So far, I’ve been a designer of Eurogames, which means I haven’t tried to simulate a story, but have instead tried to abstract a plot into mechanics that will lead to a satisfying gaming experience.
Quotes about stories
Players tend to either skip the story or skip the game. Balancing the two so that they reinforce each other is hard, and often either the story or the game ends up too shallow for repeated play.
A book or a movie tells a story, but it’s always telling more or less the same story. A game tells a different story each time you play it—even when these stories have lots in common. That’s why playing the same game again and again is much more common, more justifiable, more interesting, and more exhilarating than reading the same book again and again.
A game doesn’t need zombies, astronauts or Russian gnome submariners to tell a story. Even the most abstract games are story builders, as can be seen with chess. A game of chess has no setting, it’s not really a representation of war, but it has a beginning and an end, it has suspense and reversals, and it can be dramatically retold—so every game is a different story. Of course, this is even more true of a game of Zombicide.
There is, however, an important difference between games on the one hand, and movies, or novels, or even music on the other. The game itself is not a story, it’s a story generator.