june gloom on 10/3/2009 at 05:03

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and does a poor job at it

Tonamel on 10/3/2009 at 05:46

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You nailed a couple of the main points yourself in an earlier post. There's an inherent interest created by making someone an active participant in the story. There's a difference between watching something happen, and doing it yourself.

There's also major differences in the way the player gets narrative information. If they were watching a movie or reading a book, they would get the plot and backstory handed to them at predetermined times. Games allow for a much less linear method of storytelling, allowing the player to discover the backstory for themselves (or perhaps not at all).

When Aerothorn was looking for suggestions for his Game Narrative independent study, I recommended (http://www.zincland.com/7drl/liveonce/) You Only Live Once, and I'll do so again here. It was made in a week, so it's not the deepest of experiences, but it has a mechanic that I think makes the storytelling quite a bit more interesting than if it had been in another medium.



A game I'm working on right now has the game board switch to the afterlife if the player dies, so we're dealing with suicide as a gameplay mechanic. We're doing it because the story calls for it, but that doesn't mean we aren't stopping at every stage and asking "Is it fun?" We still want good gameplay mechanics (and art and etc), but we end up with what we do because of the story.

Oh, also:



If you're playing The Longest Journey for the puzzles, you're doing it wrong. ;)

june gloom on 10/3/2009 at 08:55

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Red Orchestra is proof that realism does not necessarily mean fun.

Ulukai on 10/3/2009 at 19:49

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Oh, the irony.

I've having trouble finding your points amongst all the words you've used :(

doctorfrog on 10/3/2009 at 20:21

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Ok, I was the one who used the term "developer-facing," so let me just set straight what I meant.

Consumer-facing terms, such as RPG, First Person Shooter, etc., are there to let the consumer have some small idea of what a game is like to assist in their purchase. Developer-facing terms in this article help designers define what approach they are taking toward a game. The power of language is that, once you name something, you can talk about it, and if you can talk about it, you can understand it better.

I just thought that looking at games for a moment the way that developers look at them (how they're made, rather than how they're played) might give us a new way to describe games and what makes them good. I think the terms are pretty valid, and even if they aren't, they could stimulate discussion such that we can find better ones.

It's just that simple. And just that complicated.