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A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games
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"An engaging and entertaining read for veteran gamers and curious newcomers alike, A Mind Forever Voyaging traces the evolution of interactive video games by examining 13 landmark titles that challenged convention and captured players’ imaginations worldwide. Alternative gaming blogger Dylan Holmes focuses on games that tell stories in innovative and fascinating ways and examines the opportunities—and challenges—presented when players are given the ability to direct how a story plays out. From the text-based adventure of Planetfall and the interactive cinema of Heavy Rain to the one-act play of Façade and the simulated world of Shenmue, Holmes showcases the diversity of video game stories that have emerged in the last 30 years. Along the way, he addresses such questions as:
•How did the introduction of moral choices in video games change the playing field?
•What film techniques have enhanced (or detracted from!) the gaming experience?
•Can video games aspire to be art? [Hint: Yes!]
•What are the benefits, pitfalls, and unintended consequences of players' "right to choose"?
•Will the robot Floyd make you cry?
Critical analysis, historical perspective, and a gently opinionated personal touch make A Mind Forever Voyaging an enlightening read that captures the best that video games have to offer."
"An engaging and entertaining read for veteran gamers and curious newcomers alike, A Mind Forever Voyaging traces the evolution of interactive video games by examining 13 landmark titles that challenged convention and captured players’ imaginations worldwide. Alternative gaming blogger Dylan Holmes focuses on games that tell stories in innovative and fascinating ways and examines the opportunities—and challenges—presented when players are given the ability to direct how a story plays out. From the text-based adventure of Planetfall and the interactive cinema of Heavy Rain to the one-act play of Façade and the simulated world of Shenmue, Holmes showcases the diversity of video game stories that have emerged in the last 30 years. Along the way, he addresses such questions as:
•How did the introduction of moral choices in video games change the playing field?
•What film techniques have enhanced (or detracted from!) the gaming experience?
•Can video games aspire to be art? [Hint: Yes!]
•What are the benefits, pitfalls, and unintended consequences of players' "right to choose"?
•Will the robot Floyd make you cry?
Critical analysis, historical perspective, and a gently opinionated personal touch make A Mind Forever Voyaging an enlightening read that captures the best that video games have to offer."
248 pages, Paperback
First published November 7, 2012
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August 19, 2024
Of the video game books I read, I found this one to be the most interesting by far. Maybe it was because it focused more on narrative than production (I find narratives fascinating so learning about them in a genre I'm unfamiliar with was rewarding) or maybe because you could feel the appreciation for the genre.
January 22, 2013
As a form of storytelling, what makes video games distinct from other forms of storytelling, such as movies or books? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this form, what techniques has it borrowed from other media, and what untapped potential does it still have?
A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games is a book that is essentially doing two things at once. It provides a history of thirteen games that have made important contributions to the art of video game storytelling, and on the side, it also provides some commentary on more general questions like the ones above. Doing two things at once is always harder than just doing one thing, but A Mind Forever Voyaging pulls it off pretty well. One or two early transitions between the specific and the general felt a little jarring, but then I either got used to them or the shifts became more natural.
The book is an interesting read in both senses. I had thought myself relatively knowledgeable about the history of video games, but until now, I hadn't known what 1983 title had been possibly the first video game in history that had managed to make its players cry. And as there several games that I had heard a lot about but never played, it was interesting to hear exactly why Half-Life, for example, had been so popular.
The games that get a full chapter devoted to them are: The Secret of Monkey Island, Planetfall, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, System Shock, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life, Shenmue, Deus Ex, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Libery, Façade, Dear Esther, and Heavy Rain. A number of others also get a couple of paragraphs worth of coverage each. As the author readily admits, this necessarily leaves out many games that would have deserved to be included, and the selection of which ones to include is a somewhat subjective one. In one case, a game was excluded from getting the full treatment because it was too good: Planescape: Torment was left out because ”there was too much to talk about: it begs for in-depth literary analysis, which was beyond the scope of what I was doing”.
Still, although one can always quibble about particular games that should have also been included, overall the selection strikes me as a good one: I'm pretty sure that if I'd had to pick thirteen games for such a project, I would have done worse. Before reading the relevant chapters, I felt a little dubious about whether it was really necessary to include two games from the same series – Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2, neither of which I had played. But when I did read the chapter about MGS2, I became apparent that the game had been quite innovative in the way that it exploited its nature as a sequel, and deserved a mention because of that fact. The nature of video game sequels is also somewhat special – as the author points out, video games are exceptional in that the sequels are often better than the original games, which isn't the case with most other forms of media. That alone merited some discussion.
