Somebody asked me what I could do to make some educational software more game-like. The software was already interactive, so the first things I thought of were:
- It needs a story, some narrative to tie all the elements together.
- It needs art. Games are very object-oriented and action-oriented experiences.
Plenty of people have talked about this aspect of the fad, so I won't get into that. Rather, I will point out that the things I noticed that make games more compelling aren't always in people's definition of a game. I've tried to do things like Fitocracy and others to increase my motivation, but it just doesn't stick, so I started wondering why. A sport can be a game, but doesn't have a story. Chess is a game that can have good aesthetics but a very abstract story at best. But for me, those games don't really pique my interest for their own sake. I realized that the thing that gets me to pick up a game more than anything else is the story; if it's a sport or other multiplayer game, that story is built on the relationships and interactions of the players.
I've also noticed that I am no longer interested in an innovative gameplay mechanic. That used to be all we talked about in college, making something new, something no one had done before. But video games are about the whole experience, something that lots of indie game developers can lose sight of quickly. This is what made classics like Ico so inspiring. Someone I met recently pointed out that story is what gets people to pick up the game, and gameplay is what makes them stay. While I'm not sure how true that is (WoW continues to have a lot of people sticking with the same old gameplay by adding new story modules), there's one thing for sure: Story in video games is important, if not THE crucial element to a successful game.
