Story writing: Games and Books (part 2)

Granted, I've not yet seen a game based on a book, though there might be a few out there. I've seen games based on movies, and maybe there are even games based on movies that are based on books. Regardless, I think that the story experience in video games could possibly be on par with--and in some cases better than--reading an actual novel. At the very least, the stories in some games are usually much more developed than they could be in a 2-hour movie. That's really the shortcoming of movies, when you get down to it—movies just don't have enough time to build characters like books and games do. TV series that last from 12 to 24 episodes (sometimes with multiple seasons) usually do a much better job at character development because they have the length to do so. Consider now that games, especially RPG's, are often expected to last a player anywhere from 20 to 100+ hours to complete. That is an enormous amount of time for developing interesting characters!