A good game beats, by leaps and bounds, a good movie. Sure, a good movie can be inspiring, make you feel a variety of feelings. But a good game can do all those things as well as allow you to interact with the characters and the storyline, explore the world the characters live in, and spend far longer to experience than a movie.
The price-to-enjoyment-time ratio is better with games. I pay $20 for a game, I can play it for twenty, thirty, forty hours. Some I go all the way to eighty. $20 for a movie at the theatre might get me a ticket and a thing of popcorn, maybe. Drink would go past that. That’s an hour and a half to three hours, tops. They don’t play those eight-hour long epics around here anywhere. I’m more inclined to buy a game and enjoy it for a long time than I am to go to the theater and this is coming from a huge movie fan.
Games have surpassed movies as a fun pastime. I still like watching movies, I still enjoy watching movies, but games are different. I can take different routes, revisit different characters, just run around and lark about, mess around, or play through some games as completely different characters and in completely different manners. It’s more fun, playing games. Movies can get inside your head, can roll around in there and really, deeply influence you. Games take you beyond that into a realm you can experience and enjoy, through well designed and written characters, and into ornate places that feel different from a movie. You can pace things differently, explore more of the world, see the game differently. It’s different in a good way.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m more of a fan of games than movies. I still love movies but I’m a fan of games. I’ll play through games more times than I would watch a movie. The experience of gaming, of exploring, of interacting, of enjoying, has caught me. Caught me and won’t let go.