Writing game stories - who is the audience?

In the last two weeks I have been on a huge learning curve....

It all started when my husband asked me if I could work with some students on developing narratives for games. He is currently teaching 2 Year 11/12 classes where students are developing games.

I'm a journalist teacher, right. I know how to tell a story. But do game stories follow the same sort of ideas? Well I started reading a couple of books:

21st century game design - Chris Bateman, Richard Boon

Game Writing Narrative Skills for Video Games - editor Chris Bateman

And they were fascinating. First, game writing depends on who the audience is. And the games industry really know their audience... they have worked out there are four distinct Myer-Briggs categories which describe the different temperaments of players -

the conqueror - competitive, real time action, focussed on plot events (missions), wants rapid advancement - level ups, fiero, winning

the manager - strategy, game process - improvement in capacity to play the game, finesse, intrigued by plot issues - political/socio issues, time to think

the participant - role playing, narrative, characters - their relationships and perpsectives, multi-player, empathic, diplomatic, wants to interact with story and change it

the wanderer - mimics, explores, wants new toys and fun things to do, unsettled by conflict - turned off if too hard, flat worlds, interested in characters and wants to identify with them

The aim of game design is to help the player find the flow state... not too challenging and not too boring... and it is different for each temperament. Different game genres target the different temperaments with different emphasis on story, characters, open or closed plot lines.

Hmmm. Next post I will talk about game narrative....