Like the 2 blog posts before, this will be about the topic stated above.
Firstly I will like to begin with my argument to the topic:
Premise 1: Humans will respond and demand stories
Premise 2: Products can be infused with stories
Conclusion: People will respond and demand products that contain a story
Premise 1
In this section there will be two main points and one side point covered
- What is a story?
- Why do people need stories?
What is a Story?
Now to get straight into the 1st point there should be an understanding about the meaning behind the word story or rather what is it?
There are multiple different interpretations to what is a story for people. One is from a simple description by Philip Martin in his blog which he referenced several writers who also did give their own points when it came to the topic.
Another opinion about “What is a story?” comes from Mark W. Travis in his article about the topic. The whole article is rather well informed about the whole meaning to what truly is a story.
He continued to tell his own more descriptive opinion on What is a Story:
Why do People need Stories?
Since we have an idea about what stories are. We need to know why do people need stories in our lives?
One rather scientific yet alright reason as to why stories are important to people would be from an article done by Michael Prinston.
I will also touch with another reason to why people do need stories. As the article below from bbc.com by David Robson, he talks about Stories being used as a form of Escapism.
Although there would still be more reasons as to why people do need stories but this is a rather open topic. Some use stories for own gain, like propaganda used by politicians (from this reference). Good stories also need to be used for the news so that people are interested and want to read (What is a story by Matthew Stibbe).
Premise 2
For this section of the blog, it will be about story within games. Touching upon multiple questions which tries to understand the fundamental reasons to:
- Why are stories needed in games?
- Conveying a story inside a game
Why are Stories needed in games?
Usually there is somewhat of a debate onto when and what goes into the story of a video game.
Some people do believe that a story is rather unneeded and a waste of time and effort. While others make the entire game based around a concrete and fully fleshed out story. Then there are people who just make a game which is purely story and a bit to no gameplay.
But really why are stories needed within video games? What is it’s purpose?
Jonay Suárez in his blog on wibbu.com gave some insight to the importance of a narrative inside of a video game.
Another opinion about the importance of story inside of a video game is done by Kayla Herrera in her blog on the Cinema Blend site. She gave rather an analysis of the new games released and how much they have caught on providing emphasis to story. One of her examples is the recent God of War 2018 (image below).
For God of War 2018, Kayla gave the example of what she saw from an E3 trailer where the main character, Kratos is teaching his son how to hunt. She was also surprised by this because this is not something which God of War has done in the past.
In the last paragraph of her blog post, she provided her own opinion as what is the importance of narrative or story inside of video games.
On an article done by Lauren Hall-Stigerts on “Why Stories makes Video Games Better” also has some interesting information about why is a story so important inside of a game. She also did talk a lot of about the usages of Environmental Storytelling.
There were several things she talked about before this section but one of the points I would like to take from her article is this which is her own thoughts and opinion but it does carry meaning:
Conveying a Story/Narrative inside a Game
Games as a whole have different ways of conveying their narrative. However, they are all trying to convey some form of story to the player playing the game. Sometimes it can be pretty straight forward.
Example below from Fate/EXTELLA (which is not a Visual Novel game but uses the same method as a Visual Novel to convey their Narrative):
Visual Novels do act as the more Japanese Developer way of conveying Narrative, although Westerners have begun to create their own Visual Novels as well. However, the North American method also is something to take brief note of. One of the main high story focused games from North America are their Adventure Games.
A lot of Adventure games do have multiple occasions where you can interact with pretty much anything in the area where the main character is within. Sometimes those things are important while sometimes they are not so much.
While others like the game’s Journey and Hollow Knight use hardly any to no words that describe the overall story or narrative of the game. However, these games still can convey their narrative through the Gameplay present and the World Building.
Those two examples above, does go to show that a game can have a story even without many words. However, what is the main thing which people are trying to use when conveying their story?
An example of a well known method used in multiple different media genres, from books, to movies and games. That would be the mono myth. Extra Credits did a pretty easy to understand and detailed work on the mono myth in how they explain the Narrative of Journey the Game. Part 1 down below:
Mono myth is something which is fairly common in most of the stories which are need of a protagonist who goes on an adventure or needs to do some special/important task. Although, that form of method is not the only one which can be applied.
Now just to describe what kind of game Nekopara is. It is a Kinetic Novel. Kinetic Novels as described by Arargi in his blog about What is a Visual Novel is:
Kinetic Novels sometimes could follow the mono myth but not for a story of a game like Nekopara. It is, a rather down to Earth story of a man managing a cafe with his Cat girls is a little far stretch to be like considered “A Hero’s Journey”. Due to the fact that this can be considered every day life.
However, people still will play games like these which has 0 gameplay and just story but because they have something they like in it. For example Youtubers who do a walkthrough of Nekopara.
Youtuber for that video is The Anime Man which had about 400k views and there is another Youtuber going by the name of Lost Pause (video below…similar thumbnail screen as The Anime Man’s one) which had over 700k views for just this video.
Although it is up to the player to decide what is their kind of story. Some people enjoy games with Large amounts of Story with gameplay as a. While other people want games with less story and more gameplay. Some players want to explore the world and find the hidden story cloaked in the game’s world building and level designs.
Which does conclude that people do have some form of want a story but it is still a person’s own preference. You cannot force someone to like something they don’t.
Now to restate my argument:
Premise 1: Humans will respond and demand stories
Premise 2: Products can be infused with stories
Conclusion: People will respond and demand products that contain a story
Thank you for reading!
Mark Jansen's Blog of Game Development and Others 