Conflict and Action were walking, side by side, down a small town street in Tuber, Idaho.

Conflict hated Action.  He hated the way he sauntered, the way he pushed smaller kids around during recess, the way he talked to girls, the way girls talked to him.  Conflict knew that he had to do something about it.  He spoke up.

“We’ve known each other for years.”

“Duh,” Action said.  He snorted, coughed up, and then spit a green snot-rocket on the sidewalk in front of them.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”  Conflict stepped over the loogie.

“Oh, this should be good.”

“I hate you.  I mean, I really hate your guts.  I think you and I should…”  Action punctuated Conflict’s sentence before he was finished by punching his light out.

Conflict lay on his back, his hand over his bleeding nose.  Action kept on walking, saluting him with his middle finger as he departed.  Conflict made a plan.

Donald Maass talks about the importance of having conflict on every page of your novel in his latest book The Fire in Fiction.  Reading this simple to grasp, but difficult to produce concept hit me like, well… like Action punching my lights out.  It sounded right but I had to put it to the test, so I pried open the covers of some of my favorite novels and sure enough, it was there – on every page.  Also, I’ve started reading Out Stealing Horses but Per Petterson at least three times and I love it, but I lose interested at the same place every time.  Guess why?  You guessed it – 20 pages of 100% conflict free prose.  Great writing but it’s a Snoozefest.

In fiction it’s easy to see.  Black and white in my opinion and I will thank Mr. Maass someday when I bump into him at a writing conference, But it is it such a clear cut delineator in games?  In games we tend to confuse action for conflict and vice versa, and that’s okay, for some games anyway.  In fact, at times it’s what we shoot for (pun intended).  But I have noticed, and so have consumers,  that the games that have good conflict tend to do pretty damn good in the market place.  When they have both – watch out,  big seller coming.  Here are a few examples that have popped in to my head as of late.

EA Sports, Madden Franchise

The action of football is the initial draw, but the real story is the struggle to get to Superbowl and come home with the hardware.  It’s like soaps for men (and women now that they get the conflict).  This is the perfect combination of conflict and action.

30 arrogant, American billionaires put their fortunes on the line, investing in modern, multi-million dollar coliseums and men of supreme athleticism and determination.  These brutish men, decked in colorful armor represent large cities and compete against each other in concrete domes to fight to be the last survivors, champions.  Only one team will leave the battle as a winner, all else can only hope to fight another day.

Command and Conquer Franchise

The best cuts scenes in the biz.  Staying true to the 90’s, over the top acting but adding big budget, Hollywood quality movies and actors is just the icing on the cake.  The game delicately weaves three parallel storylines to a central point.  The story, while as cheesy as spicy tray of truck stop nachos, sets up conflict nicely while the gameplay takes care the action.  While there are enough explosions to make Michael Bay jealous, it’s the story that kept me bashing my way to the end.

This franchise has done fantastic over the years.  41 million units sold since it was introduced in 1995.  Ouch – that’s a lot of satisfied players.

The Sims Franchise

Yeah, ok.  I’m being a homer.  Three EA games, come on, what am I trying to prove?  But they are here for two reasons, 1) because they deserve to be on any big game list and 2) well, I’ll get to that later – I promise.  I know what you’re thinking, how can you talk about story and conflict with the Sims franchise.  At first blush it’s a dollhouse-toy box, more of a hobby than a game, but in actuality that is far from the truth.  The creators of the Sims did something innovative that books can never do.  They gave all the tools to the user and said, well there you go, you wanted to do this on your own, so knock yourself out.  Go for it. And it worked.  It worked big time.  If you ever have the chance to talk to a Sims user about why and how they play that franchise they will start telling you stories about their characters lives.  They are incredibly complex and unique stories that reflect the desires of the user.

So… why these three games?  Well, in the next few posts I will be putting up interviews with the brilliant minds behind these games.  How they do the magic they do.  How they involve conflict, storytelling and action into their products.  I promise, you will be impressed with the amount of effort and love these brilliant guys and girls put into their product.  I know that I have been.

To tie this one together, I guess I’m siding with Donald Maass.  Games, like books, need constant conflict not just action to really hit it big.  I guess it’s the difference between The Hard Corps, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme (don’t worry, I didn’t see it either) and The Bourne Identity, starring… well you all know who was in that one because it was a breakout movie. You get the point.

Oh yeah, and you wouldn’t believe what Conflict is doing to get back at Action.  Even I didn’t think he could be so cruel.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 2:49 am and is filed under Fiction Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.