EGM scores. Some pretty big games.

[A Black Falcon]

I've played more of BG2 than 1, and watched my brother (who loved the series) play through a lot of both games.

Depends on what you mean by "watched". Like, you were in the room, or you were actively watcing and stuff... I was in the same room when my sister and her friend were playing through most of BG1 and BG2, but I wasn't paying close attention so it doesn't really count for much...

No, they are not both. Video games, by definition, are a visual medium. Books are not a visual medium because all of the "visuals" are in your mind. With video games that is not the case, which is why you need to narrate them like you do with movies. Books use detailed desciptions to paint images in your mind, which is why they cannot be all dialogue. When games like BG mainly use plain dialogue between static characters in word balloons, that is absolutely bad story-telling. You cannot mix and match like that! Either you don't tell the story visually and narrate it like a book, or you tell is visually like a movie! There's no good in-between method!

Baldur's Gate is not a video game. It is a computer game. There's one point of yours made irrelevant.

And as I've said, I greatly appreciate it when games use words as well as images to describe things, and really miss it in games that I think should and do not (see Syberia, for instance). Obviously you don't agree, but that is my opinion. I guess I just put more weight on these elements than you do... like, how I keep mentioning the looking at items aspect of Eternal Darkness as something I loved about that game -- did you even notice that, or care?

And my whole arguement has been that there IS an in between method and games use it. And that unlike you, I think it can be effective. It involves words, pictures, and your imagination (for games like BG where the main character is supposed to be someone you have created -- an alternate you --). It is not bad storytelling. It is just a slightly different method that uses the resources of the other mediums and combines them in a way that is perfect for this new medium.

So that's your only argument? That you can't consider movies that use subtitles or text because of quantity? Okay, so what about long anime series that require subtitles? There's more text in some series than in Baldur's Gate, so I guess that means that I have to start calling Gundam a written medium as well as a visual medium, right? Oh, I bet you're about to say "well they weren't meant to be subtitled". Ah, so what about a series that uses a made-up language and requires subtitles to understand it? I suppose you'd consider it a written medium, right?

It depends on if they were thinking of the subtitles when they made the project. If they were thinking of them as an integral part of the film, then yes, I would say that the written medium would be a definite aspect of the project. If, however, they were tacked on later to translate the original film meaning, then no, the written aspect is not central to the project in its intended state so for the case of anime it would not be written. As for your other case, the only such thing I can think of is Mel Gibson's movie The Passion, which I most certainly have not seen or read lots about so I can't say weather they made the subtitles as an integral part of the story or as an addition... but given what I do remember hearing, I think it was an addition (I seem to remember at one point hearing that Gibson was considering releasing it in Latin and Aramaic with no subtitles).

TV shows are just long movies. That's all they are, that's how they came about. Length is not of importance to this discussion. There are tv series that are more movie-like than some movies, so that's a useless point.

Length does matter... okay, it may not be the central difference, but it does matter. A game story designer spreads their story over 15 or 20 or more hours of gameplay. A movie director fits it into about two hours. This is a very different structure and a very different way of thinking... I know I've read articles before about how different making a game story really is from a film. It's not created from the same line of thought or process.

You don't understand the definition of "cinematic", that is the problem here. Not that I'm saying that those games aren't cinematic, but you really don't know why. And you cannot understand this very debate when you don't understand the basic definitions of some of the examples I am using.

And you've been so helpful in defining terms!

So what about games that use no text at all? Are they know longer written mediums? And text-based games are not video games, we've already been over this. Those are text-based games. I will not go over that debate again. You were wrong, whether you want to admit it or not. And if you try to continue that debate I will simply ignore you. You can never admit that you are wrong, no matter how much strong evidence you have in front of you (see: the PSP debate).

That "arguement" is one of the stupidest of all time because your position is so baffilingly moronic that I can't understand how any sane person could ever think such a thing... but fortunately in this case it's mostly irrelevant, for my case at least, because all of my examples have been PC games, which are computer games and not video games. :) As for you, MGS1 and 2 have also released on PC.

And all text based games have also been computer games. So that "arguement" is only brought up by you because you know that you might otherwise have to conceed a point to me... so to avoid it you don't respond to my point. I mean, it's quite clear that text-based games are computer games and text-based games (interactive novels, they have been called) are vastly more influenced by books than by movies, so you'd just about have to conceed the point... so instead you dodge it by saying they don't count. Which is moronic but what I'd expect from you.

I love how you consistently completely ignore everything I said just to get a chance to attack me...

Oh yeah, and this is still a good point.

Possibly newer games have more influence from movies however because with better graphics we can get closer to what movies are doing, but then I could also argue that with newer games instead of taking from other things there is more of a history with games to draw from and improve on so they don't need to look to other media formats as much for their influences.

Actually it's more likely that you cannot tell the different between poor story-telling and good story-telling, no matter what the medium is. If you think that most games can stand up to most books and movies when it comes to story-telling then you're delusional beyond belief.

No, I really do not think so. We just disagree, that's all.