Low Culture: Storylines feed the fire of great video games

A few months ago, I wrote an article about the mythic Citizen Kane of video games and asked a few of my friends what exactly they thought of the subject.

I had asked them because, as a writer, I have few intentions to delve into the subject academically, and I know they do. The art I make of my writing is the art they make of their gaming and whatnot. What interested me most, however, were some of the criteria involved in answering my question.

A great novel is easier to define because the parameters of its greatness has been defined.

But games have yet to receive that treatment, so a big question that I needed to tackle was how to define a great game at all. And, in the argument that ensued, we hit upon a crucial point: which is more important, story or gameplay?

Like a film has cinematography, a comic has panels or a television show has seasons, games have gameplay. It's the little unique bit that makes them different from all the other media out there. But, like all media, they also tell stories.

And so, in talking to my friend the programmer, I explained that relationship to him, and he responded with an emphatic "I don't think so."

See, for him, story was subject to gameplay. A game is a game because of gameplay, and a story doesn't necessarily have to take place. And, being the writer I am, I said, "What, are you kidding me? Every game has a story!"

His argument was pretty simple. Gameplay is defined by what you do. That's why genres are named so simply. In an RPG, you roleplay your character. In an FPS, you shoot things in the first person view.

In a real-time strategy game, you (duh) enact your a strategies in real time. And so on and so forth. Now, some of those require story (RPGs, mostly).

But most games don't need to worry about it. You can have an FPS where your sole job is to shoot things. You don't need to know why or care how. You just do it (Counterstrike was his example).

Think about puzzle games. You solve puzzles. Now some (Portal, for instance) have story, but most (Bejeweled, Tetris, even Words with Friends) don't.

You solve puzzles for the puzzle's sake. There's no story to Tetris, no characters in Bejeweled and certainly no thematic implications to Words with Friends.

Aha! There we have the heart of it (I said to my strawman friend.) There is story to Tetris! Characters in Bejeweled! And it is the simplest story ever!

You are the main character. The story is you triumphing over the game. And the more and more I thought about it, the more and more I realized I was entirely right.

Story, at its heart, is about a character triumphing over adversity. Textbook, textbook stuff. There are more complicated and convoluted versions to that, but at the end of the day, we triumph over adversity.

Games uphold the same principles. You beat games. You win games, and the difference between winning and losing, beating or beaten, that's adversity. When the levels get tougher, the bosses bigger and badder, that's rising action.

Then, right when you're about to lose and get that game over sign, you win? There's your climax. Every game has it because every game has you as its main character. Even the Assassin's Creeds and Skyrims out there, they all operate on two levels.

Yes, there's the story of the world and its characters, but there's also you. You and what you do, how you play, how you drive the narrative from one step to the next.

So, whether you're you trying to knock out tetris columns or the Dragonborn trying to save Skyrim, the story is there. And that story, that engaging, cathartic, primal experience, it's in every game, whether you like it or not.