Writing Game Narrative - a path to self awareness?

After reading Game Narrative Writing Skills for Video Games, I am excited at the potential for student learning...

Not only does game writing introduce students to understanding player psychology and developing self-awareness of themselves as a player, it can help them deconstruct popular culture - movies as well as games, and how they might be manipulated. This is not just something for IT teachers to do in their electromagnetically pulsating computer labs - it could be a way of assisting boys in exploring literacy through a culture which has 75% of them engaged.

So now, think Hollywood. Game writers use the "story arc" notion as the "spine" of the game - the "high level" story, which moves the plot forward. The player creates their own experience or story in playing the game - the "intermediate story". (Some game genres don't have stories).

The heroic journey is an archetypal game genre which follows along the line of Joseph Campbell's notion of the hero's journey. These games use archetypes such as the hero, the threshold demon, the mentor, the herald, the trickster, the shapeshifter and the shadow/nemesis.

Game writers choose main characters which have qualities that appeal to their audience - noble, mulit-dimensional, intriguing... or even anti-heroic. Missions (and often killing) are justified to save others.

A dramatic tension is set up by asking the question "Will the hero get the goal?" and rising tension mounts as conflicts arise, the hero has to develop abilities, suffer plot reversals, before the major climax of hero vs nemesis. Then there is the resolution...

The game narrative book does a great analysis of Stars Wars Ep IV and how it follows this story arc.

Educational researcher, Keiran Egan, suggests that a key into learning for 7 to 15 year olds is through a Romantic way of learning - using story, heroes and villains, transformational journeys, looking at the edges of what is possible, enabling depth.

It seems that many game genres are using these learning tools in engaging students. We see it in how they immerse themselves into a game world and come to know everything about it. As educators how can we value add this experience, and help students deconstruct it?

Perhaps by getting in and becoming a game writer these things can be revealed... you are no longer a game player being played by the writers, but rather thinking about how you might engage others as players.