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Games As Transformative Works
Deepa Sivarajan sends word that the journal Transformative Works and Culture has published an issue that focuses on games, containing a variety of articles which examine how games interact with modern culture. One essay takes a look at how developers gain an understanding of the systems and structures that drive gameplay, and another discusses motivation and "participatory culture" in games that have a substantial degree of user design involvement, such as mods and addons. There's also an evaluation of how the enthusiast press affects the perceived value of games. The issue includes game-related book reviews and interviews, which can be found at the bottom of the full list of articles.
But then you have masterpieces like Bioshock which centres its narrative around that very phenomenon, and still gives you some freedom of choice to affect the outcome of the story.
Bioshock, just like many Bioware games, has completly black&white choices, it is "kill sisters" or "save sisters", there is no grey area in between. I don't feel that this gives me freedom, it just makes the limits so more obvious. The little freedom that Bioshock has is that it allows some non-linear exploration of the levels, which is a nice touch, but its not exactly a new thing, Doom1 had that and just like in all other games Bioshock still restricts you to those areas where it wants you to go, you are not allowed to roam around freely through Rapture. Neither does Bioshock allow any communication with NPCs, its all just monologue.
That Bioshock is hailed as a masterpiece, just shows how primitive the story telling in games is and how little it has progressed over the years. Maniac Mansion, which is over 20 years old and run on a C64, was much more advanced in many areas of storytelling then many of the stuff that is thrown at us today.