Games Stories

 

An Image about game stories

Source: Game Media

The art of a stories is the centre piece of a a successful, interesting game that can hold for the test of time. As a game ages over the years, the graphics may fade or the mechanics may not be as smooth as you remember them being, but a good story, will always be a good story, making it worth the second, third or fourth play through. 

The first piece I looked at was "What Every game developer needs to know about stories". The idea of a story within the game developing world, is a hot one, with ever growing quality and further potential, as games evolve and people want more than just some better graphics. Developers are starting to see that they can't just sell their same product year after year and expect growth, they need to tap into the story development to create further connections with their players. 

Games are not movies, they may have a story that can bring forward similar emotions that such a movie can evoke, but the difference is that games are dynamic and must new games can have different stories depending on how the player plays the game. 

Two things that can be said about games. 

1. They are a form of story, not just a new toy.

2. Their particular form of story differs from all previous forms of story, and had other things in common with all forms of story.

These two statements were used to compare movies too plays back in the 20th century and is very relevant to the comparison between movies and games in the 21st century. 

Common Misperceptions 

• Story is Dialog 
• Story doesn't matter

To say story is Dialog is partly true but that is only a part of the larger cake. Story needs Conflict to be effective. The second statement on story doesn't matter is completely disregard able as this is far from the truth. A good story is what is remember within a game. A bad story is what can break a game. 

Another piece of research on this matter was the video "Story telling with systems". This video talks about the use of choices within a games. We see within this video that your ability to chose your own story isn't usually the case but is actually the game developers making you feel like you are doing so. In games such as the walking dead, your choices are remembered but don't make any underlying changes to the story. This differs from other more freely playable games such as Civilisation were it is the games systems working with each other to form a story, rather then the player following the game and its story. 

Throughout these pieces we learn the about the impact story can have within a game, and the use of good story telling can be crucial in the construction of a game worthy of remembering or playing again.