There is something special about how video games deliver story narratives. Sure, more traditional formats of delivering stories can elicit the same broad range of responses as games can. Everything from shocking the audience, to getting them to sympathize with a fictional character, to providing them with temporary distraction from the real, to making them examine a different perspective can be accomplished through a well written book as well as with a well crafted game. Yet it sometimes feels like there’s something more that happens when you are engrossed in a game you relate to. It feels like a special connection forms when the story becomes Interactive.
When you think about interactive storytelling you usually think video games. Of course video games are not quite the only example of interactive stories, role playing sessions such as D&D being another good example, but they are by far the most widely recognized and the most easily recognized by the average person. So what makes interactive storytelling so special? Simply it is because while most stories have a singular beginning, middle or end, interactive stories have a plurality of these as the course of the story becomes directly impacted by the person experiencing the story. This quirk makes interactive stories stand out from conventional forms of storytelling and gives them a potential absent from any other narrative format.
The natural follow up would be to ask: “So, how would giving the reader the ability to change the story provide any extra value?” (In case this wasn’t obvious, the short answer is in the title) Plenty of people smarter than me have already pondered this question and given a smarter answer than I likely ever will, but hey it’s my blog and I also want to present my own musing on the subject.
Before jumping straight into attempting answer this question, I think it’s important to take a second to consider another related question: “What makes a story good?”
On first thought it would be easy to think that the secret lies in something simple like an unexpected plot twist, cool combat scenes, a shocking betrayal, a gripping love triangle or any number of things. And, to be fair, none of those answers are technically wrong; these are all things that COULD make the story compelling and hook in an audience. Then again no matter how bombastic, over the top and fun to watch the fighting scenes in a Transformers movie is, you’d probably think twice about claiming they represent the pinnacle of storytelling. To give my own answer to this question, I would say that the secret in writing a good story lies with how well the audience can connect to the story’s characters and become invested with their personal drives through the narrative.
When it comes to writing there are few absolutes and I am, in a way, somewhat biased in presenting this answer, but I do believe there is a lot of merit in this assertion. The reason we are attracted to pieces fiction is that we are attracted to one of their elements and become invested in it. The element in question can range from the setting to art to characters to some core idea that differs from that which you can find in the real world. The key is that something needs to hook us. And in relation to the story specifically, the hook often lies on how the events of the story impact the character and how they in turn guide the story forward. We get invested in the story because we are invested in the characters and the characters are invested in the story to fulfill their own ends. I’m using “invested” a lot on purpose. Because without investment the narrative will fall apart and the audience would leave dissatisfied.
I mean think about it, how many times have you seen an action flick and, even if the action itself was fun to watch, you found yourself bored because you didn’t really care for the characters and didn’t care what happened to them. It hurts the story immensely if the audience cannot form an attachment to anyone in the story. Just imagine if you couldn’t connect to Frodo’s quest in the Lord of the Rings. You’d watch for several hours while a guy you didn’t like marched through the wilderness to throw a ring in a volcano, and by the end you wouldn’t care whether he succeeded or tripped into the volcano and died. That sounds like a miserable movie experience. Even though this scenario is purely hypothetical, it shows how there’s almost a symbiotic relationship between the audience’s enjoyment of the story and their relation to the characters and their plights.
Now, this rule is neither set in stone nor do you have to actively like or relate to a character to have a good story. Stories can be interesting in other ways, but those tales usually don’t put as strong an emphasis on the characters to begin with. The important thing to note is that when you can vibe with the characters there’s a strong possibility you can connect with the rest of the story as the characters experience it.
Ok, so I’ve went on a bit of a long tangent; what does this have to do with interactive storytelling? It all goes back to the idea of being able to connect to the characters. Games give you the ability to inject yourself directly into the story.
Whether you are put directly in control of a certain character, or you are making choices that affect a whole group of people, you are suddenly given control over a part of the narrative. Now you are responsible in deciding whether the characters get what they are looking for or if they stumble and fail. Not only do you become the architect of their fate, but you then get to witness the consequences of your decision. This kind of personal involvement in determining the outcome of a character’s story binds you more closely to them as your role goes from that of a simple observer to that of a friend giving advice and nudging that character along. And this connection can give you a level of investiture that simply cannot be found in other forms of media.
Furthermore, you are not omnipotent. Just as you cannot predict everything in real life you will likely not perfectly guide the character the first time around. You will do something wrong and cause the characters to fail. The characters’ failure is your failure. Their success is your success. You become linked to such an extent that you may find that you may even feel that the story no longer belongs to just the character, but to you as well. The story becomes just as much about you as it is for the character. It becomes your story. In this way games can engage you on a level most other narrative forms cannot; by making you want to experience the end to your own story.
There is an in-joke in the gaming community about how reviewers like to overuse the expression: “This game really makes you feel like insert character.” As funny as the notion that by flicking some joysticks and pressing some buttons makes you feel like a superhero, I think there is a grain of truth in this somewhat dubious claim. The ultimate goal of storytelling is to put you in the shoes of your favorite characters and ask: “What would you do if you were them?” Sure you’d try and act as you would expect that character to act, but any decisions would still be yours because you would be the one making them. I think this is the power of interactive stories; to make it something that is meant for and experienced by you specifically (Yes, you). Because only you get to decide how the story goes and whether the end you arrive at is the end you are happy with.
Here I have to admit that, yes, not everyone will be able to find the level of connection I just described. Also, yes, really good books and movies can sometimes yield the same level of investiture. But I strongly believe that video games, as the forerunners of interactive storytelling that directly integrate the audience into the story, are the only kind of media that can create narratives that will transcend from being simple distractions from the real to ones that make us question what “real” even means.
Now that certainly sounds great, but as to whether we are there yet… Well, not really. Though video games have a vast amount of untapped potential in creating unique narratives, they are still relatively new as a storytelling format and there are still a lot of limits that need to be overcome. Though games can and do immerse people in their fictional narratives, the plethora of factors to account for make it all the easier to also break that immersion, which can potentially be fatal to the viewer’s ability to engage in the narrative. But I will leave that discussion for another time.
P.S. In the end it feels like I didn’t spend much time writing about games at all, did I? I contemplated adding more, but I feel I delivered the point I wanted to deliver and felt any more would be superfluous. No worries, the main point of this post was to compare games to other forms of media anyway, and future blogs will almost exclusively deal with the quirks and troubles of writing narratives for video games.
