Meyers – Narratives in Games

A few weeks ago we discussed an article by Meyers, dealing with the narratives in video games. According to Meyers, games are always stories because they’re ultimately about winning and losing. Like stories which most of the time are repeated and told over, video games have that replay ability to them as well (at least the good ones but I guess that would work in the same manner with stories.) According to Meyers all games are stories. Madden is a story. Tetris is a story. Every game is/has a story to Meyers. I had a hard time buying this and I still have some issues with the idea but I’m getting there. I mean sure Madden has commentators that could serve as narrators to the story and they do give the provide a somewhat background story in there announcing the stadium and the players. But tetris? Really? Madden took some thought to understand his point about football being a story, but I just can’t comprehend, nor come up with a story for pretty little blocks falling down a screen. Maybe I’m lacking in imagination, but it just seems a bit too far fetched for me.