Chapter 11 Storytelling.......................

Chapter 11 Storytelling.........................

“The danger for designers is that they get hooked into their story, and they for-

get that storytelling is a linear narrative-type thing. And the more you flesh out

the story, the more you remove the interactivity and the more you remove the

player from the game. It’s kinda like ‘Oh, the outcome has already been

determined. So what’s the point?’”

— Eugene Jarvis

S

trictly speaking, computer games do not need to tell stories. Over the years
there have been plenty of fabulous games that offered very little in the way of
storytelling. ConsiderTetris, which had no storytelling whatsoever, orCentipede
andSSX, where the only story found is in the game’s setting. But other games, such as
Halo,Command & Conquer, andThief, have taken a story and made it work as a key part

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