Story and Simulations for Serious Games

13

A Really Good Villain

I asked a gamer friend of mine to answer a pretty simple question. “Tell me something about one of the characters in a video game you’ve played recently.” He looked up from darning his socks (or whatever he was doing), and told me to clarify. “Not anything external, like appearance or the way they talk. I mean that character as a person. The kind of thing you know about someone after reading a good book.” He seemed a little surprised by the question, so I told him it was for an article I was writing.

This guy isn’t stupid, and knew what I was getting at. He thought for a little while, and eventually told me, “You know, games don’t usually do that.”

(From “The Importance of Story” by John Campbell)

In a sense, you could ...