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Aubrey at Wolfire Games recently posted a discussion he had with another game developing friend, Jack Monahan, about mastering gameplay, and what that means to the player and about the game. Eventually they drifted off to talking about how story factors into this, and it took the comments thread a little while to realize that they didn’t mean to say “a good story gets in the way of gameplay.” Actually, what they criticized was a situation where “the story is the best part of a game,” which I agree is a bad thing. If a game is trying to be a narrative, it should have the story and gameplay complement each other without either taking precedence; I will now elaborate on that to the amusement of the audience.

If a game developer feels they cannot tell a good story, or if they can’t get a writer…actually, scratch that, if they aren’t a writer already and they can’t get one, then they should probably be making a simulation game. By “simulation” I don’t necessarily mean Microsoft Flight Simulator or SimCity, that’s just the term I use to say “non-narrative” because “documentary” doesn’t always work (i.e. Space Invaders isn’t exactly based on real life, but it doesn’t tell a story). But assuming a developer feels up to telling an epic tale of some grizzled space marines fighting against insectoid/reptilian aliens in a palette of gray and brown, there are a few things I’d really rather they didn’t do. I will now follow in the footsteps of Our Great Noodly Lord The Flying Spaghetti Monster and give you eight of them.

Continue reading ‘The Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn’ts Of Storytelling in Games’