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Greg Costikyan (Manifesto Games and senior IGDA figure) has released a paper titled Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String at Electronic Book Review. The subject is the "ongoing culture clash between those who view story as perhaps important but tangential to understanding the nature of games, and those who view it as essential":
More information.Dungeons & Dragons, originally created by Dave Arneson and refined by Gary Gygax, was an outgrowth of the Chainmail rules for playing fantasy battles with miniature figures. Chainmail already had rules for special "hero" characters on the battlefield, single individuals equally (or more) powerful than a whole military unit. Arneson took those rules, elaborated them, and set the game, not on a battlefield, but in a "dungeon," an underground domain populated by monsters. In one sense, this was a simple extension of an existing game; but in another, it was a wholly novel form of game.
You played a single character with the ability to grow and gain in power over time; and while (initially) Dungeons & Dragons, as a set of rules, did little to encourage plot complexity, true role-playing, or anything like real storytelling, the mere fact of a character persisting in an imaginary world over multiple sessions of play offered a clear opportunity for a tighter connection between gameplay and story. D&D was innovative in another regard too as it dispensed with the need for miniatures, a board, cards, or other physical game assets. It transpired entirely in the imagination - turning the tightly constrained nature of previous games on its head. If you could imagine it, and the gamemaster was willing to go along, it could happen. This opened an exciting vista of more free-form and flexible games. [...]
The clash between those who viewed games as formal systems and those who viewed them as storytelling media persisted with the rise of digital games; if you view the program of any Game Developers Conference (or before it, the Computer Game Developers Conference), you will find panels or presentations debating the role of stories in games.