Game Stories

Game Stories

Hey and welcome back to my blog! Today I will be writing a blog on a reading I went through. This week's readings were based around game stories.

The first reading was "Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the Hero's Journey" by Bob Bates. In this article, Bob explains that the Hero's Journey in a game is important because myths are important. Myths give people something to believe in. Myths give us a sense of identity as well as a sense of community. Myths are what we rely on to ease the fear of the unknown when we think about life and death.

To write game stories, we need to understand how myths are put together and communicated. And that is why the hero's journey is important.

A hero's journey includes multiple elements. The main elements 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

Image 1: https://www.flickr.com/photos/steveczajka/11392783794

The second article I read was "What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story"

by John Sutherland. John discusses how a story is "a universal human experience". We need to follow a story in the game to fully immerse ourselves into it. Conflict in the story helps this.

The importance of characters within a story was also discussed in this article. John explains what mainly makes a character who they are depends on the way they react to things throughout the game. This could be something like a character deciding to risk their own life to save someone else or alternatively deciding to save there self instead of putting there self at risk. The players decisions are a huge part of who they are.