Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7.9
The Best Amendment
conveys a message through game mechanics: who's actually
good or bad?
Whether expressed with words, images, and characters or through the vocabulary of a game's
system, games let us tell an incredible variety of authored stories. Game systems give us ways
of getting a player involved in the progress and evolution of an authored story. The player
might simply be pushing the story forward or deciding which branch of the story to explore.
She may even discover parts of an authored story embedded in the game's system by figuring
out how it works and understanding what it has to say. In the previous chapter, we talked about
how games can open
up the shape of resistance to allow players to pursue their own strategies,
even create their own goals. Can we open up stories in a similar way to get players involved not
only as audiences for our authored stories, but as storytellers in their own right?
Each time a game is played, an experience results, generated by the player's own process of
pushing into the game. In many games with authored stories, this experience is relatively
predictable; it may feel like nearly the same experience if played again. The process of playing
