Orson Scott Card: Stories in Games Are "Window Dressing"

You'd think that an iconic writer like Orson Scott Card would find fault with video games for having such lousy stories, but as it turns out, he sees it as an inevitability of the medium. In his interview with Gaming Today, he explained that games can't possibly have satisfying stories because by their very nature, they break the storytelling process:

Games CAN'T have the kind of storylines that movies and books have, or they wouldn't be playable. You are correct to skip the tedious, badly written "scenes" that are usually a pathetic job of trying to paste story on top of a game. What makes a game work is the opposite of what makes a story work. In a story, you are seeking to find out what really happened - why people do what they do, what the results of their choices are. You identify with the character(s) but you do not control them. Instead, the author has the ultimate authority.

Further on in the interview, Card discusses the status of the Ender's Game movie (don't ask) and the possibility of games based on the novel. Warner Brothers was apparently supposed to put out several games without waiting for the movie, but that plan fell through. Card is confident that several different games bearing the "Ender's Game" brand will still see daylight, including three different space war games, a story-based game, a "multi-user online game," and a Sim Ant-like game called Hive Queen.

The interview provides numerous other tasty bits of info and insight, like the fact that Card wrote the insults from the original Monkey Island game, with a little help from his kids. How appropriate, you fight like a cow!

Gaming Today's Exclusive Interview With Author Orson Scott Card [Gaming Today]