Chris Crawford talks about the fundamental requirements of a good story and a few mistakes that games might be making in comparison to other media forms.
The first argument that I relate to his document is his stress that games are about things, instead of people – yet stories are supposed to put more emphasis on people and not things. I disagree with this almost completely as games must be looked at as their own separate entity. They are not the same as a movie or a book, although very similar. The aim in a game isn’t to let you be a backseat passenger, watching all the action, you ARE the character and thusly you must play as the character doing things that your character would/could do.
Things being less important than people is true in the sense of attachment in a story, but in an MMORPG game for example, spending 3 days of training in order to fight a boss to get a powerful artefact is undoubtedly going to create attachment to that item, especially with all the built up story around it that you get from other people or players as well as the narrative.
I think MMORPGs are a great example of how objects and people mesh perfectly together, the story plays a huge role with these games (however note that most people choose to ignore the story) and other characters and other real players impact upon the game world in ways that nobody can expect. Invasions, luring monsters, stealing, killing, foulplay, alliances, etc. This all adds to make these games successful, the sheer amount of control over the story of the game. But the narrative is always driving players to find the rare items and it makes it bloody hard to get them too. Knowing that you now carry with you sword that you spent a week looking for that was used by some great ancestor and fought off the scary bad guys who stole it away many years ago gives a great sense of pride in yoru character and helps to further immerse yourself in the storyline.
He also talks about conflict and how they are usually the main focus in games, which is bad because there are many different types of drama that developers could draw upon. Well as a gamer I have played many games and I can say that although the majority of games do draw on violence (if its popular, it will make money) but so many others do use other drama types, and many use a mix of them all. Fable for example is a violence driven game, but it also uses many other drama types to solve its quests. For example if you wander off the beaten path you will find a man cheating on his wife and your given the option to turn him in or play along with his little scheme, either way you get rewarded so you choose the character you want to be.
He also talks about puzzles and them not being a fundamental part of a story. But depending on how you think of a puzzle, I don’t see how this can be further from the truth. If you think about a puzzle in relation to a story, if its all set out in front of you and you know the ending before it even begins, then you wont bother to read or watch on. This is the same with games, the story needs to unfold or be unlocked as yoru play on, and in more advanced games with multiple paths available depending on the choices you make this is even more important. The puzzles themselves define a game, how do I get from point a to point b with only my trusty spoon, if I team up with character A instead of character B I might get to X faster, but A could try and steal it all on me. These decisions wouldn’t be very important in a movie or book as you have no control, but in a game these things shape the future story and puzzles of the game, after all you can consider a game just a series of many puzzles, decision you have to make.
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