All of those things can also be totally valid parts of a well-told story. Not only that, any historically significant factual account of human beings is likely to contain at least one and probably more of those things.

Yes, only using those things, or using them to prop up otherwise poor writing, is most certainly a crutch. But generalizing that too far takes very significant parts of our nature and behavior -- for better or worse -- and casts them in an artificially negative light as invalid literary mechanics.

Totally agree. This is what I keep telling people whenever they moan about Game Of Thrones/A Song Of Ice And Fire being porn and/or too violent.

Excellent point. Those books also get into a lot of detail about medieval food and clothing. He's just very detailed and realistic. (I almost think of IaF as magical realism, not fantasy.)

The TV show does have meaningless porn dumped on top to keep the audience interested. That is HBO's trademark.

The problem with this argument is that most FPS games are multiplayer games first and single player games second. Multiplayer games are kind of like sports in that the story is created by the players (how you outsmarted your friends last round or how they pulled off a big comeback). Its the single player games that need to care about storytelling since its the responsibility of the game to make interesting things happen.

Good point.

You can play FPS against bots or campaign style, but many people find the real fun to be the social experience with friends.

In this situation, storytelling is almost completely irrelevant, given that all the game needs is an interesting board or map, and good gameplay and graphics.

If I see a preview for a movie that shows, in slo-mo, the hero running towards the camera with a gigantic fiery explosion behind him, I know for sure it'll be a boring movie.

I far prefer movies with an interesting plot.

Aristotle himself lists spectacle as one of the essential components of drama, alongside other indispensables such as a plot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)

That's not to say that writers with poor plots don't resort to amplified spectacle when trying to conceal their failings. But it's a mistake to think that spectacle, in and of itself, has no place in well constructed drama. In many ways, good drama is what justifies a major spectacle, which is the show in show business.

I won't say that movies with huge fiery explosions are always boring, but there's a pretty strong correlation.

Sometimes, spectacle is worthwhile, such as in Ben Hur, but BH didn't omit the plot.

But I look for movies like Memento, Primer and The Man From Earth, which are entirely plot driven.

I just have no interest anymore in jump scares and explosions.

Big explosions aren't a spectacle anymore. They haven't been for years.

Great art design is what makes for spectacle in a modern movie.

>Aristotle himself lists spectacle as one of the six essential components of drama, alongside other indispensables such as a plot.

Ever read the drama Aristotle referred to though? "Spectacle" there had nothing do with boring pre-calculated show-some-tits, car chases and explosions.

While it's true that there were no round-the-world chases in exploding robots piloted by naked sea nymphs in the earlier works of Sophocles, they did figure more prominently in his later plays. Scholars remain divided as to whether this was a direct or an indirect cause of the neon helicopter gunships that became a popular and recurring device in the oeuvre of Euripides.

Of course, very few of these "innovations" stand up to any real scrutiny. Close readings of the Odyssey and the Iliad will reveal that, more often than not, Homer did it first.

they've also always been used as scapegoats...