The first “game story” I experienced came from Space Invaders. As I hid behind bunkers and shot up at menacing aliens, a story of interstellar war unfolded in my mind. I wondered, quite consciously, where these aliens came from, why they were attacking me, and would we win this war?

I wrote the story as I played the game, like drawing pictures in my mind when reading a novel. This pulled me forward, as I wanted more stimulus from the game, so my mind would build out more story.

The point of this entire post

If you read no further, please take away this: The most important story in your game belongs to the player. It’s in their head, unfolding the way they want it to. It’s on their lips, as they tell their friends about their awesome game feats. You are best served spending your game design time on a tight feedback loop that evolves as the game levels up, continuously rewarding your player, compelling them to move on to the next achievement.

Finish the story, already

Games hinted around at story lines for awhile, but never really committed. I was disappointed, because video games were so cool I wanted to squeeze every last bit of enjoyment possible out of them. Surely there was some back story I could experience, some characters I could relate to emotionally like I did with books, right?

Yellow girl with a bow, you were such a tease

Disappointment continued after the teasing cut scenes in Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man. Those “Acts” after certain levels hinted of a story, but really continued to skirt the issue. At the time, I felt like I was paying good money to play these games, and never came away with a satisfying resolution to the conflict represented in the game.

It never occurred to me the game designers did not want me to reach a resolution…

The neverending story

The games we played had an important purpose built in to them: suck in as many quarters as possible. While I was searching for an end to the story — some satisfying conclusion — I would never get one. Indeed, if a game allowed itself to come to a conclusion, it would be time to cut off the quarters, right? Players would move on to another game, or a hamburger, or TV show — somewhere other than standing in front of this game. We wouldn’t want that.

You shall not pass

Nowadays, games often force a story down your throat. Just the other day I was playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 with my son, and had to suffer through the predictable story introduction before I could even get started. It is cool how they work in a tutorial along the way, but that first series is something you cannot skip, and it is just painful to go through it — especially if you’ve seen it before.

Super Paper Mario is even worse. Good lord, that stupid annoying sound when the contrived, nonsensical dialog prints across the screen — I can barely stand it! The text should be easier to skip, and, as an aside, that noise should totally be optional.

Forcing your player to read a story or watch a cut scene is a bad move. If you must use story to teach people how to play, let the player skip it if they want.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one

Game stories are basically all the same:

1. Someone is in danger
2. It is someone else’s fault
3. Someone has the ability to be a savior
4. The savior has some brothers, friends, or pets that are eager to help along the way

That’s pretty much it. The cool factor? You get to play the part of the savior. There you have it: every game story wrapped up in a nutshell.

Don’t make me cry

What is all this talk about games lacking the emotional connection of novels and films? That begs the question, assuming every type of entertainment should move people to tears or anger or something. I know you marketing types want to leave a lasting mark, and emotions are a way to do that, but games are not a good vehicle for that kind of emotion.

Jane McGonigal taught me the word “Fiero” in her book “Reality is Broken.” Indeed, “fiero” is the emotional response games are built to toy with. Fiero does not come from a well-written chapter or  plot twist. It comes from the player reaching critical goals during gameplay. This post on the top ten videogame emotions is worth a read.

Like I said at the beginning: the best game story belongs to the player. That’s all.

Let every player self-publish their story

In the early days, we had high score boards on coin-op games, and then in our home game systems. In today’s connected world, we have social networks and public leaderboards. My final piece of advice is to let the player build their own story of success in your game, and make sure they can publish that story to the world by claiming their space on some type of leaderboard, posting their stats to social media, and other ways to share.

Further reading

I really enjoyed Greg Cotikyan’s post, “Where Stories End and Games Begin.” It is worth your time as a game designer to read it.

Learning new skills

GoodLearning.com is all about learning new creative skills in a way that’s fun. Actually, I am the one who is all about that — GoodLearning.com is just the way I try to give this to you!

Desirable goals make learning fun

Let’s face it — sitting in a lecture for an hour trying to learn something new is a real bore. That’s especially true when you don’t really know if you’ll ever use what you’re learning, or how it can be applied.

Here on GoodLearning.com, I try to teach you valuable skills while you make your own video games. When I’m showing you how to create game art like player sprites, enemy characters, and beautiful backgrounds, I hope you’ll never have to say “when will I ever want to use this skill?” In fact, I hope you’ll be thinking “Oh! I can’t wait to get done with this lesson — it just gave me an idea I want to try!”

Engagement helps remember what you learn

You can learn how to build websites, composite photos, and animate characters in a lot of tutorials on the internet. I find these little one-off lessons hard to remember, though.

I’m trying to give you project-based lessons here on this site, so you can see how your new skills fit in the big picture. That makes it easier to recall what you’ve learned, and makes your skills more valuable to any creative team.

Enough. Let’s get started

If you haven’t already, go sign up for a free Level 1 Membership. You get to complete the entire Space Rocks game project — over 20 lessons — for free. You also get the newest 3 lessons on the site free. That means if you can keep up with my posting speed, you can learn it all!

Please, if you run in to problems, have questions or suggestions, contact me soon and let me know!