Category Archives: story in games

An interesting blog discussion is forming between TRC (over at Tales of the Rampant Coyote) and Scorpia (over at her lair) about the apparent conflict between drama and fun in games, and the differences between heroes in movies (who often start off as accomplished heroes) and heroes in games (who typically must work their way up from the embarrassment of “level one”).

Mostly, the two points being made are that (1) conventional stories where the protagonist or hero never suffers setbacks or defeats are dull, and (2) games typically allow players to proceed through the game story without having to suffer these setbacks (mostly via save and reload). The player’s constant desire to win — and the ever-present ability to save and restore [More...] Read the rest

As expected, the response to Adam Maxwell’s opinion piece that I mentioned previously has been swift and zealous. The article continued to elicit powerful responses on GameSetWatch, including an impressively long entry from Era, with this excerpt:

“Interactivity does not have to suffer from linearity. Interactivity does not equate to choice. Very common misconceptions plaguing both designers and people on the outside looking in. Our medium can be used for more than point/goal based competitions. We don’t have to have everything fit into the standard control schemes for platformers, action games, racers or shooters. We can restrict control just as the director restricts a camera to a specific scene. We can restrict the camera on top of control too, but don’t remove any of

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There’s an interesting blog tête-à-tête underway, triggered by a (perhaps intentionally) provocative opinion piece by Adam Maxwell over at GameSetWatch on “The Case Against Writers In The Games Industry.” In it, Adam makes an argument that writers are perhaps an unnecessary part of game development, and that game designers offer more bang for the buck, at least as far as he’s concerned:

“For the same price (sometimes cheaper, I’m sad to say), you can hire a designer who is also an unsung writing hero (they exist in far larger numbers than anyone wants to give the industry credit for) and when the story is done, that same designer can be there to throw his lot into the fire with the rest of the designers and

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