Game Stories

Game Stories

After reading Bob Bates article on the guide to a hero's journey, I have come away with two main points. The first is that the idea of creating, developing and adding a myth into your game isn't as difficult as it seems, as Bates outlines in the first half of the article, myths are a huge part of our daily lives and we are surrounded by them in Religious Faith, Manners and in contributing to society. Bates makes a great point when he talks about comparing drugs to Myth-Substitutes as the user would feel the need to take narcotics to eith create myth when it is not there or to discover new ones in the most real way, through their own perception of reality. The second point i have taken is that creating a hero also isn't as difficult as it may seem. While Bates uses mainly mythological hero's in this article, the same principle can be thought of for comic books and superhero movies. Bates references a list of qualities a hero can posses and of course, just as in mythology we could think of David (Goliath's victim), Beowulf or Cú Chulainn for an example that we all heard about as children, we can also relate many of these points to a hero such as Spider man, although he may be a much more recent creation, a true hero none the less.

 Screen grab from Bob Bates Article 

In the Article 'What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story' I believe that John Sutherland is campaigning for a revolution in Gaming. He talks about how movies could have died had they tried to continue feeding on the amusement and 'New Toy' feeling as he put it. Movies had to evolve into moving picture stories to compete and overtake the live stage performance as the best way to tell a story. I do believe it is possible to create this change again from movies to games. The growing complexity of stories in games is proof of the world willingness to feed on the juiciest story, with no real loyalty to its medium in which it is told. For many, it is now far more pleasurable to play a game about a world war 2 hero, essentially becoming the hero rather than watch even their favorite movie star act the story out on screen for a single 3 hour movie. With the advancements in VR and AI, it is becoming more and more accessible to portray real, complex and intriguing stories within a game. The TV show 'West World' is a good example of humans being sucked in to the idea of being so intuned with the story, they are willing to give anything to live it. In my opinion, the key to a truly great game is to bring the player as close to the story as current tech allows.