Game Stories

Dillon Eagers Game stories Week 10

Link to image: here

For my week 10 reading I was tasked with reading through articles on the impact the stories of games have on the player and the game itself overall.

Link 1 
Into the woods: a practical guide to the hero's journey by Bob Bates link: Here

The first article I read on this was "Into the woods: a practical guide to the hero's journey by Bob Bates" . This article follows Bob bates a veteran designer who talks about  the following things.

• The History of archetypes
• The structure of Joseph Campbell's Hero,s Journey

At the 2005 Game developers Conference Bates describes how when making the game for several years ,he found that from what he was reading about the heroes journey from books was quite vague to him as there were all of these stages in which the character may or may not interact with or have to go through.What makes this confusing is that them being told that they may not have to interact to begin with makes it hard for the writer of the article to know what to make of it. 

what was helpful in reading from this article was that it provided the important question of " What practical use is the Hero's journey for us as storytellers and game writers". I personally believe this is a very important thing to consider when making many things in a game from the story of the game itself , to the impact in the story's characters/ side characters can make.

At the bottom of the page the writer also left the following link to similar things to this topic on the Gamasutra website. The following link to this is here.

Link 2:

What every game developer need to know about the story by John Sutherland link : Here

The second article I read was "What every game developer need to know about the story by John Sutherland ". In this article John Sutherland goes over how the story is and quote "a hot item in games, Partly this is because the quality bar is rising in this relatively young art form". The states that as games evolve more the people ( the players) want more depth . In this article the writer addressees the following things.

• Defining Gaming as a form of story and that games are indeed not movies
• Highlights two major types of misunderstandings in gaming such as Story is dialog and Story Doesn't matter.
• A starting place which Highlights how things such as conflict in a story must be planned from the beginning of the development cycle.
• How classical stories move. This highlights things such as the protagonist, A gap that opens up between a hero and orderly life, risks and challenges to overcome, a reversal which helps a character learn something they did not know, overcoming a second gap/ obstacle and finally  taking on the greatest risk in order to  get to that object of desire.
• Why Characters matter to games/ their significance
• The importance of reversals
• Story forms before games
• Types of conflict/ types of story
• Empathy and how it may relate to the flip the protagonist has
• Paces stretching , while dialog shrinks
• Looking At a game story that works
• All three acts of a game
• The games endings
• Story and the writer
• Story and the whole development team

Overall I found this the most helpful out of all the articles as I like how the writer broke down all these factors into different headings as well as used GTA vice city one of my favorite games of all time as an example for this article.

Link 3:

Link to "Why do today's video games need narrative to stand out?" here

The third and final link I chose to use for this weeks reading was an article by Johnyorkestory.com on "Why do today's video games need narrative to stand out?". The reason I chose this particular article as my third choice is because I like how not only does it mention that as game designers our primary objective is to create a entertaining experience for the player which I truly believe is true as otherwise what possible appeal does the player have to these games. I also like how the writer f the article addresses the issue that 80% of games are abandoned by the players before they even reach the end, completing the game. It also mentions how narrative based games like heavy rain and life is strange, have a completion rate of  60-70% which amazes me considering the fact that the story would be the main incentive in my opinion to play these games.

My Conclusion

I found this reading overall quite interesting mainly due to link 2 and link 2 as not only did one relate address the issues by relating it t my one of my favorite games from when I was a kid, but also how in link 3 it showed percentages of players playing these certain types of game and how the percentage of people focused on story completion seems to be becoming a more frequent issue in the business.