What is Narrative, and why is it useful?

                Narrative. It's a pretty important term in games these days no? I mean, many games rely on it to provide a great user experience - even games in genres you wouldn't expect. Puzzlers? Check. Racing? Check. RPG? Check. (Okay that last example goes without saying but you get the idea).

                So why doesn't it have more prevalence as a discussed feature among gamers and press? Sure you can hear developers speaking at length about it but rarely is it the focus of a review or a discussion among gamers, more often the attention to detail is put onto the gameplay mechanics and art of the game. Does that mean narrative should take a back seat in game development? No, no it doesn't. In fact I dare you to make a decent game with little to no story. A few games have done it, just look at Tetris or Super Hexagon, but they're rare cases.

       

          The problem here is that while a game's story can hold a dear place in our hearts as gamers, the key verb when interacting with a game is that you play it. Playing a game means you must find your place within it's rules and structure, and while providing a narrative can go to great lengths to aid in this discovery the absolute integral part of all this is the gameplay itself. After all a story without gameplay is just a story, but gameplay without a story remains a game (an argument could be made for it simply being a toy though I'd still assert it is a game).

                Don't get me wrong about all this when I seem to be putting down narrative, I love a good story me. I especially enjoy all the subtle nuances in narrative techniques that combine together to get that much more emotive response out of  the player. A good story can combine together with good gameplay to make a great game. And that's what makes it important, in order to make great and memorable games the two sides of development - narrative and ludology - must come together and work in unison, they must feed off each other to deliver an experience to the player that will blow their mind. You can have one without the other but in either case you'll feel like something is missing, something integral to the experience that makes you want to keep on playing.