The titles have basically been picked on the basis of their novelty: whether they contributed new innovations to the art of video game storytelling. As such, the book can also be read as a collection of different storytelling techniques and considerations as applied to video games, which makes for a fascinating read.
How can game mechanics and storytelling aspects be integrated so that they support each other in building a more immersive experience? How much does immersion suffer from the game being so difficult that the player must keep reloading earlier saves? If it is exceedingly hard to make conversations with other characters feel like conversations with real people, is it sometimes better to not include any other characters at all? When can a game get away with addressing the player directly, potentially breaking the fourth wall? What techniques can be used to create the illusion that the player's choices actually matter and have consequences? Such are some of the questions which are touched upon in the book, and seeing the intricacies behind some of the games I had liked made me appreciate them, and video games storytelling in general, more than I had before. If I were running my own video game studio, this book would probably be required reading for all my employees.
Some of those questions get relatively superficial coverage: they're raised when discussing a single game, in the context of how that game did things, and then they're never touched upon again. Others feel like recurring themes. The book will discuss a theoretical aspect of one game, and then move on and return to the same topic from another angle when discussing an entirely different game. These interwoven threads are not always pointed out explicitly, and it remains up to the reader to notice them and put the pieces together.
For example, one recurring theme in the book is the notion that video games are made distinct by the need to develop the whole world beforehand: a strength of video games is that the player can freely explore a world on their own, but fully exploiting this strength also requires the game designer to prepare interesting content that maintains that illusion of freedom and being able to do anything. If the game has many interactive or simulationist elements – an environment that actually gets damaged when it's shot at, NPCs that display signs of intelligence, a system of moral consequence – it also becomes more likely that the player will be disappointed when the cracks in the illusion show up. Examples of such cracks include there being indestructible parts of the environment, the NPCs being clearly revealed as just scripted pieces of dialogue, or when the player's actions don't actually matter or morality is reduced to just another score to be maximized. The designer can avoid this problem by just making things more tightly akin to a movie, where the player is just a passive observer who's along for the ride – but to do so means neglecting some of the unique potential that video games have.
Another solution is to try to use artificial intelligence techniques and machine-generated content in order to avoid needing to specify all the content by hand - but again, this can easily fail as the successes of the technique make its failures ever more obvious. This is clearly highlighted in the book's discussion about Façade, an indie game about the breakdown of a couple's marriage which uses a natural language parser to let the player converse with the couple and try to save their marriage. Sometimes the game gets lucky at interpreting the player's writing and delivers a strongly compelling experience, and at other times, it performs... considerably less well.
A sort of meta-theme in the book, uniting many other themes, is the sense of game designers being engaged in a constant struggle to overcome the limitations of their format – both technical and financial. In a sense, it is a study of human ingenuity, of many people over many decades throwing themselves into a novel domain and gradually accumulating new ways of handling that domain, each building on the previous accomplishments of the others.
Although the book draws heavily upon the academic study of games, it never comes off as dry and boring: instead, it is a fast and enjoyable read. When I first started reading it, I thought that I'd read it for about half an hour before going to bed – I finally managed to force myself to put it away two and a half hours later. While this is a common occurrence with fiction, a non-fiction book that pulls this off is far more rare.
When not chronicling and analyzing specific games, the style of theoretical analysis is more tilted towards breadth than depth – which is fine, especially given that the book is mainly focused on providing a history of video game storytelling, not building a grand theory of said storytelling. Still, one gets a clear feeling that the author would have been capable of discussing each of the issues in far more detail than he does now. In any case, while the theoretical analysis does occasionally feel somewhat superficial, and never gets to the point of giving off a similar sense of brilliance as reading someone like Henry Jenkins does, it remains fascinating throughout. Reading it, I felt myself wanting to give it to some friends of mine to read, so that we could discuss its analyses together.
As is often the case, possibly the biggest failing of the book is that even at 250 pages, it feels too short. I would have gladly read a version of the book that was twice or even thrice the lenght, and covered that many more games. Right now, the book feels more like a snapshot of the history of storytelling in video games, rather than a history of it.
