Chris Crawford - Story

Chris Crawford says "That's why (games) are so emotionally crippled...they just don't bother with people other than as walking dolls that preform mechanical functions. The cardboard people in games do for drama what inflatable doll do for sex" (2005:15)


He mentions six lessons to consider when it comes to story.


Lesson #1 - Stories are complexed structures that must meet many hard-to-specify requirements


Games have never paid much attention to games. Stories are about people (the basic rule) that is lost in the high-falutin analysis of narrative theory. The movie, known as KOYANNISQATSI is shown to lack this, it lacks a protaganist or dialogue. People in this movie are the auidence, revealed by their works. The reason why games are so emotionally crippled are because games concern themselves with things: things you acquire, things you use, things destroyed and so on.


Lesson #2 - Stories are about the most fascinating thing in the universe: people.


All stories have conflict. Sometimes the conflict is either direct and violent, examples include Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. There are some conflicts that is social, sometimes it can be symbalic, but ti's still conflict none the less. Jurrasic Parl 2 has indirect conflict. Mathmatician and a bussiness man. Dinosaurs are merely the 'noble savages'. Well conflict at least is one place where games shine, even though this is mainly done through violence.


Puzzles
Puzzles play a part of a story, but isn't a strong force of a story. Yes, CSI uses science to help solve the mysteries, and the technology is amazing, but it is the strong characters ad often poignant storylines that are the true strengths of the stories. Without them, CSI would be a whodunit.


Lesson #3 - Puzzles are not a necessary component of stories.


Stories that concern choices characters make. Can be used to help drive the story. Star Wars "Use the force, Luke".


Lesson #4 - Spectacle does not make stories.


Many observers have noticed that our culture is increasingly dominated by the image. It's not needed in stories, but at the same time, it can be good visually. Films like Saving private Ryan have benifitted from this.


Lesson # 5 - Visual thinking should not dominate storytelling.


Spatial reasoning is when we can work something out using our knowledge of space. When used in a metaphorical sense, it works well, it also allows us to use statements like "Your statement is wide of the mark". However, according to Crawford, he says that "when people use it too literally, in storytelling, it becomes a problem.


Lesson # 6 - Stories take place on stages, not maps.


Stories will mess around with time, they will break it up, jump backwards and forwards, as well as skipping parts altogether. They will skip how the character arrives at a place (personally don't really see much of a problem with it - unless there's something that happens that would bring more to the story). Games themselves use this pretty well, however, games like JRPGs (which are really heavily story orientated have you take the character everywhere.


These were the lessons I drew from the Crawford article, I found these to be interesting as well as insightful and look forward to using these lessons into my own story writting.