Putting It Together

The importance of story to a game tends to vary according to the complexity of the game. Of course, the importance of a story to a game is usually much less than the importance of a story to a movie. This is because of that magic ingredient, interactivity. Interactivity, at least currently, is at loggerheads with story. The more interactivity is desired, the less we can force the player to follow the story line.

Actually, that's not quite true. Apart from technical limitations, there is no reason why a story cannot be fully interactive and still be satisfying . Star Trek 's holodeck often featured realistic characters and story lines, which adapted realistically to the characters. Of course, we're still a long way from that, even at the most basic level. Chris Crawford's Erasmatron (available from www.erasmatazz.com) makes bold strides in this direction, but there is still a long way to go.

As we've already stated, not all games need a well-developed story ”or even a story at all. For those that do, the stories we've seen so far are generally not that strong. Even the best of them would not make good movies. Those games that have crossed over into movies have been (virtually without exception) poor. Consider the screen versions of Final Fantasy, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Brothers, and Tomb Raider . Granted, the original story lines of the games were not that strong to begin with (with the possible exception of Final Fantasy ), but watching the films , it becomes clear that they certainly weren't strong enough to support a film.

The techniques presented in this chapter are useful for guiding your story development. Remember, however, that story creation is not a formulaic activity. A fair amount of grunt work and creativity still is required. In the words of Christopher Vogler, the hero's journey is a form , not a formula . That is, it's a pattern (one of many) that can be used to develop your game story.