Perhaps the thing that I like the most about the book is that after reading it, I was left with a clear feeling of the very greatest video games still being ahead of us. Video games remain a young art form, and while game designers have experimented with many techniques for better storytelling, the full potential of those techniques remains untapped, waiting for someone to perfect them. We have only began to glimpse at just how good games could be.
(Full disclosure: the author is a long-time online friend of mine, which has probably biased this review a little, but I wouldn't have written this in the first place if I hadn't liked the book on its own merits.)
A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games is a book that is essentially doing two things at once. It provides a history of thirteen games that have made important contributions to the art of video game storytelling, and on the side, it also provides some commentary on more general questions like the ones above. Doing two things at once is always harder than just doing one thing, but A Mind Forever Voyaging pulls it off pretty well. One or two early transitions between the specific and the general felt a little jarring, but then I either got used to them or the shifts became more natural.
The book is an interesting read in both senses. I had thought myself relatively knowledgeable about the history of video games, but until now, I hadn't known what 1983 title had been possibly the first video game in history that had managed to make its players cry. And as there several games that I had heard a lot about but never played, it was interesting to hear exactly why Half-Life, for example, had been so popular.
The games that get a full chapter devoted to them are: The Secret of Monkey Island, Planetfall, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, System Shock, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life, Shenmue, Deus Ex, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Libery, Façade, Dear Esther, and Heavy Rain. A number of others also get a couple of paragraphs worth of coverage each. As the author readily admits, this necessarily leaves out many games that would have deserved to be included, and the selection of which ones to include is a somewhat subjective one. In one case, a game was excluded from getting the full treatment because it was too good: Planescape: Torment was left out because ”there was too much to talk about: it begs for in-depth literary analysis, which was beyond the scope of what I was doing”.
Still, although one can always quibble about particular games that should have also been included, overall the selection strikes me as a good one: I'm pretty sure that if I'd had to pick thirteen games for such a project, I would have done worse. Before reading the relevant chapters, I felt a little dubious about whether it was really necessary to include two games from the same series – Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2, neither of which I had played. But when I did read the chapter about MGS2, I became apparent that the game had been quite innovative in the way that it exploited its nature as a sequel, and deserved a mention because of that fact. The nature of video game sequels is also somewhat special – as the author points out, video games are exceptional in that the sequels are often better than the original games, which isn't the case with most other forms of media. That alone merited some discussion.
The titles have basically been picked on the basis of their novelty: whether they contributed new innovations to the art of video game storytelling. As such, the book can also be read as a collection of different storytelling techniques and considerations as applied to video games, which makes for a fascinating read.
How can game mechanics and storytelling aspects be integrated so that they support each other in building a more immersive experience? How much does immersion suffer from the game being so difficult that the player must keep reloading earlier saves? If it is exceedingly hard to make conversations with other characters feel like conversations with real people, is it sometimes better to not include any other characters at all? When can a game get away with addressing the player directly, potentially breaking the fourth wall? What techniques can be used to create the illusion that the player's choices actually matter and have consequences? Such are some of the questions which are touched upon in the book, and seeing the intricacies behind some of the games I had liked made me appreciate them, and video games storytelling in general, more than I had before. If I were running my own video game studio, this book would probably be required reading for all my employees.
Some of those questions get relatively superficial coverage: they're raised when discussing a single game, in the context of how that game did things, and then they're never touched upon again. Others feel like recurring themes. The book will discuss a theoretical aspect of one game, and then move on and return to the same topic from another angle when discussing an entirely different game. These interwoven threads are not always pointed out explicitly, and it remains up to the reader to notice them and put the pieces together.
For example, one recurring theme in the book is the notion that video games are made distinct by the need to develop the whole world beforehand: a strength of video games is that the player can freely explore a world on their own, but fully exploiting this strength also requires the game designer to prepare interesting content that maintains that illusion of freedom and being able to do anything. If the game has many interactive or simulationist elements – an environment that actually gets damaged when it's shot at, NPCs that display signs of intelligence, a system of moral consequence – it also becomes more likely that the player will be disappointed when the cracks in the illusion show up. Examples of such cracks include there being indestructible parts of the environment, the NPCs being clearly revealed as just scripted pieces of dialogue, or when the player's actions don't actually matter or morality is reduced to just another score to be maximized. The designer can avoid this problem by just making things more tightly akin to a movie, where the player is just a passive observer who's along for the ride – but to do so means neglecting some of the unique potential that video games have.
