作者：Craig Ellsworth

一提到电子游戏我首先想到的便是《马里奥》。大多数《马里奥》游戏玩法都差不多：玩家控制角色的移动，打败敌人，并获得更多更强大的能量，如投掷火球或者飞行。从《超级马里奥》开始便出现了这种游戏模式，并一直延续到《超级马里奥银河2》）。

尽管游戏中还会出现其它分支内容，但是本质上都是关于马里奥跳起并撞击的Goomba头部或袭击龙壳形状的怪物。

我没有提到马里奥将要拯救公主？或者马里奥是名水管工？因为这些内容都与游戏玩法无关。

super-mario-war(from softsift.com)

公主只不过是一个剧情工具，作为你每次游戏所获得的奖励，但是当你在玩《超级马里奥》时，你是否看重这一奖励？也就是说，公主是否真有必要存在于《马里奥》中？

而库巴这个游戏中的大魔王便是一个很重要的角色，玩家能够感觉到打败它本身就是一种奖励。就像你在象棋游戏中战胜其他玩家时并不需要收到像棒棒糖等奖励，因为你会觉得获胜本身就是一种奖励。

的确，游戏玩法本身就是一种奖励，并不需要依靠故事去吸引玩家。设想在《超级马里奥》新手指南中出现了以下故事：

“温顺且热爱和平的蘑菇族人民被变成了石头，砖块，甚至是长满马毛的植物，整个蘑菇王国陷入了灭绝的危机。”

我想，这就意味着当马里奥打破一个砖块时，就等于杀害了一个无辜的蘑菇族人民。你是否知道这点？这个故事是否能够影响你看待游戏的角度？如果你真的看重这个故事，你将会非常小心地玩《超级马里奥》，甚至不敢打破任何一个砖块。

但是事实上却没有一名玩家会这么做，因为故事在这款游戏中并不重要，甚至在大部分《马里奥》系列游戏中都不是很重要。

《马里奥》便是无需故事元素也能够创造一款好游戏的铁证。的确，除了一些文本冒险游戏，早前大多数游戏中都没有故事，例如《太空入侵者》，《吃豆人》或者《青蛙过河》；甚至是《Pong》中也不存在多少故事元素。

近来的游戏中出现了越来越多大篇幅故事。但是优秀的故事既能够造就一款游戏也能够破坏一款游戏。如今的游戏中添加了更多深层次的故事情节，使得玩家能够进入游戏中体验交互式的小说情节。

这当然是件好事。假设电影没有呈现“让我们看火车呼啸而过”的一幕，那么玩家看到的就只是“行驶中的3D火车”。

电影的飞跃发展让简单的“移动画面”能够创造出一种新形式的舞台剧，让该媒体从技术演示最终发展成一种艺术形式。

但最初的电影过于模仿舞台剧，该行业没有意识到电影是一种完全不同的媒体形式，我们可以利用所谓的电影艺术去创造更多内容，而非单纯地录制舞台剧。

而现在，我们可以利用摄像机巧妙地改变这种媒体形式，电影艺术是既是艺术也是科学。

当电子游戏刚刚出现时，其主要特点就是交互性。它可以让玩家在电视上玩桌面游戏。不久之后，开发者开始重视故事元素，不再只是将其当成一种新颖的技术，而希望真正利用它创造出艺术。

但是很不幸，与早期的电影一样，电子游戏过于依赖其它媒体形式去发展故事，它们未能挖掘自己的新技术潜能来创造真正的艺术。

我的意思是说，电子游戏开发者进入了两个极端，要么过度重视游戏玩法而忽略故事（如《超级马里奥》），要么让故事情节大大超越了游戏玩法（如文本冒险游戏）。

近来，故事和游戏玩法都获得了同等的发展机会，但是并非趋于结合，反倒进一步朝着不同方向而分裂。

游戏玩法是玩家将亲自体验的内容，其本身就具有乐趣和吸引力；而故事则是玩家所看到或听到的内容，完全不同于游戏玩法。

过场动画和对话框是开发者用于阐述故事的非交互式静态工具，这种做法并不难理解，特别是在游戏最先引入故事情节时，这些工具甚为重要，因为故事元素一向是以非交互性、线性艺术形式扎根于人类文明之中。

而现在，开发者应该进一步完善技术，让游戏中的故事更具有交互性，并且贯穿于游戏玩法中。当玩家在玩《战神》时会发现游戏故事与玩法是相互分离的；游戏玩法是战斗和探索，而故事则是关于角色的过去以及他是如何陷进目前的困境中。但是在最后的boss战斗中这两大元素便会开始进行合并。Kratos（游戏邦注：《战神》中的主角）将面对一群以他自己为模板的僵尸，这实际暗指他也是在面对自己内心中的恶魔，这便是《战神》故事的核心内容。玩家最终将根据自己在整个游戏中所接触的玩法去感受故事，而故事也将逐渐融入游戏玩法中。

god of war(from scotspec.blogspot.com)

