What is the best type of story for a video game?
Video games are art. Their unique artistic strength is their great potential to immerse the player in a way that no other medium can. This potential comes from the interaction that a player has with a game's world. In a video game a player can choose to go down one hallway or another. A player can choose the red pill or the blue pill. A player can choose to get down a mountain on an ATV or on a hang glider. The choices a player makes and the way these choices impact the virtual world they choose are what give video games such a potential for immersion.
If there is no story to become immersed in then a video game loses its greatest potential. So, since a video game should tell a story, and because there are different elements to stories, I ask the question: What is the best type of story for a video game?
First we need to figure out what the elements of a story are. For this I will defer to the wisdom of Orson Scott Card. Card wrote a book entitled "How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy." In it he describes what he refers to as the MICE quotient: "All stories contain four elements that can determine structure: Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event. While each is present in every story, there is generally one that dominates the others." So, what are these elements, and what games use them as the dominant structure of story?
The first element described by Card is milieu. The milieu is the "universe" of a game. What is the setting? What are the rules of this world's physics? Who lives in this world? How can the inhabitants of the story change the world, and in what ways does the world change them? A story dominated by milieu is all about the environment. The best example of this that I can come up with is Minecraft. Minecraft is all about exploring the world. At the start of a game, the player pops into existence in a randomly generated world. What do they do next? They can do whatever they want. There are forests to navigate, caves to explore, and vast oceans to cross. A minecraft player carves their existence in this world however they see fit, and the story only ends when the player closes the game and exits the world. This is a perfect example of a milieu dominated game.
The next element described by Card is idea. An Idea Story is about answering a question. At the beginning of a story there is a problem. During the course of the story information is gathered and the problem is solved. One example of this type of story is Portal. At the beginning, the player is trapped. Are they a prisoner? Are they a willing test subject? What is with the creepy robotic voice leading the player around? There are many questions, and by the end the player has enough knowledge and ability to solve the problem of their imprisonment.
The third element of the MICE acronym is character. In a Character Story a character's role in the community they value most changes. The Spider-man game released in 2002 is a good example of this. Spider-man's origin story is all about Peter Parker transforming from a young man with selfish desires that get his uncle killed into a mature selfless defender of the common good. Peter's physical and mental changes completely change his role in his world.
The "E" in MICE stands for event. An Event Story begins with something wrong in the fabric of the world. In Skyrim the world-shattering problem is the return of dragons. In the very first scene a dragon attacks. This event is the sign of a pending apocalypse to the denizens of Skyrim. The main storyline of the game leads the player around the world to gather the knowledge and skill to restore order. Another example of this type of game is any game in the Legend of Zelda series. These games always start with the player thrust into the role of defender against an evil spreading across the land and they end when the player defeats this evil.
You may disagree with my classification of some of the games above. Skyrim, for example, has a rich milieu to explore and become immersed in. Portal builds up to the event great event at the end, doesn't it? Minecraft also has an "end" to build up to. I would recommend reading chapter 3 of Card's book for a better understanding of the MICE quotient. One of the points he makes, however, is that these attributes are not mutually exclusive. To use Skyrim once again as an example, it may be an Event Story, but it also has a rich milieu. After exploring so much of the world a player can feel betrayed after the final battle with the most powerful dragon when the game just ends. This feeling illuminates a very interesting problem in the medium of video games that other mediums may not have to contend with. Since a game gives its player the freedom to interact however they wish, a player may explore facets not well covered by one particular element of a story. The great potential of video games means that whatever the story may be, there MUST be a rich (or at least there must be a complete) milieu. Even though I loved the story behind the Halo series, I always got frustrated when I would get up on a ridge that I was not supposed to be able to reach was be greeted by an invisible wall.
Since I very much enjoy each of the games listed I can not choose a personal favorite type of story. A complete milieu is essential, but that does not make Minecraft my favorite game of all time. I wonder, do you have a personal favorite type of story?