Another solution is to try to use artificial intelligence techniques and machine-generated content in order to avoid needing to specify all the content by hand - but again, this can easily fail as the successes of the technique make its failures ever more obvious. This is clearly highlighted in the book's discussion about Façade, an indie game about the breakdown of a couple's marriage which uses a natural language parser to let the player converse with the couple and try to save their marriage. Sometimes the game gets lucky at interpreting the player's writing and delivers a strongly compelling experience, and at other times, it performs... considerably less well.
A sort of meta-theme in the book, uniting many other themes, is the sense of game designers being engaged in a constant struggle to overcome the limitations of their format – both technical and financial. In a sense, it is a study of human ingenuity, of many people over many decades throwing themselves into a novel domain and gradually accumulating new ways of handling that domain, each building on the previous accomplishments of the others.
Although the book draws heavily upon the academic study of games, it never comes off as dry and boring: instead, it is a fast and enjoyable read. When I first started reading it, I thought that I'd read it for about half an hour before going to bed – I finally managed to force myself to put it away two and a half hours later. While this is a common occurrence with fiction, a non-fiction book that pulls this off is far more rare.
When not chronicling and analyzing specific games, the style of theoretical analysis is more tilted towards breadth than depth – which is fine, especially given that the book is mainly focused on providing a history of video game storytelling, not building a grand theory of said storytelling. Still, one gets a clear feeling that the author would have been capable of discussing each of the issues in far more detail than he does now. In any case, while the theoretical analysis does occasionally feel somewhat superficial, and never gets to the point of giving off a similar sense of brilliance as reading someone like Henry Jenkins does, it remains fascinating throughout. Reading it, I felt myself wanting to give it to some friends of mine to read, so that we could discuss its analyses together.
As is often the case, possibly the biggest failing of the book is that even at 250 pages, it feels too short. I would have gladly read a version of the book that was twice or even thrice the lenght, and covered that many more games. Right now, the book feels more like a snapshot of the history of storytelling in video games, rather than a history of it.
Perhaps the thing that I like the most about the book is that after reading it, I was left with a clear feeling of the very greatest video games still being ahead of us. Video games remain a young art form, and while game designers have experimented with many techniques for better storytelling, the full potential of those techniques remains untapped, waiting for someone to perfect them. We have only began to glimpse at just how good games could be.
(Full disclosure: the author is a long-time online friend of mine, which has probably biased this review a little, but I wouldn't have written this in the first place if I hadn't liked the book on its own merits.)
March 24, 2015
Holmes clearly set out with this book to say "video games are art" and justify his playing of them. There's plenty to talk about with regard to how storytelling in games differs from other media and how it's developed, but rather than any of that he basically just reviews some games he really likes.
On top of that, Holmes seems desperate to convince us that video game stories are just as good as books or movies (which they aren't) and that the games he likes are not merely entertaining but culturally significant, and he trots out the usual wank you expect from those people who seem desperate to have their hobby validated.
He argues that Dear Esther actually isn't boring and pointless but artistic and enriching and that Deus Ex's plot is complex and thought-provoking, rather than convoluted and dumb, to give just two examples.
I like video games, I play lots of them. I'll even concede without a fight that they're art. Some of them may even be good art. But I'll never understand the need some people have to convince us that video game narratives are good art. They aren't. I have neither played nor heard of a video game with an actually good story.
That aside, he's also plain wrong about a lot of stuff. He credits these games that he's picked out with inventing things that pre-date them significantly and generally puts way more focus on where he personally noticed those things than where they actually originated. And he likes some really shitty games. Dear Esther? Come on.
On top of that, Holmes seems desperate to convince us that video game stories are just as good as books or movies (which they aren't) and that the games he likes are not merely entertaining but culturally significant, and he trots out the usual wank you expect from those people who seem desperate to have their hobby validated.
He argues that Dear Esther actually isn't boring and pointless but artistic and enriching and that Deus Ex's plot is complex and thought-provoking, rather than convoluted and dumb, to give just two examples.
I like video games, I play lots of them. I'll even concede without a fight that they're art. Some of them may even be good art. But I'll never understand the need some people have to convince us that video game narratives are good art. They aren't. I have neither played nor heard of a video game with an actually good story.
