Games + Storyworlds: The Game Comes First

I’ve written before about telling stories that fit into existing storyworlds. But those words of wisdom were of a generalized nature, speaking to “stories” in the broadest sense — novels, web-fiction, movies, video games, comics — whatever medium you (or the client) care to use.

I’d like to take a couple posts and talk specifically about writing game stories within a larger storyworld context.

Definitions

First, I should define my terms:

• “Game story” refers to the narrative integrated into the game to provide background and context for the player’s actions within the game.*
  
• As for “game”… well, I’ve got a can of worms here on my desk labeled “Defining Games” but I’m not opening it. Not today. Just assume we all know what “games” are and let’s move on.
  

The Golden Rule

The golden rule for games writing is this:

When creating a game story, it’s the role of the story to support the game, not the other way around.

Writers don’t like to hear this. I’ve even been told that I’m wrong. But I stand by that rule, comfortable in the knowledge that there are probably exceptions out there somewhere.

Finally, I recommend reading this post, in which I expound on the role and benefits of story in games. It’s goes into a little more depth on the subject, and has a great ketchup metaphor, which is what I hear the kids are into these days.

Moving On

Now that we’ve laid some groundwork, next post we can start looking at how to fit game stories into their storyworld.

* Yes? You in the back? True, players do create their own, unique stories on top of what the writers supply, but I’m just defining terms here. We’ll get into player stories in a later post.