Scattered Thoughts on Narratives in Games

In discussion groups today, silversprung asked who ended up winning the great game debate: games as games or games as stories?
We didn’t answer the question perhaps because it required too much thinking for the beginning of class. But I’m still thinking about (well sort of) because it’s evidently a sore spot for people even outside of the academic world.
One of my friends is pretty into gaming (from a non-academic standpoint), and when I told him about the tensions over narrative in games, he immediately insisted that most good games are serious stories. Obviously, by intimating that games were not stories, I was somehow threatening their value, and belittling people who play them. But insisting that games are stories doesn’t really help ludology become its own distinct thing if it so wrapped up in other fields.

Also, on a somewhat unrelated note, my friend (same one) told me about a game called Dragonrealms that he used to play a lot in high school. What was interesting to me about this game is that players could actually influence and change the path of the story as a group. There is a fixed group of authors (volunteers) who craft the general story, but if a player wants to change something, they can (if the authors agree to it). I wasn’t too clear on what type of stuff goes down in this game, but there was talk of kings and princes and what not. So I imagine if you wanted to stage a coup or something, you could suggest it, and then the authors would change the story. This is a different take on agency and how powerful players can be AND seems to be sort of similar to how our wiki works.

If anyone has actually played this game, feel free to correct my potentially incorrect thoughts on Dragonrealms…