That aside, he's also plain wrong about a lot of stuff. He credits these games that he's picked out with inventing things that pre-date them significantly and generally puts way more focus on where he personally noticed those things than where they actually originated. And he likes some really shitty games. Dear Esther? Come on.
December 17, 2024
Una foto hecha en 2011 del estado del diseño narrativo del videojuego. Es interesante en su afán pedagógico y su manera de presentar distintos avances, pero obviamente en su selección de juegos (apenas trece) está su propio déficit. Igualmente loable por cómo quiere enseñar y los comentarios que introduce.
April 13, 2018
Um pouco datado: ele termina justo quando os games narrativos viram uma tendência fortíssima. Tem boas reflexões, ainda que o livro seja conciso demais para o meu gosto.
October 25, 2017
I have no doubt that this is one of the best pieces of writing I've ever encountered regarding the gamic medium. Dylan Holmes constructs a compelling and immersive story, narrating both the title history of storytelling in videogames, and his own story growing up with the interactive media. The personal approach to the argument serves both as an unique element in the study and as a tool to engage the reather furthermore, and it creates a book that doesn't get tiring in any moment, always offering knowledge you might not even expect about games we all knew (and even some of them that most of us didn't know before).
Of course, there is the occasional "Where's X game? That's my favourite!" cry sometimes, or the discrepance with some of the analysis Holmes make, but that is due to the interesting focus on originality and influence in the chosen topic (i.e. "storytelling in videogames") rather than the quality level of it. With respect to the latter, Holmes also notes interesting aspects, but it's the former that comprises the basis of the book.
To any reader with an interest on how videogames evolved regarding the stories they tell, and how they tell them, rather than their gameplays and genres; as well to anyone that wants to get rid of misconceptions about games being "childish" and "non-art", this is a necessary reading. What is more, I recommend anyone interested to read every single word the book contains: from the preface to every appendix and bibliography, as this will provide not only with what you expect from reading the back cover, but also with a thoroughful guide as to how to experience yourself the same journey the writer made himself (including the exact way in which you can obtain the 13 games he analyzes in this book, from "Planetfall" and "System Shock" to "Deus Ex", "Metal Gear Solid (2)", "Final Fantasy VII" or "Heavy Rain"). By the way, spoilers ahead (if the book didn't contain them, it wouldn't be a book half as great), but Holmes is kind enough to tell you in advance about this, and he suggest you play the games prior to reading the book (I did this with "The Secret of Monkey Island" and I don't regret it), and avoids spoiling the central mistery plot that drives "Heavy Rain", for your convenience.
So, basically, that's it. Insert coin and read.
(P.S.: Points added for using the pronouns "she" and "her" when refering to "the player". Great way to uncounsciously make the reader aware that female players are as common as male ones).
Of course, there is the occasional "Where's X game? That's my favourite!" cry sometimes, or the discrepance with some of the analysis Holmes make, but that is due to the interesting focus on originality and influence in the chosen topic (i.e. "storytelling in videogames") rather than the quality level of it. With respect to the latter, Holmes also notes interesting aspects, but it's the former that comprises the basis of the book.
To any reader with an interest on how videogames evolved regarding the stories they tell, and how they tell them, rather than their gameplays and genres; as well to anyone that wants to get rid of misconceptions about games being "childish" and "non-art", this is a necessary reading. What is more, I recommend anyone interested to read every single word the book contains: from the preface to every appendix and bibliography, as this will provide not only with what you expect from reading the back cover, but also with a thoroughful guide as to how to experience yourself the same journey the writer made himself (including the exact way in which you can obtain the 13 games he analyzes in this book, from "Planetfall" and "System Shock" to "Deus Ex", "Metal Gear Solid (2)", "Final Fantasy VII" or "Heavy Rain"). By the way, spoilers ahead (if the book didn't contain them, it wouldn't be a book half as great), but Holmes is kind enough to tell you in advance about this, and he suggest you play the games prior to reading the book (I did this with "The Secret of Monkey Island" and I don't regret it), and avoids spoiling the central mistery plot that drives "Heavy Rain", for your convenience.
So, basically, that's it. Insert coin and read.
(P.S.: Points added for using the pronouns "she" and "her" when refering to "the player". Great way to uncounsciously make the reader aware that female players are as common as male ones).
