Styles of Storytelling

In narrative driven video games, there tend to be two major schools of thought. On one side you have the "old-school" style of thinking in which stories are presented linearly, much like a book or a movie would be. More recently though, we've seen many games from western developers featuring non-linear stories. What this means is that the player can have a significant impact on when and how certain events play out in the game.

The most notable example of this style of story telling is BioWare's Mass Effect series. In those games, players create a character (male or female), choose their appearance, and embark out into a rich sci-fi universe. Not only do players choose the appearance of their character, but they also choose how their character behaves. Every time you interact with another character in Mass Effect, you choose what the character you made will say, and what you say can and will have a profound impact on the game. Players who choose their words carefully can avoid certain conflicts altogether, while a more aggressive style might earn a few more enemies than other players. Sometimes, your actions can even determine whether or not major characters will die.

An example of the dialogue system in Mass Effect.

The benefit to having a story like this, where the player chooses where to go and what to do, is that it allows the player to truly role-play. That is, they can decide what type of character they want to be, and truly become that character. It offers new levels of immersion in video games when you're playing as a character who is ostensibly just an extension of yourself. It's something really amazing, and it's something that's really only possible through video games!

What Roles Can Video Games Play?

Video games as a means of artistic expression are so incredibly flexible and capable of so many things. To many people, the many forms that video games have adopted in recent years is something kept somewhat in the dark. Hopefully this post will illuminate this for some people. As a wannabe designer, it's important to understand the different roles video games can choose to play, and to be able to identify what role (or roles) my own games should adopt. I break the modern schools of game design down into four categories.

Narrative
As technology advances, more and more becomes possible in video games. But most of all, the use of video games as a means to tell a story has become more and more common. Pick any game at random that's been released in the past decade and you can bet that there's going to be a narrative of some kind involved. Generally, your average video game nowadays is going to be a combination of narrative and skill stimulation (more on that below).

As the visuals get better and human faces become more believable (yet stylized), video game narratives become stronger and stronger. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves pictured above.