One thing that remains constant in people is this: We play. That’s not the only thing that remains constant, and it’s not even the thing that makes us unique as human beings, but it is true. We love play. At least, we love it when we’re not so concerned about abhorring it as frivolous and useless, an attitude that’s been injected into our society in completely unfair and detrimental ways. More and more we’re realizing just how important play is. Again, this isn’t revolutionary: We’ve known how important play is for a long time, and we’ve long respected people who are good at playing, specifically playing games. From sports heroes like Babe Ruth and Joe Frasier to Chess masters like Bobby Fisher and Big Blue, our society does laud its gamers.

Gaming is a big world, and the idea of thinking about gaming in a serious way has been around for a long time, as anybody whose read Gamesmanship or Greek Myths can tell you. There are millions of games out there, and they all tell us stories. Perhaps it’s a very simple story: You plant seeds faster than me, in our made-up arbitrary way of planting seeds called Mancala. However, the fact that the story involved in most games is so shallow is a testament to the impact that a game can have on us. Because a game allows us to assume roles in a narrative framework, we don’t require much from the narrative. We will fill in the blanks. Monopoly is an incredibly simple game: Players run around town, buy up property, and gouge each other on rent. But the actual playing of the game reveals that Mom is a shady bank teller and ruthless slum lord with Baltic and Mediterranean, and Li’l Sis is dirt poor, living on the street in the rich district. Dad’s been in jail for the past 12 turns, mainly because he’s afraid of landing on Mom’s property, and Jimmy landed on Free Parking, bought up Park Place and Boardwalk on the first round, but he’s still a good guy because he loaned his sister $1200 to get her past GO and (hopefully) through Mom’s gauntlet of high-rent projects.

Games are interactive in a fundamental way: You control the action, and you affect the story in basic areas such as where you move, how you fight, how well you fare. In the realm of electronic gaming, videogames, this interaction is foregrounded and expanded upon. In addition, the narratives of electronic games tend to be more complex and involving than most board games. Seeing the end of the story depends directly upon the gamer’s success or failure. While games retain some of the authorial nose-leading of more traditional forms of storytelling, they also reach toward more open-ended realms. Gaming simultaneously seeks to offer authors new tools with which to tell stories, and readers (gamers, audience, whatever) new experiences that are much less preconceived.