Kotaku - Gaider, Levine and Avellone Discuss Narrative

Kotaku reports on a PAX panel titled "Plot vs Play", featuring David Gaider, Ken Levine and Chris Avellone talking about the importance of narrative. All three bring a different perspective - let's take a snip from David Gaider:

What it provides that regular media doesn't is the interactivity, right? You can have great stories in a film but it's the level, it's the part where the player is personally invested in their own character and their own story that can bring it up to the next level. There's a lot of talk about whether games are art, and no one seems to question that about a movie or a book, but in games their element of interactivity lets the player be partly an author along with the game's creator and that's unusual, that's weird. And from an outsider perspective that doesn't add anything — that's why there's all this discussion, because they don't see the value for the person who's playing the game, how to them that elevates the story and makes the stakes much higher. I think that's what's important.