Does Storytelling in Video Games REALLY Matter?

There's a fairly famous quote when it comes to video game storytelling by John Carmack. "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

Thanks to its memorable, uh, stylings, this quote has jumped around and has been brought up almost every time I talk about storytelling with other game developers. Even on the very first project I ever worked on, I had another writer tell me this quote as justification for why nobody would care about any plot holes or lore inconsistencies in our game. Betrayed by one of my own!

So that's it, then, right? Quain, you're a game writer and an author, so your stance is, emphatically, "Storytelling IS important in games. It DOES matter", right?

You're going to hate me for saying this, but the answer (in my experience at least) is a bit more nuanced than a quick quote. Though, if I HAD to put my opinion about video game storytelling in a format similar to John Carmack (a game developer who is, I will note, way more talented than I am) I would say this:

"Story in a game is like a parachute while skydiving. You can go without, but do you really want to?"

The Problem with Game Storytelling

I could go into a history lesson on how young video games as a genre are (and believe me, I'm tempted. I find this stuff fascinating), but I think for now I'll just leave it at this: compared to other storytelling genres, video games are essentially in their awkward teenage years. They're experimenting, often copying their role models, and generally just trying to figure themselves out.

This experimentation has led to a Frankensteining of storytelling mediums that, for the large majority of video games, feel tacked on. Think about the in-world books and journal entries throughout massive RPGs; essentially just in-world flash fiction pieces. Audio logs found in conveniently placed locations; the radio storytelling of yore (they've always reminded me of the Twilight Zone radio broadcasts my grandfather would listen to when I came to visit). Cutscenes are, cut and dry, film, and I don't think anyone is trying to deny that.

The problem with these borrowed storytelling elements is that they lack, or sometimes even go against, the storytelling mechanic of video games that make it its own unique medium.

Interactivity.

To paraphrase a lesson from one of my mentors, Susan O'Connor: where other storytelling mediums (film, music, novels, etc) are predetermined narratives in which everyone experiences the same story by the end, video games are a conversation between players, and the amount of stories that can be told are as varied as the amount of people who play them.

To avoid nerding out too much in one post (again, believe me, I could), we'll simply define a new term. Emergent narrative is the natural, often personal story, that is told when a person experiences something. The broadest example I can think of is actually sports: Bottom of the ninth, two runs down, third batter up to the plate. The tension is palpable, there's still a chance of victory, but its an underdog story now. The first two pitches are strikes, the next three are balls. This is it. No matter what, this next swing progresses the game, for better or worse...

It's the narrative we build up around ourselves as things happen, and it's something video games excel at. Emergent narrative moments are something that can happen at any time in our lives, with any experience, but sports (and games!) create an environment to have these moments happen more often. Rules. Rules take chaos and give it narrative opportunity by providing structure.

Consider what most stories need: characters, conflict, goals, and a plot (whether those goals are accomplished). Games cast their players as the characters, against opposing teams, and give them the simplest goal of all: Win. The other rules (what to do with the ball, where to run, whether both feet leaving the ground disqualifies you, etc) are put in place to provide mini conflicts, and narrative moments (Oh no! My favorite player just broke the rules, and now she's in the penalty box! If she breaks the rules again, she'll be ejected from the game!). That and to keep the players safe, of course.

Alright, woah, Quain, aren't you getting a little lost in the plot here? Weren't we talking about whether or not storytelling belongs in games? Now we're talking about emergent narrative, and sports, and rules, what gives?

Maybe you're right. Maybe I did get lost in the plot a bit there.

Or maybe that was the SICKEST TOPIC TRANSITION EVER!!!

What Video Game Storytelling Misses

Let's circle back to the John Carmack quote.

At the risk of seeming antithetical to my stance, I don't entirely disagree with Carmack, but not for the reasons you might think. As games have taken more and more from other mediums, especially film with cutscene heavy blockbusters like God of War or The Last of Us winning awards for their stories, they risk losing what makes them unique as a medium.

The more we treat video games like films, or radio, or novels, or anything that is not video games, the more we take away what makes video games unique. That sweet, sweet interactivity.

Some of my favorite games of all time are games that have "no story". Tetris, Galaga, Minecraft, or more recently; Balatro. At most, these games have narrative frames (you're a spaceship pilot fighting aliens in space. Go!), but they aren't trying to tell a story. Tetris isn't taking you through a wide, world sweeping story where you're stacking and deleting the world's garbage in order to save it from the trash monsters; it's a game about stacking blocks.

