This book starts a very optimistic description of the current use of story and characters in games, pretending that narrative in games is on the same level as in popular cinema or even Shakespeare. It goes on to map the existing formulas that make Hollywood films so boring and predictable exciting onto games, pretending that running around shooting monsters is a viable way of telling stories. If you are happy with the way current games are made and you need a formula how to make one exactly like that, this is a book for you. At least if you can stand the “trendy” cut-everything-into-bitesize-chunks layout.
Later in the book, the writers come to their senses a bit an allow some doubt to trickle through. Here and there you find suggestions that perhaps maybe there is still a lot of work to do for games to become a mature medium. But they are very careful to leave all of these questions very open, as they hide behind a few quotes from game celebreties. Perhaps the sequel will be good.
Posted on June 15, 2006 at 9:03 am
[…] MS: The linearity of a story and the linearity implied by goal-oriented gameplay seem oddly compatible. This motivates people like Marianne Krawczyk (writer for God of War) to claim that they overlap, that the story of a game is expressed through goal-oriented gameplay. Obviously your narrative ambitions go far beyond anything an action game can express. Does this mean that goal-oriented gameplay should be abandoned? […]