Game Narrative - Who's Got the Controls?

Video games are often degraded as "lower entertainment" in favor of movies and books because they "can't tell a story." This, however, is patently untrue. Most video games have some kind of story to tell, but not all of these are stories in the traditional, movies-and-books sense. The assumption that people make when they think of a story is that it is something that is told to them - a thoroughly premeditated tale in which an author is simply relaying events to the consumer. One of the biggest draws and biggest challenges of video game stories is that this is in most cases simply not feasible because of the amount of control the player has over in-game events.

Does that mean a video game cannot tell a story? Of course not. Some games, such as the Ace Attorney series, consist almost entirely of story, driving the player through a linear narrative and occasionally quizzing the player on how well they've kept up with the mystery by way of court battles. In these "battles," a story unfolds, but stops at a key moment, at which point the story will not progress until you choose the correct piece of evidence to present to make your case. This linear storytelling style is very much in line with a novel or movie, and contains a very tight, author-controlled script by limiting player options to the point where they must follow the narrative. It's a similar thing in many action games - the story is what drives the player forward to complete the fast-paced challenges or "shoot the aliens" or whatever he/she has to accomplish. In the new game Halo: Reach, a large part of the motivation to complete the single player campaign is to experience the unfolding science-fiction backdrop to the in-game events. While the story itself is somewhat linear, the player actually assumes the role of the main character and executes th premeditated events.

But that's not the only way games can tell stories. In fact, video games have created their own, entirely new way to tell a story. The player-created story has been around for a long time - certainly since the creation of the on-screen avatar, but also dating back to text-based adventure games. These text-based games, as well as many modern games, take a dungeons-and-dragons-esque approach to storytelling - the author simply presents a world to the player, and the player explores it to make his/her own story. Nielsen mentions the adventure game Blade Runner, in which the player makes choices at key points to advance the story in different directions. Branching like this is a very common way to execute the player-created story, as it is still very closely tied to the linear narratives of books and movies, but with the option for the player to choose his/her own narrative experience from a finite list of possible stories. It's almost like the game contains a large number of different books and the player simply chooses which one he reads (it is similar in this way to the already-established concept of a choose-your-own-adventure novel). Roleplaying games, such as World of Warcraft, will often choose to drop the player in the middle of a world and offer them quests to complete, giving them further freedom to tell a completely different story. Not constrained to a linear narrative, the players can choose to complete or not complete the quests as they please, allowing them to explore the world as they wish, which creates a story in itself. I can't recall how many times I've heard a friend say "So, I was playing WoW the other day, and..." and tell a story about what happened in the game. There is a story in even the most nonlinear of games, but it's a different kind of story from the traditional narrative - it's a player-created story.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS. This is ridiculous. I can publish this as it is, but I can't do it if I add even one more letter to the post. I had to delete a paragraph to be able to add this section. Continue reading the post in the comments, assuming I can make those work...