What Games will People Play

When I consider to buy or not to buy a game, a few thing that come in my mind :

Is the story of the game good?
Are the mechanics good?
How much does it cost?

So today, I’m going to be focus more on why do people consider the story before buying a game?
The Premises that I will have for today’s topic are:

Humans will respond and demand interesting stories
Product can be infused with interesting story

Premise 1 – Humans will respond and demand interesting stories

Storytelling is very strong skillset that has been used for several years regardless in any kind of industry ranging from movies to psychological uses. Storytelling enable people to learn so much more stuff like friendship, cooperation, empathy and also equality. So, why do people like stories?

Based on a research made by Paul J.Zak, he discovered that a neurochemical called oxytocin is a key”it’s safe to approach others” signal in the brain, and these “oxytocin” is produced when we are trusted or shown a kindness which motivates cooperation with others. He also mentioned that he found that character-driven stories do consistently cause oxytocin synthesis, in which motivates people to engage in cooperative behaviors.

Onto the business side, advertisement nowadays also prioritize the usage of storytelling skills. Based on Jim & Jennifer Poage from playbook.amanet.org ,these are the reasons why stories have become an essential business tool,

An interview video with Paul Smith (an expert in storytelling) that you can have a look,

Other than just motivating within the organization, companies also uses “Storyline Advertising” to pull in more customers. A great example is something from a Thai Life Insurance video which touches the viewers with a story of an unsung hero.

Storytelling has a few important elements that everyone should know,

This will ensure that a story has a steady structure and also a sequence so that the story that whoever is building is interesting.

Premise 2 – Product can be infused with interesting story

It is familiar to everyone nowadays that games include a lot of storytelling. Storytelling within a game began as early as 1972 when Pong was release, it was a game that is trying to make table tennis digitally. A lot of standard has rose since the day when the first Final Fantasy game was release. People nowadays ask for a lot when it comes to a great game with strong storyline.

Telltale Games

Telltale Games was a very successful studio with the release of “The Wolf Among Us” and “The Walking Dead” series. the company had made millions of dollars.

These 2 popular series has made a huge debut for the company who now mainly focuses on creating storytelling games. This shows that storytelling has a powerful market within the current video game industry.

Here are the records of sales and ratings that they got throughout the years,

Source : https://steamspy.com/dev/Telltale+Games

God of War Series

Ahhhh, my personal favorite series of all time. God of war has been in the market since the release on PlayStation 2, 2005. God of War then was a single player hack and slash title which was a huge hit on the console sitting at the 11th place and God of War II at 14th place for Highest PS2 Game Sales. They didn’t just stop there, they also developed on different platform such as mobile phones and handheld consoles.

Although the history of God of War are mostly developed on a hack and slash basis game, they took a huge turn at designing the game and made the game into an action adventure game.

“High risk, High rewards”, the studio decided to make the main character to take this path of a family person and not following the old path of destruction for selfishness, the game direction took a 90 degree turn out of the main elements within their game. To me, this shows that most of the fan of their fan base are fans of the story and not the mechanics of the game itself.

Here are the records of sales and ratings that they got throughout the years,

Source: VGchartz.com