We talk a lot about our favorite stories in video games, regularly applauding the narrative prowess of the creators of Bioshock, Earthbound, and Grim Fandango. Some video games are routinely compared to their filmic counterparts (See Grand Theft Auto 4 and The Godfather). But what interests me most about video games is the medium's ability to allow users to create their own stories. We also talk a lot about emergent narrative on this blog as one of
the things that video games can do that other mediums cannot. As Chuck Klosterman says:
Near the end of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara asks Rhett
Butler what she's supposed to do with the rest of her life, and he says
that (frankly) he doesn't give a damn. Now, the meaning of those lines
can be interpreted in many ways. However, what if that dialogue
happened only sometimes? What if this scene played out differently for every person who watched Gone with the Wind?
What if Rhett occasionally changed his mind, walked back into the
house, and said, "Just kidding, baby"? What if Scarlett suddenly
murdered Rhett for acting too cavalier? What if the conversation were
sometimes interrupted by a bear attack? And what if all these
alternative realities were dictated by the audience itself? If Gone with the Wind
ended differently every time it was experienced, it would change the
way critics viewed its message. The question would not be "What does
this mean?" The question would be "What could this mean?"
Steve Gaynor detailed three levels of storytelling in a recent blog post. Consider "High Level Storytelling":
The player determines what elements are present in
the gameworld, and any narrative that happens there is entirely a
collaboration between the player and the game's systems. The only
fiction determined by the designer is the broad premise of the game's
setting, and individual building blocks for potential outcomes. The
Civilization series, SimCity, and The Sims exemplify this type of
storymaking.
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