Hollywood envy: Adopting film production and storytelling in the FMV games of the 1990s

The widespread appearance of Full Motion Video (FMV) games of the 1990s represents a significant development in the history of videogames. This study explores the FMV games of the 1990s, aiming to identify and examine common narratological traits borrowed from film production found across the variety of FMV game types of the 1990s. The overall aim of this exploration is to address the question of how the narrative form of the FMV game was influenced by film form and technique, and whether this influence was more prominent than in other games in this critical period in videogame history. However, how does one measure the impact of a particular technology, when it is impossible to compare against the counterfactual situation where the technology in question is absent? To stress the importance of a technology like FMV in games is always, to some extent, an exercise in alternative history, as one must effectively imagine the outcomes for an entire industry had the technology been absent. This is largely impossible, but there are several ways that such impact can be approximated. In the present paper, three such ways will be used. The first, is to illustrate the context in which FMV technology was applied within pre-existing game series, to see how FMV changed the form and style of the given series. Secondly, by examining the key traits of FMV games in their 1990s heyday, the divergence between FMV games and non-FMV games can be observed. Finally, the lasting impact of FMV can be observed by examining what FMV game features stayed behind after this game genre effectively (though never completely) disappeared at the end of the 1990s.