In a video game, it doesn't work like that. Most tracks are played in their entirety and looped. It means that a song from a video game very often requires some integrity that a song in a movie doesn't need, because the song has to be replayable again and again without losing its meaning. Furthermore, game soundtracks are long. The Final Fantasy soundtracks started with 50 tracks in the original NES versions; the Playstation games ranged from 80 tracks to 160, which is incredibly long. That's longer than a good deal of operas, for instance (and back in Final Fantasy VI, an operetta was included in the soundtrack itself).
Gesamtkunstwerk is a term Wagner used for his operas, actually, and it's that operatic mindset that video games most remind me of. When you compose for a video game, you've got enormous potential at your hands: your music determines the mood of everything that happens. When you write, you're told how your tracks will be used, how they'll blend together, and that gives you an incredible freedom to really do whatever you can.
In my article, I mention how Nobuo Uematsu very frequently shifts genres: he's written waltzes and ragtimes and celtic pieces and rock pieces and piano ballads and he's had two pop hits, once of which (originally written for Final Fantasy VIII) sold half a million singles. If he'd been writing for a movie, that wouldn't have been possible: the best movie soundtracks all integrate around a sonic theme, similarly to how a symphony works. A video game's music is far grander: when you're writing over 4 hours of music for a single soundtrack, you can create music that goes over and over themes, and still have space for two hours' worth of whatever you see fit.
Because of the circumstances in which you're writing, you have a freedom to use your mind in a way that no other composer today really gets a chance for. It's similar to having a patron in some ways.