Dustin Hansen - The Greatest Stories Ever Played: Video Games and the Evolution of Storytelling

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For Tanner. The world belongs to those who have no fear, eat salty chips, and seek for the wild among the norm. Lets make dangerous things together, that wont soon be forgotten.

Story (N.)

a: An account of incidents or events;

b: the intrigue or plot of a narrative or dramatic work;

c: what happens when a character faces an unavoidable, challenging obstacle, and how they change because of it.

Ive been writing books for a long time. More than fifteen years, Id guess. And before that, I designed games and wrote professionally for the video game industry. In one way or another, Ive been writing or thinking about writing for a quarter of a century. Twenty-five years, at least. Thats a long time. Well, at least it is from my perspective.

And during that entire time, this book or a version of it has been playing in the back of my brain. Ive written hundreds of thousands of words about story and games that will never be read by another human. Ive got a filing cabinet full of notes Ive taken while playing games, capturing everything from the emotional impact to the dialogue to the moments that made my jaw drop. I even have notes on the not-so-great games. I dont play favorites when Im capturing my impressions in the privacy of my own game room.

It is an endeavor, or maybe a journey, that Ive been on for half of my time here on earth.

Story is the creative lifeblood that pumps through my heart. But I think youll agree that story isnt the only thing that makes a game great. There are great games out there that are totally void of story. Not just bad stories, but games without any story whatsoever. Seriously. Games are complex and run the entertainment gamut.

Yet a game with a fantastic, emotional story arc will always hold a special spot in my gamer heart. And a fun game to play, combined with a great story, is a rare gift. Its a marvel something like this can even exist. Theyre so big and so is complete the right word? Considering all the people and countless hours of work that go into making a knockout, blockbuster title, its incredible when a singular vision with impact gets produced. We truly are living in remarkable times.

A second thing Id like to point out is that while twenty-five years of studying, playing, reading, and creating stories seems like a long time in a single humans experience, it isnt even a blip on the time line of storytelling history. This might be the biggest issue with storytelling in games, so I want to get it out of the way early. Games are infants in the storytelling world. And babies make mistakes.

If we examine the lifetime of film, which is widely accepted as one of the best storytelling mediums humans have created, were only looking at around 120 years, give or take a decade. And even that is just a blip on the time line of storytelling history. Compared with movies, games have only been telling stories since the 1970s, and in that time, the rules of how games work have changed considerably. And the delivery devices change dramatically about every five or so years as well.

To put this in perspective, while things have certainly changed in the book world over the last five hundred years, you can still read a William Shakespeare sonnet in basically the same format that Ole Willie, as I like to call him, intended. You can even do a side-by-side comparison of his writing to that of a modern-day poet or playwright. But while it isnt impossible to find a working PDP-10 mainframe computer to play the original version of Colossal Cave Adventure in its purest form, it isnt the same as playing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on your new PlayStation 5. Yeah. To say that things have changed is a monumental understatement.

Screenshot of Will Crowthers original Colossal Cave Adventure running on a Windows computer, next to a screenshot of the PS5 game Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Sony Interactive Entertainment

The speed at which game development and video game storytelling have evolved is unprecedented. In no other timefrom prehistoric to modernhave we experienced a change in how we tell and enjoy stories as we have in the last forty years. I dont want to exaggerate too much, but that is a big deal. Because stories are a big deal to us. And I dont mean that in the public, universal, objective sense; I mean that stories matter to every individual in a profoundly personal, practical way.

As you might imagine, this type of rapid change can cause a few bumps in the road. Not every game made is going to be a winner, and when a huge portion of the storytelling takes place in a player-controlled environment, there is a lot of room for error. What Im trying to say is, theres been some bad games.

But the game industry has created masterpieces. Deep, rich, complex, emotional stories that put you, the gamer, right in the middle of the conflict and ask you to decide your own fate, or, at the very least, experience it.

Ill fully admit my bias. I love everything about story games. Creating them, playing them, writing about them. And I know Im preaching to the choir. The majority of people who grab this book are here because they already love story-based games, too. But Im pretty confident in stating that the most original and innovative storytelling happening now and in the future will take place in the game space.

A foundational element of a great story is that it cries to be shared. That drive to share a story is biological. It was in sharing the stories of man and gods and beasts that ancient societies warned of potential hazards. The cautionary tale. Of course, not all games are cautionary tales, and to show my bias once again, I personally think that video games are the most shareable of media. So much, in fact, that entire platforms like Twitch have staked their future in gamers streaming and talking about how the games we play affect our lives. And they arent going anywhere anytime soon (fingers crossed).

Im willing to bet that all of us who have experienced the power of using a controller to move the story forward rather than turn a page have had that experience where we have to pause, set down the controller, and just think. Or better yet, feel for a moment before we can go on. I know I have. And the wonderful thing is that we all bring our own backgrounds and understandings to the games we play. When we mix that with a medium that requires us to actively participate in how the story unfolds, we get this unique, personal attachment that speaks to us in meaningful ways.

For me, if Im being really honest, that has only happened about a dozen times. Dont get me wrong. Ive enjoyed hundreds of good story games, but that special moment Im talking about is special for a reason. I remember each of these moments because they dont happen very often. They left an indelible mark on my life at the time. It happened the first time I joined a group of fellow travelers in