The value of story; quantifiable results

I am sorry to say that I am not talking about exalted storytelling, nor classical narratives. What I came across was someone trying to approach story as a feature with a quantifiable benefit. [LINK] This is a hard task, but the writer of the piece had an ace up his sleeve. He cited a project that specifically dealt with discovering how much value a simple story, a little 'narrative context', can add to simple items. As a narrative designer, I was fascinated by the idea that someone could put a figure on the value of story. This fascination turned to shock and amazement when I saw what those figures were...

As of last week, about 80 bits of written context had turned $112.02 into $2,857.22.

That is a profit margin of about 2,450% for those of you doing the maths in your head. The figures are heavily inflated by the fact that the original items are fairly worthless (the average value before the story is about $1.50), but it tells you a lot about how much weight people place on any sense of story. These objects were no longer random junk, but the centre of a story.

They were essentially buying themselves a modern version of the relics of heroes, when you think about it. A signet ring from ancient Rome is a sorry thing, for instance. Hundreds are in circulation and you can buy them for about the value of the metal they are made from. If that Ring was once worn by Julius Caesar, or even Brutus, then it is a part of the legend and suddenly it should be insured for a fair sight more.

When we write a story, its 'focus object' is the game, a mass-produced thing of zeroes and ones that is shared by thousands of players. Value is lost, but we give them something else; we give them the legend as a living thing, we give them the starring role for a time. If we do it right, maybe one day we can add 2,450% to the value of the game.

Wow - shows how impressive a marketing tool 'story' is! (and it also doesn't hurt if your name, as a writer, is somewhat well known for further value-adding.)

Thanks for sharing this article.

Of course, the stories presented are good stories

Games can be good regardless of story. Chess, Go, Tetris (as Yakaru mentioned) are great, timeless games without an explicit story, though one could certainly try to have an implicit story. The Battlefield series has implicit stories, but nothing explicit. Games can be HURT by the inclusion of an explicit story - Section 8 and Frontlines: Fuels of War are two games that didn't need a single player story to present a good game to the player, and the stories they did provide were terrible. These terrible stories were often cited as major drawbacks to the games themselves, even though they were clearly directed at large multiplayer experiences.

So, I guess what I'm saying is: story has a place, but it depends on the game.