In direct contrast to films, video games are inherently an active experience. Unlike film, a player is invested in a video game because of the interaction between the medium and the player. In games like Metal Gear Solid, with only one playable character, the player becomes invested in the actions and survival of the character. When someone is playing video games and the game character dies, and the player is asked what happened, they reply "I died", not "Snake/Q*Bert/the Ikari Warrior died". The act of pressing buttons on the game controller and having the character onscreen engage in actions is the act that involves the player with the game. This is why poorly implemented controls are incredibly frustrating. If the player is to become involved with the fate of the character though control of the character, it is imperative that the game be responsive and predictable to the player; otherwise the illusion of control, and the attachment to the character, is shattered.

What one finds in Metal Gear Solid is a gaming experience that switches between an entirely active experience and an entirely passive experience. The result is an unsettling mixture of quick and precise actions performed by the player, followed by long periods of inactivity while the game advances the plot. This experience has been decried as being boring and essentially unsatisfying. This is because there is a certain expectation attached to the experience offered by video games. As fellow critic Brad Gallaway noted on the Gamecritics message board:

"To only tell a narrative is pointless, but if you can tell it while keeping the player involved, engaged and entertained.. then that's worth it."

There is an important implication here, and that implication is that narrative is insufficient to carry a video game on its own, and that the gameplay must be at least competent in order for the player to be involved. In Metal Gear Solid, large sections of the game are devoted completely to narrative. Because of the expectations players have of video games, the lack of gameplay, defined by interaction with, and control over the game, disengages the player from the character. The investment in the story that Kojima is working towards is sabotaged by his own narrative device. We can observe this problem in the shots where Kojima presents material which could not be seen or known by the character. Although this helps create motivations and thus greater complexity for characters other than Snake, it can only help reinforce the detatchment of the player from Snake himself.

The problem with Metal Gear Solid is a problem of presentation and expectations. By attempting to revolutionize the presentation of the narrative in video games by using film techniques, Kojima breaks up the expected ‘flow’ of gameplay, causing dissatisfaction in the player. It is not that the cutscenes are not well-realized or well-conceived; it is that the perception of the nature of video games does not allow for extended and frequent passive experiences. The question then becomes: is it inherent in video games that the player can become invested in the game only through actively doing? Or is it rather our expectations of video games that preclude our becoming invested through non-active experiences? Unfortunately, answering these questions is beyond the scope of this article.