What these games do extraordinarily well, however, is cater to the player's emergent narrative through providing a rule-bound sandbox. Balatro is an excellent example of this: the narrative is how the player chases their collections, what jokers and vouchers and card packs they buy, what deck they play with, what taro cards they keep rerolling, hoping to find. Each game, whether its 5 minutes or 50, has its own narrative dictated by the player, allowing them to come out with story after story they're often excited to share, especially with other players of the same game!

And they cater to this emergent narrative by focusing on the player experience. What they want their players to take away from the game when they play. What will keep the ideal players coming back again and again. Some devs call this "finding the fun": identifying what's fun and unique about your game and focusing the gameplay to reinforce it.

It isn't a coincidence that some of the greatest games (that I can think of, and believe me, I'm not a paragon of knowledge) are games that have a clear, reinforced player experience. But that doesn't mean storytelling in video games needs to be sacrificed for the player experience. It means the narrative we should be focused on telling first is that of the player.

And sometimes, that player experience we want to deliver? It requires another narrative. An explicit narrative. It requires, what John Carmack might describe as, a story.

SEGWUEY!!!

Where Story Meets the Player Experience

What do you want from your game?

Do you want to scare your players? Make them feel powerful, or like an underdog? Make them feel like a superhero, or fill them with a sense of pride?

Whatever that core player experience is, gameplay, audio, art; everything should point to it. Reinforce it. Bolster it. And your story should be no different. Like the other elements of a game, the story isn't necessary. You can make a game without audio or art no problem. In fact, it'll make the entire game creation process a whole lot easier if they're omitted. But would you want to? Probably not.

What matters is that the elements match what you're going for. Want to scare your players? The environments should probably be dark and foreboding, with creepy ambient music and loud jump scare sound effects (that I will immediately turn all the way down in the settings menu).

And your narrative? It should be equally as scary.

It should set out to create environments, characters, motivations, setbacks, antagonists, climaxes, and every other narrative moment you can think of that align with that player experience.

For simplicity's sake (too late, I know) I'm going to refer to the game's explicit narrative (the written story) as the narrative, and the game's emergent narrative (the unwritten player story) as the player experience. Both of these are important, and both of them deserve devoted time and effort, but I think it's safe to say that when Carmack is talking about the unneeded story, he's likely referring to the narrative, not the player experience.

But does that still make him wrong?

Case Study: Uncharted

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy by Naughty Dog

Now, let's use the Uncharted franchise as an example. Not because I particularly care a lot for those games (though they are very good), but because it's one of the easiest games for me to talk about in this context, and I am very, very tired.

Uncharted sets out to make you the hero of an action adventure. To make you Indiana Jones, without the name. This means raiding tombs, discovering lost artifacts, following treasure maps, solving puzzles, and fighting bad guys. It also means giving the players a sense of wonder and scale, providing interpersonal character conflicts, and making them feel like an explorer.

Now, you could make Uncharted without Nathan Drake, or any of his associated narrative. The player would still solve puzzles, but... that's about it. Where are these puzzles? What are they made of, where do they lead, what mechanisms power them? You don't even have to dive too deeply into "the lore" of discovering who left these ruins here and why before you realize: to set your game anywhere is to give it a narrative.

Likewise, you can make an Uncharted game without any characters: a lone, disembodied camera running around solving puzzles without anyone around. But then where's the conflict? Where's the interpersonal relationships? Where's the snarky, comedic tomb raider with a heart of gold?

It's not hard to see that, without even the most basic explicit narrative, Uncharted ceases to be Uncharted. Even if you could create an Uncharted without narrative (and I don't know if you could) it would lose all of its soul.

But does that mean every game needs a narrative? That explicitly written story filled with characters and plot?

Of course not.

What narrative does Tetris have? No, scratch that. The better question is: what narrative would serve Tetris's desired player experience? Would narrative add to the game?

I don't think so. And that's okay.

Conclusion

So then, John Carmack was right after all? "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

No.

Games offer a unique opportunity to tell stories no other medium can: player stories. Without them, games cease to be games. You might as well make a movie or write a novel. And sometimes those player experiences require an explicit narrative, but not always. If all you care about is telling the explicit story, well, you might as well make a movie or write a novel.

However, the uniqueness of games storytelling requires a shift in us, the story tellers. A refocusing away from "How do I tell the best story?" to "How do I fulfill the desired player experience?"

Story in games isn't unimportant. It's the most important thing for a game to have. But the story you should be worrying the most about is the one the player will be able to tell themselves over and over again. If that story requires an actual, written story to tell? Then you can start worrying about characters and plotlines and conflicts.

In the end, it's all about the story you want for your players. Not the story you want for yourself.