很少出现能够同时整合这两大元素的游戏。通常，故事情节越复杂且篇幅越大，它便越难与游戏玩法相交融。只要仔细观察一些RPG游戏，你便能够清楚地看到这两者的界线。

尽管很多游戏都希望让玩家自行控制故事的发展，并且具有交互性，不要求大部分内容贯穿相同类型的游戏玩法。大部分对话选择便是如此；如果你面对的是一款战斗游戏，你会发现对话选择并不能给予玩家足够的控制权。

然而也有一些游戏能够让玩家更好地控制故事结果。游戏角色会因为玩家的行动而永久长存或死亡，玩家可以在主要游戏玩法中根据自己的技能或选择而决定角色的生死，这种设置接近于真正融合玩法和故事的目标。

甚至是一些线性故事情节也能够具有交互性。即使玩家不能够控制故事的发展，也不能控制故事的结果，但是他们却能够引导自己的角色贯穿整个故事。

在这里我并不是指玩家将引导角色穿过一间充满敌人的房间，并以旁观者的角度去观看这个游戏场面；而是游戏将要求玩家真正融入故事，并贯穿玩法去体验故事情节。

也许我们需要改变现有的游戏类型，创造出更深刻的交互式故事；或者我们应该努力完善现有的游戏机制而赋予其讲故事的能力。

我想现在仍然有许多电子游戏维持着传统游戏模式，《愤怒的小鸟》在这一方面其实也和《吃豆人》、《波特Q-精灵》无异，同样可以登陆街机游戏平台。

也有许多游戏在技术上发生了巨大变化，但是它们却只能介于游戏和电影之间。有人将这些游戏称为“互动式电影”或“互动式故事”，但是因为这些游戏的故事都未能体现交互性（即游戏玩法）元素，所以这两种称法都不合适。我认为将其称为游戏/故事混合体或者混合媒体更形象。

《暴雨》等游戏接近于互动式故事，但电子游戏尚未真正实现这个目标，我们现在还不宜这样称呼此类游戏。

LARPing（游戏邦注：真人角色扮演游戏）应该算是现今最能够体现交互式故事的游戏类型；它允许玩家能够随着游戏进程而创造故事，或者至少让他们能够根据自己的想法改变游戏主线。但LARP中的LA（实景真人）却意味着这种游戏与电子游戏领域无关。

尽管我并不在乎游戏故事是否与玩法相分离，但我认为直到游戏能够真正利用玩法阐述故事之时，它们才能算是一种故事艺术形式。而在此之前，游戏只能算是一种混合媒体。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Games Aren’t a Storytelling Medium (Yet)

by Craig Ellsworth

When I think of videogames, I think of Mario.  Most Mario games are basically the same:  you control the character’s movements, defeat enemies, and gain some fun super powers that add variety, like throwing fireballs or flying.  This formula has been there since Super Mario Bros., and has continued through Super Mario Galaxy 2.

There have been many spin-offs, but at heart, Mario is a guy who bops on Goomba heads and whacks around a dragon-turtle beast.

Did I mention you rescue a princess?  Oops, I forgot.  Also, did I mention Mario is a plumber?  I guess it slipped my mind considering it has no bearing on the gameplay whatsoever.

The Princess is no more than a plot device, and serves as your ultimate reward each game, but when you play Super Mario Bros., is it even necessary?  In fact, is she necessary in any Mario game?

Bowser sure is an important character, being the boss and all, but defeating Bowser is a reward in itself.  When you beat another player at Chess, you don’t need to receive a lollipop for a job well done; winning is its own reward.

Indeed, playing is its own reward, and there is no need for a story to hook you in.  In fact, consider this part of the story in the manual for Super Mario Bros.:

“The quiet, peace-loving Mushroom People were turned into mere stones, bricks, and even field horse-hair plants, and the Mushroom Kingdom fell into ruin.”

I guess that means when Mario breaks a brick block, he’s killing innocent Mushroom People.  Did you know that?  Is it relevant to how you look at the game?  I suppose if you care that much about it, you could try playing Super Mario Bros. without breaking a single block.

But nobody cares because story was not important in that game, and for that matter it’s not terribly important in most Mario platformers.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love Mario.  He’s my favorite videogame character, the universe he inhabits is beautiful, and if there is one mascot that will forever define videogames — not just Nintendo — it’s going to be Mario.

