Our love of stories is insatiable and transcends the medium through which they are delivered. And of them all, gaming has proven to be the most innovative and successful. Red Dead Redemption 2 – the highest grossing entertainment release of all time – is one of the most critically lauded and globally adored games in recent memory.
Yet Red Dead Redemption 2 was, at its core, a story of the Wild West and the men who inhabited it. Its characters, from Arthur Morgan, to Dutch, to Uncle, to Bonnie, were so complex and raw that you cared about the outcomes of every mission: not only of the main story, but of the side stories too.
Red Dead Redemption was a console-based game, but other games are both playable and portable.
A recent winner at the Gaming BAFTAS in London, ‘Florence’ (downloadable on smartphones) is a story-based game that allows you to follow the life of Florence, a dejected and dreary twenty something at the point of a fledgling romance. Short chapters take you through her life, during which many things change. But what sets it apart is that, through the clever incorporation of simple smartphone functionality, you must engage physically with the story, encouraging Florence through this important moment of self-discovery and change. It is an incredibly sincere imagining of modern life, exploring universal themes of expectation, pressure, dreams, love and growth that we can all relate to.
These mediums, be they videogames, VR or smartphones, are utilising their unique attributes to breathe new life into storytelling. By looking beyond the paper page and the printed word, we can all find and enjoy new ways of satisfying our craving for a good story.
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Simon John
Cicero Group Limited
