Jasper Shogo Dutz

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Gaming

As a so-called "millennial" I, like many of my friends, grew up during the age of video games. I'm of the belief that just like film, dance, music, and painting, video games are (or at least have the capability to be) a multi faceted art form. For example, you have the art of making the game itself. Elements such as character design, voice acting, gameplay, plot, etc etc.. Furthermore, many games give the player lots of options to choose from such as in game decision making, character customization and playstyle. Like many art forms, gaming is a medium of story telling that is both premeditated and spontaneous due to the fact that the player's decisions directly effect the story-line of the game. The second part is experiencing the game itself. There are games where the path that the player traverses is entirely laid out. In other words, the art has already been made (much like film or visual art). it only has to be experienced by playing through it from start to finish. Then, there are other games where there's no definitive beginning or end in which case, the players of the game (or within a community of fans) create the story. An example of the latter would be fighting games. The developers simply designed the mechanics of the game, much like many jazz composers created chord changes to be improvised over. Naturally, at a high level, no two people will approach those games  (even the same playable characters) or chord changes (even on the same instruments) exactly the same way. Keeping with the music-to-gaming theme, contrary to fighting games, role playing games such as final fantasy or pokémon are much more like classical music. The story already exists and it is the way in which you choose to tell the story (as the main character) that defines its qualities. Both take practice and dedication to master.