You may know by now that my background is in writing, and my path to video game design has not exactly been what you might call normal. I played video games as a kid, sure, but my whole life, I wanted to write books. My life has been a series of intersecting stories and characters both fictional and real, and I was intoxicated with the idea of creating my own stories, my own conflicts and characters and world. This fascination unsurprisingly carried over as my focus gradually shifted from writing to designing video games (I still write, by the way), and I find myself just beginning to figure out game design at a time which has been referenced by many as "the narrative moment" in video game history. Coincidence? I think not. Opportunity to do some really cool stuff with video games and narrative? Definitely.
The thing is, a lot of times, we are victims to our own beginnings. Maybe this is the narrative moment for video games, but so long as we hold to old ideas of storytelling, character, and conflict, we'll keep pumping out the same uninspired plots, the same hackneyed personae, the same lifeless simulacra that seem to dominate the game industry these days. If we are to access the full potential of video games, we have to complicate the narrative and take full advantage of the affordances of the medium. Well, so what does that really mean? Certainly, it means having good graphics and great sound and all that, but more so, at least for narrative games, it means non-linear narratives, complex characters, even more complex character interaction algorithms, and simulated intelligence. Obviously that's a lot to tackle, but my thought is that even if we don't figure it out all at once (or ever), we're a lot more likely to get a lot farther, a lot faster, if we start now and fail fast. We need writers in the game industry; we need game design concepts in the literary world. We need connection and collaboration and courage to keep trying, and I'm afraid nothing else will do.
