed to play video games after a certain age, at least that's the vibe I get from other people. The older you get, the less people talk about games. The release day discussion over lunch and in between classes has given way to picking up games on your way home from work. It just disappears, it becomes something you don't talk about. You have to find gamers now. It's not something you can just walk around talking about to people.

So why do I play games, anyway? Why does everybody else sit around watching the latest episode of American Idol and I'm sitting here trying to find the most effective combination of superpowers to attack the Nazis with. Despite the social stigma, I don't feel like I'm wasting my time at all. It doesn't feel the least bit inappropriate. There's few things that feel as good as coming home and helping Sly outwit Carmelita one more time, or finding my way to Ogrimmar with my giant cow. So why do people not like games?
Of course, that's being pretty melodramatic. Plenty of people like games, otherwise this site would be filled with several posts pointing out that the other staff members are, in fact, the original source of the world's known homosexual stereotypes. And nobody's going to sew a scarlet G onto your chest and hurl rocks at your head, unless you also happen to speak Klingon, in which case you might earn a bit of shameful head-shaking.

But it's not exactly expected conversation at the bar. You don't pull up a stool and say "So, did you see the Super Monkey Ball combo on the XBox? Pretty sweet." Most people just don't play. It still leaves me with the question, why do I play games? Most critics are quick to point out that you accomplish nothing by sitting on your butt all day pushing buttons and staring at a monitor. Unless of course, the topic of the day is violence in which case you'll gain a thirst for blood to rival only to Hannibal or Genghis Kahn.

This week, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Working on the staff here at Gamers With Jobs is a pretty satisfying job. Sure, it's not an actual job where you get paid or do any real work, but there's a great community to hang out with. Plus there's always a place to put my ramblings, some fine multiplayer gaming going on any night of the week and the staff here sure do take a lot of abuse. It's a pretty good gig here at GWJ. And when my acceptance letter comes in, I am such a ghost.

You see, GWJ doesn't give me enough of the high life that I've always heard so much about. When I walk down the street women don't longingly, passionately even, scream my name, there's very little gold in my mouth and when I snort cocaine there's never a scantily clad woman available. I'm afraid I'll have to head to greener pastures. Though to leave an impression, I'm going to use the front page of GWJ as a springboard into my new career as a professional game journalist. So read on if you work for Gamer Informer or any other fine Â"gaming magÂ" as we like to call it in the biz, you'll get a taste of the finest game journalism has to offer.

Tribes was my first real internet game, it nearly consumed my life during my first semester at college. Adjusting to life at college was hard, nobody told you when to get up, when to go to bed, or even when to attend class. My main motivation for getting up was to get out of the dilapidated dorm I'd found myself in, when my neighbor cranked his Limp Bizkit techno remix at 3 in the morning I think the mold on the walls actually pulsated with the beat. The worst was the internet access, I'd went from barely being able to use dial-up to inhuman internet speed. I could browse anything, anywhere, instantly! Of course after about a month the novelty wore off and I cursed the network admin's black heart for not upping my bandwidth. But for a brief few weeks I was enamored with the internet, and my first real love was Starsiege: Tribes.

So needless to say I'm pretty excited about Tribes: Vengeance. The demo plays well, the reviews are looking solid and there's even supposed to be a story! The novelty of it all, to have a story in a Tribes game. I know, I know, there's some sort of story behind that Â"StarsiegeÂ" in front of Tribes, but my only knowledge of the universe comes from Tribes. Like all great sci-fi stories, I'm sure the story of Starsiege is full heroism, emotional turmoil and clever plot twists, but I'm just not seeing it. From my experiences in Tribes and Tribes 2, I just can't see a fictional universe full of drama and intrigue. The Starsiege universe I know and love from playing Tribes is quite different than that. Quite different indeed ...