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Six words about stories in games

Sat, 01/14/2012 - 17:37 — lewpuls

According to a recent tweetdeck, one of the trending:worldwide topics on twitter was 6 word stories. In the past few months I've asked people to say 6 words about game design, programming, wargames, and casual games.

This time the charge is this: say six words about stories in games (or stories and games, if you prefer).

Comments

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ReluctantPirateGames - 01/14/2012 - 19:34

Wait, why am I doing this?

Stories...

HandwrittenAnthony - 01/14/2012 - 23:15

... permeate many significant user gameplay decisions.

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An interesting exercise!

I think a game's narrative drives a lot of the decision making during gameplay. One personal example: I'm currently playing Skyrim, and I have been feeling guilty about killing bears. It didn't seem like something my "character" would do, so I've started using calming abilities to stop their attacks. I haven't done this for any other creatures, and in terms of economics I come out at a loss, as the leather yield from their pelts is better than many other animals. If there wasn't any imperative to play through the game as a story, then I wouldn't have any qualms whatsoever eradicating the bear population for my own gain.

I ended up substituting the word "all" for "many" in my reply to the exercise, because at some stage certain games go beyond their narrative into pure goal-oriented strategy. Like Chess - although there is an inherent story in the setup, once you've played for a little while the narrative doesn't matter so much as the strategy and outcome.

As much as I want to wave the "story is important" flag until my arms drop off, doing so is a surefire way to start up an age-old argument that will probably never be resolved. I think that I'll settle for "every game has a narrative, and many contain stories that help guide the player" and leave it at that.

Some examples (all mine):

lewpuls - 01/16/2012 - 10:46

Not the best medium for storytelling
Stories provide context for learning gameplay
Themes influence gameplay, atmosphere does not
Players should write their own stories
Story often an excuse for action
HiSTORY games can be learning tools
Gameplay must come first, story later
A game *story* idea? Worth nothing.
Game designers are rarely story tellers
Linear stories tend to stifle gameplay
Story in games? Write a novel.
Film envy will get you nowhere

You can see from my examples

lewpuls - 01/16/2012 - 10:51

You can see from my examples that I'm not a big fan of imposing story on a game. Story can certainly provide a context, as in your bear example. But that's your choice, not the designer's. Even in historical games, I prefer to let players determine history, not try to make them follow history. That's what SPI tended to do, and it was terrifically wrong-headed because what happened in history is often not what was most likely to happen. For the long version see my article "Designing for Cause vs. Designing for Effect" (historical game design), "Against the Odds Magazine", January 11 #30 now also at
http://pulsiphergames.com/Articles/DesigningforCausevsEffect.htm

I don't disagree with your

HandwrittenAnthony - 01/16/2012 - 22:33

I don't disagree with your points - can't really - and I don't think any game designer could. This is one of the frustrating parts of this conversation for me, in that every time the arguments come up, someone settles on 'story can't take the place of gameplay'.

Which is entirely correct.

Without gameplay, we don't have an actual game. I don't think there's any room for wiggle on the argument at all.

But I think the vocabulary of the two sides differs greatly as to what constitutes a story.

I don't think - at least I hope - that the pro-story camp see cinematic conventions and lengthy cut-scene as the epitome of story-telling in games. Perhaps they were some years ago, but only because designers and writers were still trying to find their footing amongst the rocky highlands of advancing technology. Cut-scenes shouldn't tell a games' story. Cut scenes and cinematic conventions - if used at all - should be there to set up the plot, or characters, or setting, but not the execution of the actual story.

This is where I start to get excited about this discussion.

Different kinds of stories suit different kinds of mediums. Games, by their interactive nature, have the incredibly enviable position of being able to pass the storytelling from the media to the user. Story-telling in games shouldn't be a one-way street. The story is emergent from the player's gameplay: as per the definitions in your article, the stories occur due to the design of systems around the intention of a cause, not an effect.

There may be individual games - even entire genres of games - that struggle to get this right. They want to superimpose their ideas of setting and character over the gameplay. In those circumstances, I guess I might have to (reluctantly) agree with you.

But game storytelling - at least how I experience it and am learning to design for it - is about setting up a context which, through gameplay, the users can experience for themselves.

I don't know, perhaps this means I've strayed too far from my pro-story brethren? I consider Minecraft to be a pillar of emergent narrative and an amazing tool for story-telling. For me, it comes down to picking the right medium for your story, and designing them both to complement the overall experience. I believe that games provide the opportunity to tell stories that can't be told anywhere else, because at the end of the day the stories will fall into the hands of the gamer to tell.

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