In addition to continued updates to the subscription-free Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet developers would likely point to the game as a good representation of narrative's improvement within the game design community.
At least, that's Leah Hoyer's assertion as head of narrative at the studio with experience as both director of original programming at the Disney Channel and director of narrative design briefly at Microsoft.
Story is definitely not the front-and-center star of games the way it is in TV, but the recognition for how important it is to the overall experience is absolutely growing.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Hoyer claimed that narrative doesn't have the same "authority and primacy it does in television, but that doesn't mean people aren't thinking it's important."
If you look at film, when film got started, people were not even allowed to talk in film. They didn't have the technology. People obviously get invested in the characters and the story they're playing through. And by no means am I saying that every game needs to be a particularly narrative heavy game. There are certain genres of games or types of games that don't need a lot of story. But the bigger they get, and the more expensive the budget gets, you start to realize how important it is to have characters and a story world that people are excited to be a part of.
When asked about television, Hoyer said that there's an assumption about the medium and how it's exclusively about telling good stories.
And because of that, they've gotten really good at telling stories, but they also realize that so many people have told good stories so they're always pushing to tell a story in a new way and maybe take it from a different point-of-view. [Games] have all the ability to tell stories like books and TV and film, but now they have this way to really immerse people in the telling of the story and I know there are a lot of game companies out there, ours included, that are really excited to find ways of building and shaping a story along with the player.
For more, watch the trailer above or read our review of Guild Wars 2 here. Do you think game narratives are approaching what television and movies have accomplished? I'd say most video games tend to tell better stories when they try to be more like books than films.
