Seeing your game as a story helps you get to that bond.
As a matter of fact, the more of yourself and
your own life experience you can write into the characters and
into the story line of your game, the stronger this bond is gonna be.
The game also becomes an extension of your perspective.
It gives you a voice to speak through.
You should never discount that level of attachment to a creative process.
Lastly, why I feel it's important to see your game as a story first,
is that a story is gonna help build you a framework for your game start to finish.
By understanding the mechanics of how a story comes together and how it's told,
you can help yourself design a game idea much more fruitfully.
A story will help tie the various design elements and choices all together.
Whenever you're faced with a design question, you simply turn to the story
you've designed first and ask yourself, does this serve my story?
Just take a look at Angry Birds.
Here we've got a light,
whimsical game where you flick birds at pigs to try to knock them over.
Every inch of that game ties together tightly.
The game's storyline gives you a sense of a world that exists where these birds and
pigs live together, that they deserve your emotional attention.
The story's simple.
Pigs steal eggs from the birds, birds get angry and they fight back and
try to get their eggs.
And every level that you play fits into that simple storyline.
It's not about knocking these pigs over, so
much as it is about getting the bird's eggs back and righting a wrong.
See?
Now you're emotionally vested in helping the birds get their eggs.
As silly as that sounds, it's true.
You can't deny that that is more powerful than just flicking random
shapes across the screen to knock into other random shapes on the other side.
The story of the pigs and
birds becomes a higher purpose that you can connect with as a player.