Week 8! The never ending story.

I don't necessarily think a story makes for a better game, but I do think a story certainly makes for a more immersive experience and offers a different type of enjoyment than say a player driven game in the model of the Sims.

A good story will hopefully captivate the player and make them want to keep playing, and i know from experience i have lost entire days trying to delve deeper into a good storyline. I think this is a key difference it gives the player a sense of involvement. How the story is played out is in most cases pre determined by the programmers or creators of the game and the player will travel a series of paths which will ultimately lead to the same end or in some cases a selection of endings again pre determined but i don't believe this limits the story in any way i think the whole point of a good story is to offer some form of structure and plot.

So as a player there is the element of the story guiding but unlike movies playing a game is an interactive experience so their will inevitably be things a player can do or attempt to do which may not always be plot relative. so with that said the story Will guide but the player does have some element of control as to how and when.

Not all games have a predetermined story line. I started to think about guitar hero and singstar as having no story but I guess there is an arguement it is a story of the progression from amatuer to rock god or pop legend. With games like the sims I suppose the storyline is fairly open ended but the characters will follow a very broad script of birth, work, marrige, and death which in a sense offers some form of narrative. I would say that in games where the story may not be a great deal of plot or the story may not be obvious a player will impose their own story.

So I suppose story does exist in most games if you look hard enough. Not always obvious, not always good stories for that matter but I think that a story is a fundemental feature in a game as thats what we as a speices seem enjoy whether it be music, movies or the humble computer game.