Hello all,

Now walking into a writers forum and posting something for you is mildly intimidating I must say. I mean imagine walking into a boxing club and asking who would like to spar. It's just not the done thing.
However, I would like to get your take on a certain issue that I myself have a lot of interest in. Please also note at this point I had no idea where to post this so if you have any complaints with that or the admin throw a fit please feel free to have it moved.

The thing I would like to ask you about is a subject I hope you will all take with a certain degree of respect as it is about an entertainment medium that not only is becoming massively successful but also one that may become a new outlet for good narrative.

Recently I have been studying for my degree in computer games design and have started a topic called: Games Narrative. As you can guess we normally look at aspects of games which use narrative, how they use them and what tools of writing are implemented when making a game. Although this seems like a pretty straight forward subject on the surface there are numerous arguments within the industry about the importance of narrative when understanding computer games.

Questions that often come up are one such as: Can narrative take precedence in games over such things as the mechanics? Can games remain a medium free of the same ways of analysis as film and theatre yet become more story orientated? Is there scope for games to become as successful at portraying a story to an audience? Can you deliver a message as well when the linearity of story telling is taken away?

These are SOME of the things I would like to discuss with you, as I hope you have a perspective on this I have not yet encountered. I hope you can give me your views and maybe you can also take something away from this.

Thank you for your time.

There was a rather interesting news/feature story doing the rounds a little while ago about the gaming industry's attempts to draw more women to computer games. The stereotypical gamer tends to be "the single guy who can't grow up"; who's forever spouting Star Wars, who's totally out of touch with the opposite sex and, indeed, much of his own, who prefers to sit in a darkened room all day pretending to blow things up. (Btw, I had a Super Nintendo set as a kid and my poor mother had to virtually peel me and my father from the television for meals - am also a girl, so I don't necessarily subscribe to this rather simplistic profile).

Apparently, the "experts" have decided that what will attract female players are games that involve, as you say, some kind of narrative; a character that you can create yourself, that develops and changes along the way (suffering and redemption), and that requires tests of skill slightly more sophisticated than pummeling an opponent repeatedly and hoping for a KO.

As a teen, I loved gamed like Myst and The Seventh Guest; games that created an "intelligent" alternate world, with the idea that I was solving mysteries and puzzles in order to reveal the story of a lost/trapped soul. Those two also had a slightly historical twist, and although they didn't require you to be a "character" per se, there were plenty of situations that allowed players to imagine what the surrounding story could be.

Just my thoughts, and not sure how helpful they are in terms of answering your questions directly...shall follow with interest!

It's hardly a statistical sample, but the only games my daughter is interested in are things like The Sims, where how the people actually tick is relevant. She'll tell me what happened in detail as other people tell you what happened last night in East Enders. It seems that she either needs a story, with a narrative arc and characters with some individuality about them. (And she likes any of the silly little online games that involve taking dogs for walks or putting cherries on cakes, i.e. objects that she cares about) She did like a game of her brother's - something fable-y or fairy-tale-y - while it was about characters wandering in the forest collecting things and making alliances, but always got bored and gave up when they started fighting. Of course a fight has a narrative arc, but I think you only see it in retrospect.

Emma

The problem with a narrative focussed game, like Halo, is that, as a player, you feel you're being led by the hand. It feels as though the story is forced, and isn't really an intergral part of the game at all. To be honest, I usually skip FMV sequences because in most cases, they don't really enhance game exeperience. Instead, they feel like they've been bolted on, as if to say, "no, this isn't just another level of the same old crap, it's er... well you've got to get the blue key!" - Great, we didn't need FMV or much of a story to enjoy Doom or Duke Nukem, did we?

It's a little differnt with strategic war games like Desert Storm or Mercinaries, becuase the story gives an edge of reality - more of a background than a narrative - a justification for the action - but on the whole, these are games that can be played without really knowing or appreciating who it is you're blowing up.

For me, Nintendo seem to be the only ones who pull it off successfully, making the story a big part of the game - even when the game is non-linear, which is no small achievement. They go for lots of small, interactive vignettes that come together to make the whole - Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and every single Zelda.

Actually, they're not totally non-linear are they? It's more a case of levels of story, where the first few levels can be played in any order, giving a background before allowing access to the next level of narrative, and so on until you reach the game's conclusionn, by which time you've achieve a good all round picture of the story without feeling your going from level to level to level.

So, for what it's worth, perhaps that's the key - small, autonomous parts, layered, to give background, twists, surprises and then conclusion.

Colin M

Excellent points being raised here and many of which are being talked about in the games industry itself.

I myself have often wondered if story telling in games is something to bring around a much larger amount of female gamers. In my own experience, however, I have found many female gamers to want puzzle games such as brain training. The Sims is the most popular girls’ game and one without any real story latched onto it. That isn't to say it is without it as the story in the Sims is very much what you make it.

As for the FMV being latched onto first person shooters I would tend to agree, sometimes story can invade where it just isn't required. Although, I recently read a speech given by a games writer who noted that most of the stories written for first person shooters appears on a packet of space invaders crisps. The evil bad guys have come to our planet and need eliminating by some means. Surely then we can see that there is potential to take games to a higher level? (No pun intended).

For instance could there ever be a place where games deal with some of the issues that books, film and theatre deals with? If you portray war could it be about the emotion, the struggle and the people instead of blasting away as many Nazis as possible. More a Saving Private Ryan as appose to blowing him up and winning the war single headedly.

Some games such as RPGs have made a living out of telling good stories, games such as Final Fantasy has whole fan bases just for the characters they have created. People have been known to have broken down in tears when one of the characters died in Final Fantasy 7.