Last time, I blogged about a panel discussion that dissected the quality of storytelling in games of the past. Now, let's fast-forward to Thursday morning, when I walked into the very same room as before, slightly late, to a crowd that was just as packed. (Fortunately, I did manage to find a place to sit.) This time around, it was a panel called The Future of Story in Games, and by now I've learned that whenever I hear the words "future of..." before anything, I should be preparing myself for a fun-filled brouhaha of wild speculation accompanied by vitriolic arguments from various opposing schools of thought. I could tell that I would be far from disappointed in this regard, as the panel contained an even more diverse set of speakers than the first one, from freelance writers to people from id Software, Silicon Knights, Polar Productions, and several other companies. (Names, for those interested, are... (deep breath) Matt Costello, Tim Willits, Denis Dyack, Mary DeMarle, Matthew Karch, Michael Hall, and Deborah Todd.)

The meat of the argument was as such: given that the industry is ultimately driven by markets (this is the part where the experimental freeware game designer in me cringes, but let's not get into that here), what do gamers and the rest of the general public actually want? The most technologically-oriented developers say "gameplay"; people play games because they want to be able to "do something cool", and story should therefore play a secondary role, supporting this coolness factor. Those on the opposite side of the spectrum, with backgrounds in screenwriting, say "story"; people want to get sucked into an engaging plot and memorable characters, meaning that games will never be as massively popular as other media until they get those things right. Film, after all, was far more lauded for the newness of its technology in its infancy, yet today, it's matured into an entertainment medium first and foremost, and it is argued that games are now heading in that very same direction.

In truth, it seems to me that the answer lies in an amalgam of both views, and a handful of panelists gave good reasons for this. First of all, technology is important because it potentially makes for better storytelling; we are already seeing companies develop frameworks that enable more expressive characters and more immersive worlds to explore. Also, one must bear in mind that stories are not just told through writing alone, but through visuals, sound, and yes, gameplay. Just as in the games mentioned in the first panel, game stories have far more impact when all the pieces fit together to form one cohesive whole. Therefore, it makes no sense at all to rank one discipline above another; they are all equally important!

Since, as I mentioned above, several of the panelists were also screenwriters, it was inevitable that further comparisons of games to film and television would be made. One point they brought up that really stuck for me personally was the notion that genres would potentially no longer be classified by their gameplay styles, e.g. "first-person shooter", "RPG", and heck, even "adventure game", and instead, similarly to movies, be known by their subject matter: drama, action, horror, et cetera. I found that this was very much true with regards to the way I think of my own gaming preferences — rather than liking adventure games as a whole, I would say, for instance, that I gravitate very much towards comedy games, many of which have adventure-style gameplay but not necessarily always so — even though I do still think that boxing everything into a genre of any kind can sometimes be limiting. Still, grouping games in terms of what they are about appears to have more potential for the evolution of gameplay styles that synergize with the story they are trying to tell, and this is an innovation I would most definitely love to see more of.

Finally, I must reiterate that the fact that people are even discussing how important stories are in games — and in such well-attended panel discussions, too — is in itself a reason to be optimistic, because it means that someday, we might just end up with stories in games that stand up to and even surpass the stories told in other media. Given that I myself gravitate to adventure games because of the way that many of them have historically fused story and gameplay, I would say that this would be a definite asset to the genre... and far more importantly, to gaming as a whole.