Narative in Games

Telling stories has been mankind's way of depicting, remembering and transmitting  events. First they were told, then written, then pictured, then filmed and now played. Games are today's most viable and accessible way to make your own story, in a way. You get to take on the face and body of a character which you get to create from a various range of presets and then you guide him/her/it through the world he's been set into, following a series of events that are (hopefully) skillfully masked by a gamed designer to offer quite a unique, subjective experience to each player. That is the purpose of narrative in the game.

But what's the difference between story, plot and narrative?

• The story tells you that you are a great hero of a land you already know ( so not to many details are given ) and that through  a series of events ( some of which are not depicted) you get to the baddie, slice of his head and proclaim yourself savior, and then the next hero (through a series of unknown events) slays you. And so on and so forth.

•  The plot tells you that you are a farmer because you dad was a farmer and his dad was a farmer and so on and so forth. This is your legacy. Your quest is to go and stop the evil person from stomping on your vegetable patch while on his way to pillage and rape the town your sweetheart lives in. This is your motif. You win the battle against evil. By doing this you redeem your lady's honor and plant a new batch of tomatoes in your new garden, behind your new castle. This is your reward. 

•  The narrative tells you that once upon a time this and that happened, respecting the chronological course of the events. Then it reaches you part in the story and starts by telling us that you just woke up, you get out of bed and notice that you can't find a slipper so you walk barefooted on the cold stone floor to your bucket of water. You splash water on your face. put a shirt on and notice that it has a hole in it. You walk to the kitchen and you pour yourself a bowl of porridge. It's cold. You eat it and then step outside and start doing your morning chores. A chicken clucks around you and you push it aside with your foot. As you work on your tomato patch, a dark person on a dark horse gallops straight through your tomato patch. You jump out of his way and watch him disappear  over the hill side.  You get up, grab your trusty spade and swear vengeance in the name of your beautiful tomatoes. Your adventure starts. 

If you haven't figured out by now : story is the one that tells you the overall events in a short and direct manner, ignoring details, plot is the one that tells you about the relations between the actions that you do and the general story and consequences and narrative depicts EVERYTHING. 

Even though the narrative one seams the most tedious one, it's used in games due to the fact that you can change the sequence of the events that happen, just to create a certain atmosphere : "

I must get to the holy water in time to dip my arrow in order to get back to the mine and shoot zombies.  (If I don’t, I am stuffed)…again…..

"

Also when narrative is used in games, details and information relating to the world and sometimes your quests are conveyed in more unexpected modes (for a game) than dialogue with an NPC. Here I refer to in-game books/scrolls/murals/magazines/news and sometimes even flashbacks that serve to further the story and better immerse the player in the game world. Another way to convey the narrative to the players is by introducing "cut-scenes" during certain moments of game play. These would tell the story such as the player would see it in a movie, with little to no interaction from it, leaving thus the core game play to concentrate more on the action. The use of cut-scenes, although amazing from a graphical point of view, and sometimes from a story point of view as well, are a bit controversial. Some players don't enjoy cut scenes at all and miss out on the story, some play the game only for them and miss out on the actual game-play and some just use them as a break to go get a biscuit. I believe there is still a balance to be reached with this form of interlud in games and more interactive ways of conveying a story to the user should be adopted.

Most games revolve around epic stories of liberation, freedom and justice. You have to defend the Earth, work as an undercover agent to save your country, foil the Templar's conspiracies, survive a zombie apocalypse and discover the mysteries of long lost lands. But not all games revolve around stories. "Tetris" for example is just a reflex game, based on the ability of how fast is the player able to make a line before the blocks reach the top and the game ends.  Of course you can add whatever story to it: from an evil circus monkey that throws pieces at you and wants to bury you alive  to a very per-historic variation of portal, in which every line you make opens a portal that sends those pieces/or bits of pieces to the top so they can fall down again, creating a never ending loop.  But whatever you imaginations chooses to render, the game is not one story based, and the fact that the pink line and the blue square never met will not affect the overall game play. Same goes for simulation games, may it be "The Sims" "Sim City" "Roller Coaster Tycoon" or "TrainTown". They are there to simulate situations that might occur, eventually in real life. You might add a story to it, but a story is not necessary to make the game work.