Hi Everybody!
Hope you enjoyed last week’s posts by my friend Darkled. He’ll be around from time to time adding some of his perspectives on games (and the occasional film).

A few weeks ago I featured a new favorite segment of mine on the Escapist called Extra Credits.

Today I want to feature a presentation from them about the ubiquitous “Narrative”.

Telling a story is an important thing that many games place a lot of stock into when they go about whatever it is they set out to accomplish…but we need to remember how narratives began when tools were more primitive, and how there may have been a story to tell when most people never really even thought about it. Games have gotten so caught up in the narrative that they sometimes become little more than cludgy unskippable cutscenes that amount to bad movies with the occasional interactive event. I think a lot of designers have lost their perspective…and that may not entirely be their own fault.

But I digress. Have you ever considered the narrative of Asteroids? Pac-Man? How about Missile Command?

Think about it for a moment…and then watch this video. It really is beautiful how such an early game puts you in a situation that has such a deep meaning, and is so well constructed that most never even realize it’s there, yet it was powerful enough to give its creator nightmares for months.

Please enjoy, and have a great week. Next time I think I’m going to talk about a new game we’ve been playing called Terraria…