Video game stories are better than film, say majority in study

If you ask me, no film or TV show’s plot can possibly hope to compare to a good video game story. There’s something different about being fully immersed in the story going on around you, and watching it unfold before your eyes while being an active participant in the events which always makes narrative-based games feel so impactful.

For that reason, I’m wholly unsurprised that one study which quizzed participants on whether they think that video game stories or film plots are generally better found that the vast majority picked games. As reported by August Man, the study was conducted by Buffalo 7, who quizzed 1158 respondents. Out of those, 67% said that they think game stories come out on top.

Take a look at the trailer for The Last of Us Part I below.

What’s more, the study created an index to determine which games have the greatest stories, using average rankings in Reddit posts, YouTube videos, Google hits and critical articles (as well as other factors such as game length and number of comments) to create an overall score. According to this criteria, The Last of Us sits at number one, followed by God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Honestly, that’s totally unsurprising, but they’re all deserving titles.

Respondents were also asked which game they think has the most memorable story, and those results were pretty similar to the 'greatest story' ranking. In total, 47% of the 1158 respondents said The Last of Us’ story is the most memorable, followed by The Witcher 3 (35%). Slightly less popular picks included Undertale, Hades and Portal 2.

How about that? I must say that the complete lack of Xenoblade Chronicles in those rankings is deeply upsetting, but I can’t deny that it’s a solid list. Please play Xenoblade, though.