I’ve been tracking the games and storytelling issue on the web and on other resources for a while now. Games as in video games, virtual worlds, board games, games. So let me open with a modest statement – games are not a form of storytelling. Yes, I know many readers will not like this but being a storyteller and after pondering this thought deeply and reading a lot of what is being written out there – games are not a form of storytelling.
Games do have narratives, plots, characters, forms, some of them even have an emotional arc or prompt one in the players; some games follow story-rules of various sorts and some even have a good story in their background, but they are not storytelling. Story is one thing, storytelling another. Digitizing a story might be possible. We might even be able to digitize a storytelling event one day but my questions are – what for? will it be worth something?
What for? that’s an easy one – for money. Storytelling is present in the world for over 6,000 years and it is very powerful, we know that. Creating a digitized application can turn it into a real money maker. Will it be worth something? depends on what you percieve as ‘worth something.’ I know I’m stepping on thin ice here but I’ll do it anyway – if you were to write music would you consider anything ‘worth something’?
Storytelling is an art form – to enjoy and master. Many people say we are all storytellers. No we are not, although we all have a story to tell. We can all draw but are we all artists? We can all make an attempt at storytelling but being one will take much more than that. The game indusrty is constantly performing a basic mistake (sorry guys..) – trying to build a character through it’s characteristics, not it’s character. In this case – the character of storytelling.
If you want to know how to incorporate good storytelling into games you can try and acquire many of it’s characteristics – narrative, plot, metaphore, emotional arcs, forms etc. but you better find out through experience, because storytelling is not an intellectual profession - it’s art. There is a physical experience to it and as long as you try and learn it from books you are missing something very profound.
To be continued…
