Game design is narrative design: Exploring video games’ ‘automatic stories’
Game design is narrative design: Exploring video games’ ‘automatic stories’
Game design is narrative design: Exploring video games’ ‘automatic stories’
By Sorrel Kerr-Jung
January 19, 2023
Summary
A "Good story" in a video game is usually a coherent narrative with characters and events, ideally one that's augmented or enhanced by gameplay.
It's a kind that only exists in games and one that exists in every game.
Where life is a story we write, defined by our experiences, games are stories we come to, and stories we supplement with those experiences.
How do games like that fit into my theory of the automatic story?
Even in narrative games that don't allow for much experimentation I find that two stories are always present.
To continue playing is a narrative choice that the player makes, consciously or unconsciously, as the co-author of the automatic story.
That's not the same story as the one the game is telling; if you put the game down, both stories will stop at the same time, but they'll both mean something different.
Reference
Kerr-Jung, S. (2023, January 19). Game design is narrative design: Exploring video games' 'automatic stories'. Destructoid. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://www.destructoid.com/game-design-is-narrative-design-exploring-video-games-automatic-stories/