William Vitka over at CBS's GameCore has an ambitiously fascinating piece up on gaming and storytelling. He puts forth the question of whether or not video games will ever have a Citizen Kane moment. "My first response is to ask whether the analogy is the right one," Henry Jenkins of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells Vitka. "If the question is, 'Will video games become a serious art form in their own right?' I think the answer is inevitably yes."

Graphic novelist Warren Ellis is less optimistic, saying, "Great storytelling begins and ends with the storyteller, not the physics engine or the rendering," he says." It could be argued that great storytelling and rendering are not mutually exclusive. The same could be said of CGI and storytelling in film. "But let's be straight," Ellis says. "You're not going to get anything on the level of Kane in video games until someone somewhere pays an honest-to-God writer to sit in a room and create a story themselves that they are passionate about telling through game play and visual narrative."

Once again, the validity of such a comparison is brought forth. Vitka writes that the problem of discussing video games and stories is that "we have never had a storytelling medium like video games." Jamil Moledina, director of the Game Developers Conference, concedes and says, "Game playing represents the hybrid of both aspects of storytelling, where the audience is empowered to self-propagate the storytelling creation and enjoyment. This stimulates their own creativity and gives them the experience of controlling their destiny." And that is what makes a good video game.

Full Piece Here [GameCore]