Games Stories

In Today's blog post I will be discussing the reading, 'A Practical Guide to A Hero's Journey'. It's about looking at how a hero's journey can shape the narrative of a game. The readings this week focuses on games stories and why narrative is important. In this article we looked at the value of myths,  within what society teaches us about ourselves, morals and how we should behave and act. Throughout history myths and stories have been used to encourage tribes and communities to be brave while hunting and fighting, and to believe that their deaths during war are good for the survival of their comrades. The article states the following: 

• Myths give us our sense of personal identity, answering the question, "Who am I?"

• Myths make possible our sense of community. We are thinking mythically when we show loyalty to our town our nation or our team. Loyalties to our friends or community are the result of strong myths that reinforce social bonding.

• Myths are what lie underneath our moral values.

• Mythology is our way of dealing with the inscrutable mystery of creation and death.

It turns out that myths are wired into us. The fields of evolutionary biology and psychology tell us there is an adaptive advantage to myths.

 Getting a player to identify and connect with a character is an extremely important part of developing a game. The are 6 main elements to the making of a story:

• Plot: The narrative that describes what actually happens.

• Theme: What does it all mean? Why does it happen?

• Character: As in, a single role within the story.

• Diction: The dialogue, and also the actor’s delivery of that dialogue.

• Rhythm: This does include “rhythm” in the sense of music, but also the natural rhythm of human speech.

• Spectacle: This is what Aristotle called the “eye candy” or special effects of his day. He often complained that too many plays contained all spectacle and nothing else – sound familiar?

In The Key, James Frey says in addition to being a great dramatic character, the hero usually possesses many of the following qualities:

• The hero has courage (or finds it in the course of the story).

• The hero is clever and resourceful.

• The hero has a "special" talent.

• The hero is an "outlaw," living by his or her own rules.

• The hero is good at what he or she does for a living.

• The hero is a protagonist (takes the lead in the action at some point in the story).

• The hero has been "wounded" (maimed, disgraced, grieving for a lost loved one, etc.) or becomes wounded in the course of the story.

• The hero is motivated by idealism (at least at some point in the story).

• The hero is sexually potent.

The second article that I read was, 'What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story'.

When creating a story for your game, you should keep it simplistic and make sure that it works functionally. Usually, the story goes like this :

• Have a hero.
• There is an incident.
• A gap opens up between the hero and the orderly life.
• Hero has to take a risk to overcome the obstacles that come to them.
• Reversal, something new happens or the hero learns something that they didn't know before and the world is back to normal again.

Overall I really enjoyed this weeks reading because I found it to be quite informative and interesting. I feel that I have learned a lot and that I have a better understanding into what goes into creating a protagonist game character that the player can connect with. 

Gaming image;
Sources Google images;