Blasts of snow and icy wind hits your face as you quickly make your way home. Despite the raging cold of late December frost, a feeling of warmth runs through as excitement envelopes your body. You repeatedly tell yourself ‘today is the day’, and quicken your pace to the front door.

You fumble for your keys that are lodged in your winter coat, not knowing where it laid in the multitude of pockets. You grow frustrated and cursed under your breath until the endless searching came to fruition. You make out the shape of a small metal substance hidden deep in the corners of your chest pocket and whipped it in the door.

A step into the doorway you realized a bright ray of light. Presumably you had forgotten to turn the lights off this morning and, once again a short profanity of words are muttered as you estimate your ever rising electricity bill. Well, no matter. ‘Today is the day.’

Then the corners of your mouth perks up as you reach your bedroom. You undress in the comfort of your pajamas, drag the stash of tasty morsels under your bed, and sit in your plush chair. You look around, ascertain that everything is in place, and put your headsets on.

The long awaited weekend of rest has finally arrived. You can finally play the game you’ve been waiting for but what’s this? A blog you’ve been keeping track of seems to have updated you on a new post. You check it out and read “Video Games Are Better Without Stories” by Ian Bogost.

It seems the gist of the article is a critique on narratives in the game play of video games. According to Bogost “Game’s obsession with story obscures more ambitious goals” and that game narratives gives up simulated characters and plots, “embracing scripted action instead.” This somewhat infuriates you and you decide to share your opinion as well.

You write a lengthy response starting with the point that narratives are indeed not essential in all games. With ones like Tetris, instructions are enough. However, games without narratives are simply a repeat of constant actions with no actual ‘game play’ or substance. Narratives not only provide a creative and unique backstory, paired with world building, players can fully understand the game and the subtle hints around them as they progress in the game. Bioshock, for example, opens with a 15 minute story line that introduces the character in a first person point of view. By doing so, players are able to focus on the artwork which displays a dominant contrast of ‘the world below a utopia’. You add: narrative creates empathy. It is the reason why most favored games are so memorable; strong feelings of fight-or-flight maneuver simply from the cut scene of the isolated lighthouse certainly has you engrossed.

You then bring up another point from one of the other responses you see. Bianca Batti and Alisha Karabinus writes in their piece “A Dream of Embodied Experience: On Ian Bogost, Epistemological Gatekeeping, and the Holodeck” that ‘Bogost’s judgements regarding so-called ‘good’ and ‘bad’ storytelling are based on the ‘insidious idea of ‘worthiness”. You agree and feel as if this ‘worthiness’ is more so an entitlement and norm within the society of patriarchal gamers who have the say in what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. You ask : what are the so called ambitious goals that might obscure the game? Why is storytelling not considered ambitious as well? Games are all stories to some degree, they can be literal like Twine games (or this blog :)) , and by denying these stories ultimately denies the game’s efforts and abilities.

On that note, you realize you have spent some time away from your game and decide to end off your reply. You take a big stretch in your chair and start the relaxing dream of your weekend.