But Mario is proof positive that you don’t need a story to make a great game.  Indeed, most early games had no story, except for text adventures.  No story necessary in Space Invaders, Pacman, Frogger.  Not much of a story to Pong, either.

These days, games have big stories, and often great stories can make or break a game.  With the depth stories in games get into nowadays, players are often participating in interactive novels.

This is, of course, quite a good thing.  Imagine if movies never got off the “let’s watch a train drive by” stage.  Eventually you’d be watching “Trains Driving By in 3D!”

The leap from movies making simple “moving images” to creating a new form of stage play turned the medium from a tech demo into an art form.

But first, movies copied stage plays a little too much; they did not understand that, being a different medium, there was a whole avenue of art called cinematography which could be exploited and used to create something beyond a recording of a stage play.

Eventually it was figured out, of course, and now we have a repertoire of tricks with the camera that change the medium drastically; cinematography is both an art and a science.

When videogames first came out, they used interactivity as the thing to show off.  You played board games on your television!  It was only after some time that developers began taking storytelling seriously in videogames, getting beyond the novelty of the technology to finally make art with it.

Unfortunately, just like movies in its early stages, videogames based their storytelling off another medium.  And just like movies in its early stages, games didn’t use their new technology to its potential to create art in the medium.

By this I mean that videogames either concentrated their efforts on gameplay over story, like in Super Mario Bros., or took story over gameplay, like text adventures.

These days, while equal time is usually spent on both story and gameplay, they are not married, but rather are split up into different jail cells.

Gameplay is the thing the player does, which is fun and engaging in its own right; story is the thing the player watches or reads, separate from the gameplay entirely.

A cutscene, a dialogue box; these are static, non-interactive tools game developers use to tell their story, and it is understandable that, when games were first developing storylines, such devices were necessary because human civilization has pretty much kept storytelling locked in as a non-interactive, linear art form.

But now, games should have sufficiently improved their technology that stories can be interactive, through the same gameplay the rest of the game uses.  Play God of War and see that the story is clearly separated from the gameplay.  The gameplay is fighting and exploration, and the story is a study of the character’s past and how he arrived in the mess he is in.

The game begins to merge the two at the final boss battle, when Kratos faces a bunch of zombie versions of himself; in essence he is confronting his inner demons, which is what God of War was always ultimately about.  The player finally gets to interact with the story through the same gameplay he’s always used throughout the game, and the story (which was restricted previously to cutscenes) merges with the gameplay.

It’s very rare that games merge the two parts of the game together.  Often, the more complicated and epic the story, the farther from the gameplay it goes.  Take almost any RPG and you’ll see the divide pretty clearly.

Even games which try to give the player meaningful choices to sway the story, while interactive, don’t require the same style of gameplay as the majority of the game.  Most dialogue options are like this; when a game is primarily combat-based, dialogue options are a poor attempt to give the player something to control.

Some games do much better in giving the player control over outcomes.  When characters live or die permanently as a result of the player’s actions, and the option always exists to keep them alive or let them die based on the player’s skill or choices during the main gameplay portions, that is as close as we’ve come to games truly mixing gameplay and story.

Even linear stories in games can still be just as interactive, even if the player has no control over where the story goes — the player may not have control over the outcome, but they do get to lead the character(s) through the story.

By this, I do not mean leading a character through a room of baddies to watch the cutscene on the other side.  I mean that the game requires the player to act out the story through gameplay.

Perhaps we need to shift away from the genres we have today, as most of them do not work well to allow interactive story; or perhaps we need geniuses that can figure out ways to make the current mechanics tell the stories.

I think there are still plenty of videogames today that maintain the classic definition of videogame; Angry Birds would fit pretty well at home in an arcade cabinet next to Pacman and Q-Bert.

But there are also many games which are technological marvels, but are half-game, half-movie.  Some want to call these “interactive movies” or “interactive stories”, but they are neither, since the interactivity (the gameplay) is far removed from the story itself.  I would call these game/story hybrids, or mixed media.

We are getting closer to interactive stories as game developers try to take big risks with games like Heavy Rain, but the day has yet to come when I can use such a term on a videogame.

Perhaps the current closest interactive story to be found is LARPing, which allows players to improvise and create stories as they go, or at least change the main thread sufficiently to personalize it to their taste; but of course the LA in LARP means there is nothing digital about it.

I have no problem with stories being separate from gameplay (and most of my favorite games have separated stories, or almost no story at all), but when games actually use their primary mode of gameplay to tell their stories, that will be the day when games have truly begun to explore their medium as a storytelling art form.

Until then, we’re still just mixing media.(source:GAMASUTRA)