Spring Break
There is a player here: Storytelling in video games
John Bailey
Issue date: 4/7/09 Section: Focus
My father and I used to play "Wolfenstein 3D" on our old 486. For the occasional hour or two, as rain drummed upon the roof and my mother hovered nervously in the hallway, I was a 5-year-old version of B.J. Blazcowicz, captured by bad zombie nazis and forced to fight for my life.
This is perhaps my earliest memory of a story in a video game. Fifteen years later, games have paraded bigger and better zombies, treacherous corporate maniacs, 'roided-up space marines and ninja vampire assassin girls before my watchful eyes in ever-higher definition. And 15 years later, I still get more chills recalling "Wolfenstein's" fuzzy, brutish Sound Blaster effects - "Haark! Buoaargh!" - than I do playing "Resident Evil 5."
So why haven't the new stories gripped me the same way? Why can't I immerse myself in the nightmare future of "Fallout 3"? Why don't I wake up with cold sweats and visions of Majini gnawing my larynx? Why didn't I cry when Aeris died?
Video games have an important advantage over other art forms: the player does half the work. The developer sets up the world, and then the player rushes off to cavort and gambol. In other words, game storytelling is a two-way street. In some ways, the more the developer tries to tell a story, the clunkier it gets, and the harder it is for the gamer to feel involved.
Square Enix's "Final Fantasy" titles, for all their epic pretensions, suffer terribly from this problem: they've got a story, and it's huge, and you're going to sit there and listen, and nothing you can do will change that.
Some developers, though, seem to have struck this gold mine of storytelling: let the gamer tell the story.
Roger Travis, associate professor of classics in UConn's Modern and Classical Languages program, commented on the importance of the player - or the "receiver" - in game storytelling. Indeed, says Travis, this importance can take on classically "epic" proportions.
"Even in the deepest work of art, the person who created [the art] doesn't have control over the reception of their work," Travis said. "The person who is receiving the work is always going to create the meaning. Games have the ability to put this front and center in a way that I think no medium has had since the bard of Homeric epic."
This is perhaps my earliest memory of a story in a video game. Fifteen years later, games have paraded bigger and better zombies, treacherous corporate maniacs, 'roided-up space marines and ninja vampire assassin girls before my watchful eyes in ever-higher definition. And 15 years later, I still get more chills recalling "Wolfenstein's" fuzzy, brutish Sound Blaster effects - "Haark! Buoaargh!" - than I do playing "Resident Evil 5."
So why haven't the new stories gripped me the same way? Why can't I immerse myself in the nightmare future of "Fallout 3"? Why don't I wake up with cold sweats and visions of Majini gnawing my larynx? Why didn't I cry when Aeris died?
Video games have an important advantage over other art forms: the player does half the work. The developer sets up the world, and then the player rushes off to cavort and gambol. In other words, game storytelling is a two-way street. In some ways, the more the developer tries to tell a story, the clunkier it gets, and the harder it is for the gamer to feel involved.
Square Enix's "Final Fantasy" titles, for all their epic pretensions, suffer terribly from this problem: they've got a story, and it's huge, and you're going to sit there and listen, and nothing you can do will change that.
Some developers, though, seem to have struck this gold mine of storytelling: let the gamer tell the story.
Roger Travis, associate professor of classics in UConn's Modern and Classical Languages program, commented on the importance of the player - or the "receiver" - in game storytelling. Indeed, says Travis, this importance can take on classically "epic" proportions.
"Even in the deepest work of art, the person who created [the art] doesn't have control over the reception of their work," Travis said. "The person who is receiving the work is always going to create the meaning. Games have the ability to put this front and center in a way that I think no medium has had since the bard of Homeric epic."
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