Games Stories
I read two articles containing a lot of valuable information on game design and how stories effect us in different ways!
The first article I read was “Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Hero’s Journey” by Bob Bates.
This article was great for us "gamers" that get so caught up in the story of different games and the journeys that take place. The article answers why the hero's journey is so important to us and why we care so much about these characters and their different story arcs. The main reason why this is important is because of Myths. Here are several reasons why Myths are important.
- Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, "Who am I?"
- Myths make possible our sense of community. We are thinking mythically when we show loyalty to our town our nation or our team. Loyalties to our friends or community are the result of strong myths that reinforce social bonding.
- Myths are what lie underneath our moral values.
- Mythology is our way of dealing with the inscrutable mystery of creation and death.
A professor named Joseph Campbell analyzed thousands of myths and discovered that there are many common elements. Here are some of the most important myths that he discovered.
- Establishing the hero's world
- The call to adventure
- Entering the mythological woods
- Trail of trials
- Encountering the evil one
- Gaining the hero's prize
- Returning that prize to the community
Pick your premise, create your hero and finally create a great villain. These are the min three steps of creating an interesting game that will keep the players attention.
The second article I read is "What every Game Developer needs to know about Story".
I found this article interesting as it mentioned some of the common misperceptions about games and mainly their story. There are two massive misunderstandings when it comes to games.
- Story is dialog.
- Story doesn't matter.
The article goes on to say that story is conflict, which I definitely agree with. I play a lot of games and without some type of conflict, the game just gets very boring and repetitive almost. You need a goal, something to achieve and something that may even be difficult. It needs to feel satisfying to beat. The article gives us a story structure that should be followed and is the most common structure in all games.
- First, there's a protagonist, a hero.
- His or her world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident. (Look at the sabotaged dope deal in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for a good example of this.)
- A gap opens up between the hero and an orderly life.
- The hero tries the normal, conservative action to overcome the gap. It fails. The world pushes back too hard.
- The hero then has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.
- Then there is a reversal. Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn't know before, and the world is out of whack again. A second gap has opened up.
- The hero has to take a greater risk to overcome the second gap.
- After overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal, opening a third gap.
- The hero has to take the greatest risk of all to overcome this gap and get to that object of desire, which is usually an orderly life.
Overall I found these articles really informative and they helped me understand game design a lot more. I learned the best ways to go about writing a story for game development and even stories in general so these articles were a great way of understanding more about game design.
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