What Games Are: Game Design, Development, Publishing, Marketing and Art

Games Don't Tell Stories. People Tell Stories.

I posed the title of this post as a topic at GameCamp.

The idea is this: We get very heated on the discussion of whether games are a storytelling medium or not, with members from all four lenses often talking at cross purposes. Games historically do a bad job of telling stories but sometimes do a good job of catalysing memorable experiences. Those experiences then go on to be formed into stories by players, post hoc. 

What do you think?

Camera Comes First [Game Design]

Games have their own visual rules which are often contrary to other kinds of camera. Camera design dictates how players see into the game world, and ultimately how they play, so without good camera design your whole game may end up unplayable.

It’s very difficult (read: expensive) to change a poorly designed camera without rewriting a game entirely. This is why I consider gamatography (like photography, but for games) to be the first design task on any project, the first spec to be written and the first code that needs to be prototyped.

There need to be clear rules that will govern the camera throughout the whole of the game, sooner rather than later. Do it right and camera acts as a foundation on which you can build. Do it wrong and you’ll create a user experience nightmare.

You Can't Make Players Feel [Design]

One of the biggest misconceptions that game designers seem to carry around with them is the idea that games make people feel. This mistake manifests in a variety of ways, but for the most part the designer ends up making his game talk at the player, while they are unable to do anything. Using ham-handed dialogue and clumsy imagery, the game in effect lectures the player.

Games do not make people feel. No art does that. Feeling is a response, but the kind of response that it evokes is neither uniform nor a simple metric. It is partly a result of stimulus, but also partly what that stimulus means to them. Fear, love, humour, excitement and joy all come from within, and this is why art relies on symbols to try and draw them out.

Video Game Writing and the Sense of Story [Writing]

Hot on the heels of my post about player characters actually being dolls, I came across a video (via Rock Paper Shotgun) from Game Theory with Scott Steinberg in which he asked about interactive fiction and storytelling in games. Have a look:

Interactive Fiction: The Art of Video Game Storytelling

This is the marketing story of games and storytelling that developers have told for decades. It’s an aspirational story, but look beyond the highlights to the substance underneath and it doesn’t really stack up.

Many of the struggles that game writers face today have not changed since the early days. Inherent contradictions prevent game storytelling from becoming more than it is, and I’d argue that it has reached the limits of technique. In 30 years of gamemaking there have never been, and likely never will be, any good game stories.

And yet, budding game writers, do not lose hope. Your contribution is more important than ever. Allow me to paint a new picture of your future for you:

Cars, Dolls and Video Games [Narrativism]

When asking whether games are an art capable of greatness, the question is often conflated with stories. Games are played on a screen, where films and TV also exist, and have epic moments of tension that seem dramatic (but are actually thaumatic). The language becomes confusing, and some theories take this too far.

They posit that players becomes heroes in their own game stories, just as actors play heroes in movies. This is not really the case. In believing that games are special, the theory tries to borrow from other art forms’ specialness rather than define games on their own terms. It doesn’t work. Games are an art, period. But we can’t really own that statement properly until we deconstruct many of the tropes that have seeped in from other arts. So let’s start right here, right now:

There is no such thing as a player character.