Street Fighter is one of the greatest story telling games – Jansen

A fun blog post that convincingly argues the point that stories can be told through gameplay (the cybnernetic / ethnographic perspective on studying the play environment seen in games studies / cultural studies) using Street Fighter as an example. The main point to take away here is that traditional filmic or literary story are for Jansen, only required as background information. Like one of many options in a game, they are only complimentary to the main object of fascination for the player, the gameplay and its mechanics. Jansen argues that what players remember from games such as Street Fighter (and certainly true for other competitive games) is core moves or mechanics tied to a character, as opposed to their back-story. In MOBA games this is exmplefied brillianty as the back-story and premise of the characters (as much as developers spend huge amounts of money on videos for characters) always takes that backseat. When a new character is released it is not introduced by means of its back-story but through its moveset and gameplay footage. The character then, is more of a tool used by players to construct their own stories that are much different than the ones of traditional literary or filmic notions of the word.

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