Game Stories

Article one was titled “Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Hero’s Journey” by Bob Bates.

According to the article myths are important as they convey the values of society. Myths are how we teach each other who we are and how we should behave. Myths actively guide our actions.  People who figured out where the dangerous animals lived and how to avoid them survived longer than people who didn’t. And people who taught one another about this in tribes, survived longer. Bates believes that games are essentially myth-reinforcing activities and that the player tends to choose the kinds of games that reaffirm their own personal myths. For some it might simply be a need to bring order out of chaos. The most important elements to appear in a mythical story are:

• Establishing the hero’s world.
• The call to adventure.
• Entering the mythological woods.
• Trail of trials.
• Encountering the evil one.
• Gaining the hero’s prize.
• Returning that prize to the community.

There are 000 steps in creating a story. By using Campbell’s observations as a template we get the following:

1.    Pick Your Premise.

2.    Create Your Hero.

3.    Create a Great Villain. 

4.    Show the Hero’s Regular World.

5.    Disrupt the Hero’s World.

6.    Enter the Mythological Woods.

7.    Confront the Evil One.

8.    Acquire the Prize.

9.    The Hero’s Return.

The second article is titled “What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story” by John Sutherland.

Two common misperceptions about games are: story is dialog and story doesn’t matter. When in reality story is conflict. This is extremely important to remember. Classical story structures are simple and they work. This has been put into practice by story tellers of all kinds for thousands of years. Here’s how it goes:

• First, there's a protagonist, a hero.  
• Their world is thrown out of order by an inciting incident.
• A gap opens up between the hero and an orderly life. 
• The hero tries the normal, conservative action to overcome the gap. It fails. The world pushes back too hard. 
• The hero then has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that are pushing back.
• Then there is a reversal. Something new happens, or the hero learns something she didn't know before, and the world is out of whack again. A second gap has opened up.
• The hero has to take a greater risk to overcome the second gap.
• After overcoming the second gap, there is another reversal, opening a third gap.
• The hero has to take the greatest risk of all to overcome this gap and get to that object of desire, which is usually an orderly life.

Characters are important to a story. What a character wears, eats, and drives are all important. But those aren’t the things that make him what he is. That’s characterization. There are different types of conflicts in story. External conflict happens most naturally in games.