Video games have become as prized and celebrated for their stories as much as for their gameplay. While traditional gaming qualities like excitement and challenge are still important, today’s games are often as much about character development, world building, plot twists and emotionally satisfying resolutions as they are about scoring points and killing baddies.

Storytelling in game terms is the integration and development of a narrative structure. This is similar to how a story works in a book or a film, but with one important difference: a game has to be interactive. The player is a part of the story, and it should unfold differently for them depending on their decisions (choices), their skill or their luck.

As such, games developers have to strike a balance between a carefully constructed story and giving at least the illusion of freedom. If a player’s actions seem to make no difference to a predetermined narrative, then it ceases to be engaging as a game; but if it is all action and consequence, as with sports and basic shoot ’em up games, then a game cannot be said to be telling a story at all.

In the beginning

Storytelling in gaming derives from the table-top role-playing games of the 1970s and 80s such as Dungeons & Dragons. These RPGs were a template for many early video games, with Dungeons & Dragons itself swiftly becoming a popular video game franchise. Indeed, gamer culture initially developed out of the RPG scene.

RPGs allow players to adopt characters, explore a world and uncover a story in which they play a major part and can affect the outcome. It was merely a question of applying the fast-improving technology of video games to this principle in order to make the experience more immersive, realistic, sophisticated and enjoyable.

Other models

There are other models for storytelling within online gaming however. As traditional casino games migrated online they also adopted storytelling aspects. That is especially the case with the video slots at Stakers, where an overall theme- fantasy, supernatural horror, treasure hunt- gives a framework through which a player can follow a plot and often seek to overcome a fictional villain as well as winning money. Developers have found that this deepens player engagement with a game, providing both novelty and greater levels of significance.

The development of an art form

From the mid-90s on, and the second generation of gaming consoles, storytelling has become an increasingly important element of video games. It is a quality sought after by players, who demand ever greater levels of sophistication, as well as being a way for giving games greater prestige as their makers seek to establish the medium as a cultural art form deserving the same respect as books, films etc.

An influential early game in terms of storytelling was Beneath A Steel Sky (1994). Although the first iteration of this UK ‘point and click’ game was relatively primitive by modern standards, it nevertheless had a coherent storyline along with character development and player choice. The levels of subtlety, humour and even melancholy moods combine to make this an enduring classic, and its influence can be seen on more contemporary popular games like Skyrim and The Witcher.

 Tech driven

 Storytelling is often driven by technology. The early text-based RPGs were technologically primitive but relied on traditional storytelling techniques for their appeal. As more games are developed for mobile phones the focus on storytelling has increased once again, as the smaller screen means that the more spectacular elements of video games are less effective.

Technology also enabled greater use of storytelling in otherwise basic ‘hack n’ slash’ games, leading to classics like the first three Silent Hill horror games and the Resident Evil franchise. Here, to different degrees, character development is as much a part of the game as survival, and significant plot twists become a vital part of gameplay.

A world to discover

The balance of storytelling and interactivity was brought to the fore in 2015’s Until Dawn, which utilised the ‘butterfly effect’ of chaos theory to make clear just how the player’s choices affect the game world. World building is also an important aspect of storytelling, whether in open world (sandbox) RPGs like Skyrim or the incredibly detailed worlds of the Grand Theft Auto series.   

All this raises the question of whether games risk becoming “interactive movies” rather than games as we classically know them. The medium has proven it can tell a great story as well as any other, but it mustn’t lose sight of the qualities of actual gameplay that distinguish it from other forms.