The Power of Storytelling in Video Games: How Narratives Enhance the Gaming Experience

One of the questions I think I’ve been asked most since branching more into gaming is where I started as a gamer and what games I like to play, an experience most gamers can probably relate to. We want to know what happened that brought us all here, to this point in time where we’re bonding over pixels on a screen. We all started in different places that, at the end of the day, maybe aren’t actually so different. Me? I started on a GBA playing Barbie games while my male cousins played Mario or Pokemon. As I got a little older, I fell into a world where girls just did not game even though all my friends’ brothers had the latest Xbox or Playstation in their rooms. A little further down the road I would end up with a step-dad who got us a PlayStation 2. I wasn’t very good at the games he played, usually Need for Speed or something similar, and instead of encouragement, I got told repeatedly that I was awful at these games since I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t touch a console again for nearly ten years but I have zero intention of ever letting go of the worlds I’ve found myself in through gaming.

I know that I’m not alone in this experience. Being female in the gaming space often comes with a massive helping of push back. There is an ever-lingering need to prove oneself and prove that we belong. This pressure can be extremely disheartening and it took me a long time to work through the past and be able to truly enjoy the games I play. There are a lot of things in life that, had I been met with the same resistance, I would have lost interest permanently. But my interest in gaming never went away and it took a couple years for me to figure out why - it’s the stories that games tell. Those narratives are what suck me back in time and time again. Narrative has immense power in the gaming space, one that may be often overlooked or taken for granted. This power makes games more relatable, allows for deeper connections both to the story and other gamers, and that connection can evolve and change greatly as one's relation with the world changes, and it can even help with facing some of life’s hardest challenges.

I could go on for hours about all the ways that I’ve found myself and a community, a home even, due to the narratives that games provide. The root of all of these ways, at least for me, is relatability. I may have fun playing Minecraft and Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros., especially with friends, but I’ve never encountered anything in those games that is necessarily relatable. I go through spurts where exploring or racing against friends is fun and cathartic, but they never really suck me in. These aren’t the games that I grow connections with people over. Yes, I have good memories with friends of playing these games; they’ll never top my list of favorites though. Those games that do suck me in, that make me want to go back and play over and over and over are the ones that tell a story. Life is Strange, The Legend of Zelda, even farming sims such as Stardew Valley and Story of Seasons that give you guidance towards a story but let you decide where that story goes–they all exist in realms with their own stories and histories. You get to choose how the story goes and learn about these characters along the way. You can get a new beginning, explore aspects of yourself that you may not have realized existed, you can be the hero.

These narratives can also provide an outlet, an escape even, into a world where gamers can be themselves. Members of the LGBTQIA+ community can find kinship and themselves in ways that are often inaccessible in society. I know I did. I found a gaming community that encouraged me to be true to myself and then went in search of games where I could be myself without worrying about whether the world would accept it or not. I found a whole world of games featuring LGBTQIA+ characters and even more where you get to make the choice to have your character be the person you want to be.

This relatability also builds bigger connections between both gamer and game and between gamer and gamer. Sure, you can bond with someone a little and find out how competitive they are playing some Smash Bros., but how deep can that connection get? When you ask someone their favorite game, chances are extremely high that those games are all narrative driven, be it a casual or adventure game. Gaming has even created a bonding point between myself and the kids I babysit. They’re always excited to see me and not only tell me the latest happenings in their game worlds, but ask about mine. Most recently, we’ve all been bonding over The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Some of these kids are ones I’ve known for over seven years and, until they started gaming, we honestly didn’t have much to bond over. We got along but, other than the occasional book, didn’t have much that we could truly talk about. Now when I see them on Mondays the first thing they ask me is what game I played that weekend or how far I made it in a game they know I’ve been playing and I ask them the same.

One of my favorite things about this connection though is that this connection to a game evolves, it doesn’t exist just once. It changes as life changes. I’ve had two very different experiences with two different games over the last year. The first set was before I came out, the second set was when I was working on becoming comfortable with myself and where I exist within the world and the LGBTQIA+ community. The first of these is Unpacking. On the surface this game seems relatively simple and just like another puzzle-type game. You take things out of boxes and put them away. But those things tell a story and that narrative is relatable for different reasons to different people. For me, I found the shift in the narrative towards the later levels drew me in in vastly different ways between my first and second times playing. The first time, I was happy to see representation for a group I knew many of my friends belonged to (and I still absolutely want a pair of rainbow socks). That second time, it hit deeper as I had also finally figured out that I too belonged to that group. Playing through a narrative that I have only partially lived and getting to dream about the future through this game is an experience that I won’t ever forget, no matter how many times I replay this game.

Another game with an incredible narrative is the Life is Strange series. This is the first game I played where I actually held an appreciation for the ability to choose a partner of the same gender as myself. I started with Life is Strange: True Colors and have been slowly working my way backwards. Having the ability to have a queer relationship was freeing and came at a time while I myself was taking the leap into my current relationship and trying to figure out how to tell my family. Being able to fully embrace that relationship in game helped me become more confident in myself and that ending was so much more fulfilling than when I had previously played and gone with the relationship option I felt was expected of me. The base narrative that drives these games didn’t change but my experience with them did vastly because the way I exist in the world had changed.

Storytelling in gaming provides a fourth purpose: these games can also help us face life’s challenges. This is still a connection formed between player and game. For me, one of the ways I was able to explore and figure out that I was gay was through gaming and exploring that part of myself through the games I found. But life provides more challenges than this and there are games out there to help deal with the emotions these challenges can bring. Games like Lost Words: Beyond the Page do this. In Lost Words the world the narrative was built in crumbles as the main character faces the loss of a family member. In the wake of that loss, however, is a fresh start and the ability to rebuild and create something new. It shares the lesson we all know too well about letting go and rebuilding. The world won’t look the same as it did, and it certainly can’t be rebuilt into what it once was. I discovered this game at a point in time where I was dealing with an almost identical loss and the lesson left behind by this story helped me process and move on from my own loss.

The stories that games tell have immense power and can help with so many different aspects of life. I know that they have helped me the most with growing my confidence and learning to understand and accept who I am a queer member of society. No two stories are exactly identical, nor are the ways that we as gamers interact with them. However, those stories still bring people together and allow us to bond over how we connect to certain games. Even when I game alone, which is often, I never truly feel alone because of the community that these stories create.