A game is a story.

Competitive games show a similar structure to a story.

In a team sport like soccer, we essentially pick a champion to root for. We think this team we like is morally or in terms of ability more entitled to win than others. Everyone knows exactly what the rules of the game are and what goals the teams pursue. Thanks to that clarity, we can enjoy focusing on the strategies and tactics our champions choose to reach their goal. From then we join them on the journey, as they face obstacles, create opportunities, succeed and loose and ultimately, we feel the excitement or the terror right before the end of the match, when our champion either will win or lose.

The story is the game

If we watch a movie or read a book or in any ways we consume story, the same components are there.

The worldbuilding establishes the rules of the game. What resources are available? What’s the goal?

The characters provide the champion and the enemy, both competing for the established goal, confined in the established rules. The question becomes: who applies the better tactics? Who is more creative and efficient in their use of the available resources? In contrast to a sports game, they might be able to find a loophole and break the rules. That would come with fatal consequences if the villain does it, and with transformatory consequences if the hero does it, for they outed the established rules as fake and expose the true rules of the world, they live in.

Even if both parties stay within the established rules, they seek to gain a deep understanding of them, such that they can abuse them to their advantage. The battles then could be:

• About skills or resources: Who is stronger within the rules established?
• About strategies: who understands the rules better, thus can play more creatively with them?
• About the rules itself: maybe not in sports, but in stories, one party might play along another set of rules, than the other (rules of friendship vs. rules of power. Then the battle becomes about which perspective on life is the “right” one.

In most stories, the heroes only gain true mastery of the world’s rules when they make the conscious choice of not abusing the rules for moral reasons. The conflict then becomes one of morality versus power. One party plays to win, the other plays to do the right thing. This puts the heroes at a disadvantage, which makes us root for them. They can overcome the powerful villains, because their moral restrictions help them understand the true meaning of the rules, and so they can outsmart the villains.

As hero and villain, champion and enemy struggle with each other, they create big moments. These moments affect the game they play, as they are successes or setbacks for one or the other party. After those moments, new tactics must be chosen, the parties take on new positions. But of course, the characters get affected as well. Maybe pressure builds and one of them grows desperate, maybe even a success can lead to the hero to take on a new challenge, when for example they grow from a leader of a small band of rebels to a commander of an army.

The build up to the successes or losses create the hope and fear that create the journey we love to remember. Then the moments become myths, as we talk about them with our friends. With myths, legends arise as well.

These moments do not have to be carefully curated. Instead, it is enough to establish rules and give the consumers pieces with which they can create their own experiences and stories worth telling. A game can create stories without necessarily telling a story.