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The way in which I like to approach the adventure game is as an interactive story; as such, the very first thing I focus on when creating a game is the story it will tell. But I feel that it isn't enough to make up a story solely for the sake of justifying the gameplay that emerges from it. While doing so in and of itself is certainly a lofty goal to strive for, it does tend to make for a shallow and formulaic end product. For a story to truly stand out as a meaningful work of art, it must convey a purpose and make some sort of statement about the world. Hence, this next article in the series will focus on the process of coming up with such a story.

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The PS3 is $500 to $600. The 360 is $300 to $400. A good gaming PC can cost in the thousands. What we are we paying for? The more games I play these days, the more I see that many of the "next-gen" games are simply prettier versions of games we've already played. We're paying for more lines of resolution and audio that comes at us through more speakers. When we're able to put a human-looking character on the screen and make him or her look and act like an actual person, that presents a problem. What do we want that person to do? What do we want them to say?









Back when games featured a few colors and some simple sprites, we didn't need these characters to do much. Swing on that vine. Eat that mushroom. Asking how or why someone did something in a game is silly and rarely asked. Now we have the tools to make something that has special effects comparable to what we see at the movies, and we give control of this world over to a player who is going to wonder very quickly why he or she should care about what's going on when a button is pressed. The technology may be getting better, but the quality of the stories generally isn't.

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So why do trends exist? Because they are familiar, they enable standards, and they just make life easier. In the case of video games, trends help companies maximize sales while reducing costs because gamers will purchase what they are accustomed to. But easier isn't always better. Here are eleven reasons why...

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I’ve always enjoyed holding forth about how many limitations there are for stories in video games. Often to an audience of non-gamer friends, I’ll start by pointing out what you can’t do in a game with regards to the story. Most of it has to do with the protagonist. Because the hero is the player character, you can’t make that hero anything the player might balk at playing. For this reason, many of the most awesome main characters from film, fiction, and television don’t really work so well as a main game character.









For example, take Oedipus or Clytemnestra: the emotions that might make you gouge your own eyes out or stab your husband to death are one thing to witness, and another to do, even fictionally, even by proxy. Even Achilles doesn’t really fit the bill. There’s nothing wrong with being the world’s greatest warrior, but sitting and sulking in your tent – over some slave girl? Let’s say you begin the plot immediately after all the pouting – it’s still going to sit wrong. “Wait, why was I mad? Why was I being such an idiot? And now I’m suddenly supposed to be all mad about this friend who went and got himself killed?”








There’s no need to resort to antiquity, either. Add to the list Thelma and Louise, Travis Bickle, Holden Caulfield, Amelie, even good old Hamlet. What makes every one of these characters memorable depends on a key moment or characteristic that the player would resist and resent as an imposition on his free will.

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Just Adventure staff writer Bob Washburne recently had the pleasure to conduct a telephone interview with Myst creator Rand Miller to discuss the past, present and future of Myst Online: Uru Live which is featured exclusively on GameTap.







We thought that our readers would like to listen to the actual interview and hear Rand Miller for themselves, so we are offering the opportunity to either read a written transcript of the interview or, to download and listen to an MP3 file of the interview.







Whichever you choose, we hope you enjoy this unique opportunity to spend some time with one of the gaming industry’s most influential developers and an icon in the adventure community.

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Façade is a prototype of interactive drama, a new genre of character and story-intensive interactive entertainment. Façade is freely downloadable at interactivestory.net. In Façade, you, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

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