Found an interesting blog post today at Rampant Games: http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=3648.
While I don’t agree with lots of what is said, some of the points are valid.
Story and games have a different existence together… The actions of the player usually don’t modify the game world, and when they do it’s in a purely binary fashion. So, the player isn’t part of the story, which seems counter-intuitive in a sense that a lot of effort is put into immersing the player in the story.
The conclusions Paul Spooner in the above article draws from this are too restrictive and just go into the old RPG concept of DM/Player symbiosis, while I think there’s two layers to any game: an interactive layer and a story layer… They can conflict occasionally, but its possible to create game mechanics that stop the player from interfering with the story, without seemingly restrict freedom: an example of this is a story where the player needs to be a good guy and he’s out having fun murdering little children. If you attach a penalty coherent (like an alignment penalty) with the game story with the act of murdering children, the player won’t do it (or if he does, he’s aware that it might make his life more difficult in the long run).
I think that the main issue is not story vs. interactivity, but story vs. fun…
Let’s imagine the above example… the story we have designed is the typical hero of the light story, where only a hero pure of heart can defeat the dark overlord of legend. To be coherent with the game story, if the player murders innocent people, he’ll loose the pure heart and will be unable to stop the overlord… Both of these mechanics are easy enough to be implemented; the player retains his freedom, and the story can run its course… But is it fun? Is it fun to make the player go throughout the whole game, just to fail at the final boss, because in the beginning of the game he stole a villager’s purse? It’s not fun, but it is accurate in terms of both story and gameplay!
You have loads of stories without happy endings in literature, movies and other forms of narrative art, but that is seldom seen in games, because it is thought (and I agree with that) that it isn’t fun…
That’s what I think it’s missing in the above article… other than that, it’s an excellent read!