I've been thinking a lot recently about the future of stories and of games. I'm trying to reconcile the two, and it's not working.
Stories are, well, stories. They recount events and people to evoke an emotional response in their listeners; they educate, illustrate, fascinate and other …ates. They are history, they are factual without being fact. They can be written, fixed in place, or they can be improvised and fluid.
Games are agreed-upon rules for people to compete, often with an overarching metaphor. In the most macro sense. Games can be based on stories, and have some narrative elements, but games are not stories.
At least, that's what my gut says.
There are stories that emerge from games — metastories, I guess. The drama that comes from a good chess game can be remembered for years; but the story is not part of the rules themselves.
Now video games are starting to change things. There are games that are “story-driven”, like Mass Effect 3 or Bioshock. And yes, you can get wrapped up in those narratives.
But do you ever lose the drive to win?
And what does that do to the story? Would we ever ask an actor in a play to try to win? And if we don't in a game, is it no longer a game? What does it become? Does it become a story with game-like elements?
Recently I've been thinking about the benefits of being a pirate. I play bass in a little pirate band for kids, and we've been at it for almost ten years. Ten years. We have four albums to our name, and we draw decent numbers for our shows here in Portland. We pour our little pirate hearts into each show, even the ones that are... challenging, and I think everybody has a grand time. Every now and then we get emailed adorable photos of kids rocking out at home, or pictures they drew of us, and it bouys our hearts beyond compare. But on the whole, this enterprise is not a money-making machine. We're generally in manageable debt, and the money we make does help with the bills. But it's pretty nominal, and we all have other full-time jobs. With five of us in the band, with families and loved ones, it gets difficult to schedule and get on the same page. We get told a lot that we must have a lot of fun — and we definitely do — but there is a lot of overhead that weighs heavily. The crew are such wonderful people, it's hard to imagine they need to do any other work; but the reality these days... I don't know.
So yesterday the band and I had a great opportunity to shoot a music video with a local film production company. The director donated his time, a local company donated a bunch of beautiful 16mm film, and about 15 local crew worked for dirt for over twelve hours. We even had the thing catered, by the Russell Street BBQ. There were interns! Everyone was very professional and laid back at the same time, which was very cool. We had a bunch of kids show up to be our audience, and to be in little gags during the video.
Its off for processing and editing, and hopefully will be in our grubby little hands in about three weeks.
The sucky thing was on the way home, while we were stopped for a celebratory beer. Someone broke my rear window of my car and stole my bass amplifier, the same one I've been using for every single pirate show. There were people around who saw it “go down”, and were a great help with the report to the police. I'm spending this morning trying to track down the serial number to stop it going to pawn shops, but I'm skeptical I'll ever get it back.
It was a great amp, and its going to be missed. Things could have been worse. The bass I made myself was in the trunk, along with more equipment. The rest of the band's gear was in a van right in front of my car, and if it were dark or more secluded, they could have easily broken into that as well.
And hell, we'll have a fantastic-looking music video soon.
