mygamestudies.com

It's feels sort of awkward to revisit the old narrative/story vs. gameplay issue. At least in the academic circles it has been flogged to death. Yet, the guys at the Joystiq podcast (warmly recommended, it's the most sophisticated and fun game journo podcast out there!) have been discussing the matter in connection with Mirror's Edge lately, and perceptively. Therefore I decided to take this opportunity to revisit the issue briefly.

My take on the thing nowadays is basically that one aspect of game design is how to distribute information to the players. Every game design is also an information system, and there's lots of various types of information - ranging from points to attributes of a character, and everything in between. One particular information that the player needs is concerning goals. Here my notion coincides with Joystiq's Justin, i.e. that the primary function of story elements in a game should be to motivate the player to move on - in other words, to communicate the next goal (or a set of them) in a way that persuades the player to tackle them, with curiostiy and enthusiasm.

The consequence of such an approach is, basically, that story is 'just' one mode or technique with which to distribute particular information to the player. In other cases it works for the designer's purposes better, in others the choice to go for narrative framing of goals might be just stupid. In Bejeweled, no way. In Puzzle Quest, yes way - to motivate the player to journey to the next bejeweledesque battle. So there you have it.

Technorati Tags: Bejeweled game design game goals Joystiq Mirror's Edge motivation story design