Video Games as an Interactive Story

Ever since I was very young I have been playing video games as a hobby. From Mario Bros. on the on the NES console to today where there are a wide variety of games to choose from on various platforms. During this time I have seen how games have evolved as a storytelling medium. Most of the earlier games, such as Mario, had a basic storyline (saving the princess for example) but the story was often put on hold or rarely referenced as the games main draw was the action. However, games have come very far from these original origins, now often containing large worlds with many characters for the player to interact with. Still very few games, if any are currently able to capture the concept of a interactive story, even with these large settings for players to interact with most modern games still have a linear storyline, where the player may have choices to make but the story still remains the same no matter what you do. Some games are attempting to make the bridge to interactive storytelling, though this seems to be almost exclusively from the MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) genre. Games such as World of Warcraft not only have a constantly changing story created by the developers, but also is constantly changing by the millions of players who inhabit the game world and are effecting the world around them as well as creating their own stories for their personal characters.