story are success and failure, with success coming after players have completed all of
the predetermined goals in all the levels, and failure coming at any point where players
let their forces be overwhelmed by the opposition. Some games allow some simple
branching in their story lines, but each branch is still predetermined by the game’s
designer, and usually the branches are fairly limited in scope.
But there is an altogether different type of a story associated with a game. If what I
have just described is the designer’s story, we can call this other type of story the
player’s story. Returning to the example ofCommand & Conquer, each time a specific
player plays the game, she generates a new story unique to her. Indeed, each level
makes up a mini-story of how the player won or lost that level. For instance, let us say
that the player started out her game on the GDI side, building a large number of
Minigun Infantry, Grenade Infantry, and Humm-Vees. These forces, however, were
nearly wiped out by an early Nod attack, during which the enemy’s Flamethrower
Infantry proved to be too much for the player. The player, however, was able to exploit a
vein of Tiberium she found nearby and build an Advanced Power Plant and some Bar-
racks. The player then concentrated on building only Rocket Infantry and Mammoth
Tanks. When the Nod Flamethrower Infantry next attacked, the player was easily able
to run them over with her tanks. A number of the infantry started retreating, and the
player directed her tanks and Rocket Infantry to follow them back to their base. There
the GDI infantry were able to bombard the Nod structures from a distance, with the
Mammoth Tanks taking out any resistance they encountered. Thereby, the player won
the level. This is the player’s story.
Now, when many game designers talk about storytelling in games, they are most
likely not talking about the player’s story such as the one told above. However, the
player’s story is the most important story to be found in the game, since it is the story
the player will be most involved with, and it is the story in which the player’s decisions
have the most impact. This is the story they will share with their friends when they talk
about the game. Though the story may not be very interesting to others, it will be
extremely interesting to the person telling it, who lived through it. In most cases, once
players have defeated the level using cunning tactics, they will be much less interested
in the pre-scripted, full-motion video (FMV) designer’s story that comes up between
the levels, explaining the next level to be played. There are certain advantages to hav-
ing a designer’s story, of course. It can contain interesting characters and situations and
employ traditional storytelling devices such as building to a climax, creating tension,
foreshadowing, and so forth. The designer’s story can add meaning and relevance to the
actions the player performs in the game. For example, taking the One Ring to Mount
Doom to be incinerated and taking your trash to the incinerator are roughly equivalent
activities, except in the former case the story gives the action meaning and importance,
while in the latter the banality of the activity makes it thoroughly uninteresting. Unfor-
tunately, the use of these devices is often at the expense of the interactive nature of the
story. On the other hand, depending on how a given player plays the game, theCom-
mand & Conquerplayer’s story told above may not have much drama or narrative
tension to it, and as a result may be somewhat limp as a storytelling experience.
The ideal for interactive storytelling is to merge the designer’s story and the
player’s story into one, so that players can have a real impact on a story while the story
retains its dramatic qualities. There are two good examples of the ideal interactive
204 Chapter 11: Storytelling