Video games are about interactivity, overcoming obstacles, and above all, having fun. So⦠why do they have stories?
Welcome to Story Mode, the series that looks at how games tell stories. For our first instalment, weâre tackling a pretty big question that has surrounded the discussion of video games as art for as long as people have been talking about games at all: does a gameâs story really even matter? Does the story a video game is telling have as much of an impact on the player as the actual mechanics and gameplay elements? Well, considering this is a series about stories in games, itâs probably fairly obvious where we stand on the issue, but weâll get there when we get there.
Thereâs a reason most video game adaptations tend to be pretty bad. Take away the interesting and fun mechanics, and most video game stories fall pretty flat if forced to stand on their own.
Thatâs because – for the most part – a gameâs narrative isnât the thing that dictates the gameplay. In fact, often times, itâs the other way around. The gameplay and mechanics inform the kind of story the game will tell. Why do you think a huge chunk of the games in the RPG genre take place in Fantasy worlds? Well, Fantasy stories lend themselves really well to the kind of mechanics found in RPGs. It also has to do with the influence that Fantasy tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons have had on the genre.
Tetris doesnât even have a story, and itâs among the best selling games of all time – so obviously, story canât be that important, can it? If you were to explain the narrative beats of Super Mario Bros. to someone whoâd never heard of it, they would think you were describing some sort of abstract art piece, not a majorly successful piece of pop culture.
Well, if we want to answer this question and settle this debate once and for all, weâll have to make a few distinctions and define exactly what we mean when we talk about a gameâs âStory.â
First thingâs first: a game is not its story⦠but thatâs also true of pretty much every other visual medium as well: a comic book, movie, or episode of a television series have a lot more going on than just the story each is telling. A good example is the difference between a screenplay a movie. You can hand two directors the same screenplay and theyâll likely go off and make two drastically different movies. The screenplay is the blueprint; the foundation on which to add sound, images, performances, and other essential elements of the medium. The same goes for games – itâs the narrative designerâs job to create a story that provides motivation to the player and ties together all of the interesting and fun mechanics that the game designers are cooking up, but a good story doesnât equal a good game, just like a good screenplay doesnât guarantee a good movie – a game is a culmination of different elements, and the story is just one of those elements.
A gameâs story is also more than just the cutscenes and dialogue. A gamesâ setting can communicate a ton of narrative information purely through visuals. Think about it: just looking at a gameâs environment can deliver a ton of information about tone and genre, and informs how you engage with it. Take an open-world game like Fallout 4 as an example. If you knew nothing about it, you could probably gather quite a bit of information just by looking at its barren landscape.
Thereâs also the concept of âEmergent Narrativesâ – which is just a fancy way of saying âthe stories you create as you interact with a game.â Did your Sims drown because you removed their way out of the pool? Thatâs an âEmergent Narrative.â That violent rampage you went on in GTA? Emergent Narrative. Aimlessly running and climbing your way through Hyrule in Breath of the Wild? You guessed it: thatâs an Emergent Narrative. Itâs not something that was written down as a story beat by the gameâs narrative designer; itâs something that happened because of the way you choose to interact with the game – itâs the personal story of your individualized experience with the game world.
Earlier, I said that if you took away a gameâs mechanics, its story wouldnât be able to stand on its own, which is why movie adaptations so often fall flat. Well, thatâs because a gameâs narrative is informed by its mechanics and vice versa. The two are intrinsically tied together. Game stories are conceived with interactivity and gameplay in mind. The fact that movie licensed games are often terrible isnât used as proof of the shortcomings of film as a vehicle for storytelling, so why would the opposite be true?
So, back to the question at hand: do video game stories matter? Well, if weâve learned anything, itâs that most games canât help but have stories. Setting your game in an environment, having playable and non-playable characters who inhabit that environment, and being able to move through and interact with the environment are all part of the unique storytelling elements that games have to offer. The challenge for narrative designers isnât to make games more cinematic, itâs to find interesting ways to double down on the storytelling aspects that are unique to games, and having a more fluid definition of what it means for a game to have a good, meaningful story.