Game Story, Six Gilled Sharks and The Quest For the Narrative Fix-A-Flat

[rdansky]

Every couple of years, we get one of these. And by “these”, I mean “some distinguished gentleman from outside the game industry announces that games aren’t/can’t be art”, and everyone goes nuts as a result. A couple of years ago it was the late Roger Ebert, whose argument could largely be summed up that games weren’t art because they were terrible

Comments

[mythusmage]

In my opinion we would be doing a lot better were we to stop insisting that games have to be story, or even narrative. It's nice to know what we are doing, but for crying out loud, just because somebody came up with an idea does not mean he had the right idea.

[rdansky]

I think there's an appropriate level of narrative for every game, simply because we're narrative-making critters. Tetris doesn't need a convoluted backstory as to where the falling blocks are coming from, but the little Russian dude in the house? Well, that's a narrative element that enhances the game.

[ladyeuthanasia]

Have you been following the Storium Kickstarter? Do you know anyone who was a beta-tester for that?

[rdansky]

I was their $49K stretch goal :-)

[ladyeuthanasia]

Oh, awesome! :D I haven't looked at it closely (mostly because I've been deep in a writing hole). But I did see something about beta testing and wondering how extensive it was.