Video Game Narrative ??!?

I thought the last lecture raised some interesting questions about the nature and value of video games... however I still can't clearly articulate what the difference between video games and other media forms is. I scribbled down a lot of questions in the lecture and kept comparing video games to novels in my head in an attempt to try and understand the differences between the two - especially in regards to their uses of narrative.

For instance in the question of the difficultly to ascribe a fixed narrative or meaning to a game - Isn't a game just a interchangeable set of interpretations of a pool of information. This seems quite similar to a novel where readers will work through the text and recognise a narrative. Even if the narrative of a video game is different to that gained by another player it's still based on interpreting the codified meanings of the game... with a preferred way(s) to navigate our way through the text.

Games still contain shaping factors very similar to those used in novels and films to create narrative. - Are different players experiences so different from a preferred and alternative reading of another type of text?

One difference pointed out in the lecture was that of diegetic and intra-diegetic spaces and the idea of immersion but I still cannot see how this immersion is so unique. In video games choices you make supposedly become part of the story, but essentially the story is already written and your choices limited within the code of the game... If I were playing a first-person shooting game I couldn't decide that killing people was boring and that I would prefer a game of tennis within the game world...on a less abstracted level, I couldn't decide that I wanted to kill my own team because this would be an alternative reading and would be 'punished' within the game.

Another difference was that of dying and re-spawning... but isn't the goal of re-spawning just to get another change to 're-read' the options the game gives you in order to understand how the game works... is this so different from re-reading a page in a book that you do not understand? I can't see how except that the game is set up to make it difficult to understand in the sense of knowing exactly what you have to do to be successful or win. The book gives you only one choice, to turn the next page or stop reading. A game gives you many more but they are the same kinds of choices.

I like the idea of video games being multi-linearity rather then not linear at all... maybe video games contain multiple narratives rather than being incompatible with the idea.

Kevin suggested that players start and end at the same point of a game but who they are when they get there is different – as a personal reaction to their own choices – thus the meaning is in the personal interpretation of code and symbols just like a novel....