Author: Zachery Oliver

Editor’s Note: Think of these as preliminary thoughts. I wouldn’t call them “fully formed” yet, just a thought experiment of sorts about stories in video games.

I had thought, for a long time, that I was the player character. I controlled his/her/its thoughts, movements, and actions within the game world. Zachery Oliver fundamentally determine what happens onscreen in a narrative of his own making. While thinking this, I did not realize how many loaded assumptions play into the process of that thought, consciously or not.

No one denies, of course, that people create stories. That plays into human personality and actions for generations. People pass tales, myths, and narrative about communities, individuals, and gods throughout time and space. Part of our design shapes our life, psychologically speaking, in the form of a story with each particular instance turning into its own dramatic arc. We use this example from pop culture and sports (just watch Sportscenter, and see them recast every games as a narrative of some sort) to religious devotion (i.e., “God has a plan for my life”). In all cases it shows our brains turning a series of happenings into some intelligible.