Okay, I admit it. I’m partially like the people described in this post over on Lost Garden. One of the people he describes as a “fanboy” I guess, since I have no interest in being in the book or movie business, and I’m not a publisher, the only thing left is a fanboy. I will admit, my love of story in games comes from old adventure titles; specifically Sierra style adventure titles. However, I will say that my love of all things adventure is not what I see as the future of the medium. That’s quite complicated, and I’m sure it’s pretty apparent from other blog posts… but maybe not.

Anyway, here’s my argument against the approach Lost Garden is taking, and instead of going through various parts of the post piece by piece, I’ll simply elaborate on his final analogy at the end of the post:

… I find story to be much like a fine wine. When you pour a glass of gloriously rich merlot, you’ll discover all sorts of delicate nuances that are simply impossible to find anywhere else. Yet, that same glass of wine can also be used to cook some wonderful dishes. […] Stories in games are really the equivalent of cooking wine, an essential and useful ingredient for many popular genres.

On the other hand, there are lots great dishes that you can cook without using any wine at all, just like there are some great games you can build that don’t use story. If game design is anything like cooking, there is an entire universe of game designs that work perfectly well without any story elements.

The thing I have against the post is that it assumes that cooking with wine and cooking without wine are the only two options. What about cooking specifically for a particular wine? More importantly, how about cooking to enhance certain flavors in a particular wine, which in turn bring out enhanced flavors in the meal?

This is really what I’m looking for. Although I grew up with the lock-and-key adventure style games, and I worked my butt off to get into the game industry because of them, I didn’t really want to enter the industry just to maintain the status quo of lock-and-key style games. I wanted to see a place where the gameplay and story elements of a game enhance each other: games where subtleties are revealed through play style and agency, not through cut scenes and scattered books.

That said, Danc is certainly right. It costs a lot of money to even begin to think about approaching that kind of system. At least until we understand it, and can condense the required systems into tools and techniques that make the whole process easier. Of course, even with recent jumps in the technology, I still think making it simple is a long way off.