Most moviegoers know instinctively that movies are formulaic. But it might surprise you to learn just how rigid the formula can be. Jeff Tidball examines the movie's three-act structure and how it could help game designers make their creations more emotionally involving.

There's a debate raging in the game development community over the role of storytelling in game design. But two recent games have managed to make a compromise between narrative and interactivity. Anthony Burch analyzes how key scenes in Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Metal Gear Solid 4 trick players into believing they have more control over the game than they actually do.

Paul W.S. Anderson has directed nearly as many videogame-based movies as his notorious German colleague, yet his reputation remains relatively intact. How did he manage this feat? Graeme Virtue puts himself through a survival-horror gauntlet of Anderson's films to find out.

"Interactive movie" isn't a phrase most of us remember fondly, but for a brief period in the '90s, this forgotten genre of games captured the imagination of the gaming public. Rob Zacny looks at a couple of the genre's best examples and what contemporary developers can learn from them.

The Wizard was a movie that defined a generation of gamers. It was also 100 minutes of pure corporate propaganda. Mike Schiller takes a closer look at how The Wizard was made, and what it might look like if it came out 20 years later.