In Which I Argue With Steve Jobs

The passing of Steve Jobs has brought about tributes from all over the technology world, and this one in particular stuck out from me. It’s from video game design Ron Gilbert, who created one of my favorite things – not just games – of all time: The Secret Of Monkey Island. (How appropriate, you fight like a cow!)

Over at Grumpy Gamer, Gilbert talks about the one time he met Jobs:

I arrived at the meeting and went into the conference room. John Lasseter was there (who I casually knew from when Pixar was part of Lucasfilm) and we chit-chatted.

A few minutes later Steve Jobs came in. He sat right across the table from me and the first words out of his mouth where: "I don't believe you can tell stories in games."

Now...

Steve Jobs could have told me the sky was green, he could have told me that dogs gave birth to cats, he could have said just about anything and I would have nodded thoughtfully and probably been totally convinced, but he had to say the one thing in all of creation that I could not let go.

I spent the next hour arguing with Steve Jobs.

My advice to God: Don't argue with Steve Jobs.

Gilbert doesn't go into details about the discussion beyond the punchline, but I did find Jobs' statement as an odd thing to say. There's been the long-standing debate about whether games could be considered art, but I've never heard an argument about whether stories could be told in a game format, especially these days where many titles are akin to interactive animated films. Back when Gilbert met Jobs, I'm guessing it was the early or mid-90s, and while there wasn't a ton of narrative available on that generation of consoles, PC adventure games -- like Gilbert's own Monkey Island series -- were built on narrative.

Here is a dictionary definition of "story"...

1. a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale.

2. a fictitious tale, shorter and less elaborate than a novel.

3. such narratives or tales as a branch of literature: song and story.

4. the plot or succession of incidents of a novel, poem, drama, etc.: The characterizations were good, but the story was weak.

5. a narration of an incident or a series of events or an example of these that is or may be narrated, as an anecdote, joke, etc.

I suppose the arguments about games-as-storytelling-devices is that the player gets too caught up in the immediate goal to notice the narrative. That is, whether you're shooting, climbing, or solving a puzzle, you're paying attention to the goal rather than the narrative.

However, my argument against that is that lazy game designers segregate out gameplay from plot. Smart game designers do what stories do -- give us character, conflict, environment, and stakes. Similarly, plenty of awful films are light on story but heavy on visuals, but the best ones bring it together.

I think about some of my favorite gaming moments, and they have less to do with how cool the gameplay was and more to do with the impact of the moment given my character's goal. For example, in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots, there's a well-known scene towards the end of the game when your character has to simply get to the end of a hallway -- except the hallway is being blasted with microwaves and seemingly goes on forever. That means that the further you get, the more your character is burned from the inside out, and thus the harder it is to move your character forward -- by the end, you're literally slamming a button repeatedly as fast as you can to get him to crawl a few inches to the goal.

Outside of the context of the narrative, such interaction seems rather pointless and is akin to 8-bit Nintendo Track & Field, where you "ran" your character in a race by tapping the buttons. There's certainly no story in Track & Field, it's just Player A and Player B competing with each other.

In this case, though, the journey of the player, the game world's central conflict, and the ultimate goal of many characters -- both protaganists and antagonists -- comes down to whether or not you make it down that tunnel. The stakes are high, and you're driven forward because you care about what happens to these fictional characters in this fictional world. MGS4 reinforces these points with visual overlays cutting away to the different reactions of characters as you get closer and closer -- the interaction raises the stakes, and in a way, the punishing level of button mashing brings you closer to the moment rather than taking you out of it.

How many of us have felt the emotional swing of urgency and reward while watching/reading a climactic moment in a story? Isn't this the same thing, except your urgency is translated directly into a control pad?

Can games tell stories? In it's simplest form, a game with a story (not, say, a sports game) is analogous to an old-school Choose Your Own Adventure tale. The world, characters, and conflict are defined, but you control -- to varying degrees -- how to get to the end point. A good story in a game will propel you forward because you want to get to that end, even if the controls and gameplay suck.

So, with all due respect to Mr. Jobs, I beg to differ. Games don't just tell stories, the best ones help tell the stories in unique ways that only that particular interactive medium can.