This is a great article from Grantland about the complex challenges of immersive storyworlds and narrative video games. It is primarily a review of LA Noire by Tom Bissell.

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Those who are immune to the pleasures of video-game storytelling argue that games have far more in common with music and visual art than film and literature. According to this view, games are primarily rule sets or interactive systems, and it is in these arenas where the true art of video games resides. This is undoubtedly true, but must it be an excluding truth? No one, after all, ever gathered around a campfire to hear a rule set. It may be that our existing storytelling models are, in many ways, ill-suited to video games. Perhaps the video game medium is not a storytelling medium at all but an experiential medium in which storytelling possibilities are allowed to occur.

I haven’t read Tom’s book Extra Lives, but I do like to share a little link love, when praise is due.