See below for a list of common tricks to get a game up here. Ironically, the more formulaic the genre-specific gameplay is, the easier its formula is to adapt to a story. Deliberate Integration: The developers take a critical look at both the gameplay and narrative conventions, then employ one to reinforce the other.This standard seems to be most prevalent in genres that aim for emergent narrative - like many life sim and management sim games, for example - though those genres' particular definition of what constitutes "story" is looser and broader than most. Perfect Integration: The gameplay is the story.The Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration is then defined as follows: Therefore, it's more accurate to speak of individual instances of gameplay and story integration/segregation, as a single game can provide examples of both ultimately, "gameplay and story integration" is less of a dichotomy and more of a continuum, and games can be sorted based on whether integration instances outnumber segregation ones or vice versa. Likewise, there are practically no video games where the gameplay and the story are integrated so tightly that they become indistinguishable, if only because the technology for procedurally generated narratives does not yet exist. But again, few games segregate their gameplay from the story completely, and there is usually an overlap at least on the contextual or thematic level. This leads to situations where gameplay rules blatantly contradict the story rules - and such cases are usually easily identifiable and are listed on Gameplay and Story Segregation page. This becomes even more obvious when the game's gameplay rules are adapted from an external source, such as Tabletop Games.
Indeed, very few players stop to ponder why the Player Character's well-being seems to be divided into numbered chunks but the only one that matters is the last, because it's an established gameplay convention and most developers no longer feel the need to justify it. While definitely not as old as storytelling conventions, they are not fundamentally different and game designers often borrow from them without considering how they fit In-Universe. Since a gap between gameplay and story exists and despite the medium's relative youth, video games have already developed a rather standardized set of general and genre-specific gameplay conventions. Additionally, while it is virtually impossible for a game to have no story at all, story is not the only aspect that evokes an emotional reaction in the players, and "raw" gameplay can have the same effect in its own right, independent of the context it is placed in. Similarly, it is often impossible to extricate the "gameplay" part from the "story" part for some game elements: for example, level design serves a practical function for gameplay, but also conveys information about the game's setting to the player - and attempting to avoid this by setting one's gameplay in an environment comprised entirely of featureless white cubes would still tell the player something about the game's setting. the Pong level of storylessness) and, even more so, to not have any gameplay (though this depends on whether you count Kinetic Novels as games), and these two aspects are usually integrated at least a little - after all, you can hardly introduce pony-breeding gameplay against the backdrop of a galaxy-spanning war story.
Either way, it is very rare for a video game not to have any story whatsoever (i.e. Traditionally, video games narrate via cutscenes and dialogues (even though interactive dialogue overlaps with gameplay).Īnother definition would be that the gameplay ultimately revolves around numbers and is governed by mathematical rules, while the story revolves around words and symbols and is governed by the rules of emotional narrative.
to the player, which typically provides narrative context for various elements of the game. Story is the type of interaction between the player and the video game where the game narrates a story note Not just the main plot, but also character arcs, themes, and setting exposition.Historically, the most common type of gameplay is combat, but it also includes puzzle-solving, stealth, Character Customization, etc., etc. Gameplay is the type of interaction between the players and the video game where the players input commands to overcome challenges the game throws at them.