James Wallis uses genre as the fulcrum for balancing game rules and narrative structure in story-telling games, which he differentiates from RPGs through their emphasis on the creation of narrative over character development.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by James Wallis.
"In the ongoing debates about storytelling and narrative in games, the various commentators often overlook a key point: even in the most cutting-edge examples of the state of the art, it is not the players who tell the story, it is the game. Whether computer games with a narrative element, board games, card games, or face-to-face role-playing games, the essential plot and structure of the narrative is predetermined before the game begins, and cannot be altered."
"Human beings like stories. Our brains have a natural affinity not only for enjoying narratives and learning from them, but also for creating them. In the same way that your mind sees an abstract pattern and resolves it into a face, your imagination sees a pattern of events and resolves it into a story."
"the game's mechanics must take into consideration the rules of the genre that it is trying to create: not just the relevant icons and tropes, but the nature of a story from that genre. A fairy tale has a very different structure and set of requirements than a horror story or a soap opera, and a game must work to replicate that. "
"In most games, the structure is simply the way the game is played. In story-making games, it is also the principal way that the narrative shape of the story is formed (...)."
"Structure is not the same thing as rules. (...) That's how the game plays. It's not how the game works."
"The key to a successful story-making game, at least in the ones that have been released so far, is simplicity of design. (...) it does mean that rules have to be integrated with structure and genre to form a coherent package. I am a self-confessed proponent of "elegance through simplicity" in game design, and I realize that this doesn't fit every taste, or every style of game. "
All quotes were directly pulled out of the essay.
As an educator as well as Director of Digital Media Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy, my pedagogical and personal interests lie in how to use media to incorporate inter-disciplinary studies; to use sound, images as well as visual and narrative compositions to communicate multi-dimensional ideas, passions and concepts. In relation to this inter-disciplinary approach, I incorporate the concept of "mixing" to weave together space, design, technology, story-telling and critical discourse. One of the concepts I try to reinforce is that 'space' includes the psychological as well as the physical. In addition, I teach digital media students that "design" is the intentional approach to choreograph the experiential and that digital technology is a tool for exploring these ideas. Accepting this, I challenge the students to consider: how does the user/viewer experience and process the interaction between digital media and the "narrative" of the everyday? Two of the texts I am currently interested in utilizing in the process of creating digital media artifacts are: Paul Miller, AKA DJ Spooky's manifesto "Rhythm Science" and Henry Jenkins' "Convergence Culture." One of the concepts Paul Miller addresses is that technology has become a paradigm for individual identity as well as an interface of the everyday events that tell our stories. Henry Jenkins offers critical insight into the multi-levels and interdisciplinary force behind current digital culture as well as the woven process by which technology converges with a sense of self and culture in the digital world. Using these texts as the framework for teaching some of the UDM Digital Media Studies courses, students are assigned to create short videos that address ideas from the books. For example, one video project was to weave the concept of "mixing" the students' everyday experiences and perceptions with audio tracks from DJ Spooky's work—using the concept of "synaesthesia" to ultimately weave DJ Spooky's audio pieces, which are themselves, in a sense woven artifacts of historical and auto-biographical reference—with the students' own interpretation of urban life, space and cultural critique. Many of these videos are time-based collages—abstract in nature. Another assignment was for the students to use the tool of technology to assemble Shoebox Stories, short videos taking critical stances on urban issues as well as personal stories and histories of the local culture of Detroit.
(Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)