Backstory

From earliest times, computer games were provided with a backstory, the dramatic context in which the game takes place. This was often presented in part on the back of the game box and fully presented at the beginning of the manual. "The evil Klogg empire has sent its squadrons of Death Fighters to attack Earth. All resistance has been overcome save for a single Earth Fighter; now it's your job to stop the Kloggs!" This was followed by the now-standard line, "The fate of humanity is at stake!" Gee, with stakes like that, who could resist? Unfortunately, the reality of the game always fell far below the promise of the box. Its cover might show a muscled man fighting off dastardly monsters while a woman equipped with physiologically impossible breasts clings to his knees, but the game itself would have little more than orange squares moving around randomly, with a purple square (that's the player, bent on saving humanity) darting about emitting little blue dots that hit orange squares and make them disappear. The incongruity between the lurid text and imagery of the box and the clumsy graphics on the screen was laughable to all but the game players.

Backstory continues to hold its place in games, if only because they do require some sort of dramatic context to explain the events taking place. A great deal of sage advice and erudite writing on the subject has smitten the games industry; would that it had some significance. The fact is, backstory is simply not part of the game; it's mere window dressing. The quality of the backstory has no significance to the game itself; a weak backstory cannot ruin a strong game, and a strong backstory cannot salvage a weak game. Some of the biggest hits in the history of games Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Civilization, and The Sims have no backstory whatever.