June 17, 2019
It was nice to take a break from fiction to read this analysis of the evolution of video game narratives through time. Chronologically, the game goes from text adventure games through point and click adventure games to JRPGs and then to the blending of narrative with FPS engines before ending with Heavy Rain. The book is relatively short for its subject matter and decades of coverage (200-something pages on my Nook in epub format including the glossary) so the author has to cut out a lot. He's honest and upfront about this which, for me, took the sting out of "why did he mention this one and not that one?".
I believe the best compliment I can give this book is that the handful of chapters about games I'd played (Monkey Island, Final Fantasy 7, Dear Esther) brought me new insights. The author's throughline was about how the ludic and gamic systems slowly merged as video games evolved. In other words, to what degree were developers using the medium to create something wholly unique. In the earlier games sometimes the story is sacrificed for the game or the game is sacrificed for the story. But as the decades passed and we gained a game grammar and vocabulary (basically, even though it's not a perfect analogy - tropes), the developers were able to work within and subvert or comment on those expectations. No surprise to anyone who's really into gaming and around 30 or older, one of the best examples in this book are Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2. But there is also Dear Esther, which completely subverts the FPS.
How much you like this book is going to depend on a few things. The book is written academically with words like ludic and tons of footnotes (easy to follow in PDF (as I read at work) and annoying in epub (as I read on the plane)). There have been more blog-like essays covering similar topics that you can find out there, so that's one caveat. It's not a dry text, not by any means. And the author inserts his feelings and perceptions about the games throughout. But it's just a bit more formal than you might expect. Second, are you interested in the history of video games narratives? Third, have you been playing games since the 80s? Although I hadn't played a lot of games on this list, I'd played enough (and absorbed others through osmosis if they were series my brother Dan liked to play) to have a connection to what he was talking about.
I believe the best compliment I can give this book is that the handful of chapters about games I'd played (Monkey Island, Final Fantasy 7, Dear Esther) brought me new insights. The author's throughline was about how the ludic and gamic systems slowly merged as video games evolved. In other words, to what degree were developers using the medium to create something wholly unique. In the earlier games sometimes the story is sacrificed for the game or the game is sacrificed for the story. But as the decades passed and we gained a game grammar and vocabulary (basically, even though it's not a perfect analogy - tropes), the developers were able to work within and subvert or comment on those expectations. No surprise to anyone who's really into gaming and around 30 or older, one of the best examples in this book are Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2. But there is also Dear Esther, which completely subverts the FPS.
How much you like this book is going to depend on a few things. The book is written academically with words like ludic and tons of footnotes (easy to follow in PDF (as I read at work) and annoying in epub (as I read on the plane)). There have been more blog-like essays covering similar topics that you can find out there, so that's one caveat. It's not a dry text, not by any means. And the author inserts his feelings and perceptions about the games throughout. But it's just a bit more formal than you might expect. Second, are you interested in the history of video games narratives? Third, have you been playing games since the 80s? Although I hadn't played a lot of games on this list, I'd played enough (and absorbed others through osmosis if they were series my brother Dan liked to play) to have a connection to what he was talking about.
April 30, 2023
Informative selection of games guiding the reader through landmark evolutions of narrative in videogame. A quick and robust way to connect with titles that shaped today's industry (and that I am probably never going to play).
December 9, 2025
Seattle author Dylan Holmes discusses more than a dozen games with reference to how they tell a story with the player. Chronologically from the text adventure Planetfall through the more recent first person 3D, game creators have had to be pretty creative with how they not only draw the player in but also create a narrative experience.
In addition to several pages about each game (and a few spoilers), there is also an appendix which describes how to get and play each of them. Another appendix briefly discusses some of the games that didn't make the book.
I liked the accessibility of the book but wanted more. These are all home games - perhaps arcade games (Dragon's Lair) and other related titles could have been compared / contrasted. Now more than a dozen years old, it could also be "revised and expanded". Worth reading!
In addition to several pages about each game (and a few spoilers), there is also an appendix which describes how to get and play each of them. Another appendix briefly discusses some of the games that didn't make the book.
I liked the accessibility of the book but wanted more. These are all home games - perhaps arcade games (Dragon's Lair) and other related titles could have been compared / contrasted. Now more than a dozen years old, it could also be "revised and expanded". Worth reading!
February 24, 2024
In A Mind Forever Voyaging: A History of Storytelling in Video Games, Dylan Holmes references the 1995 text adventure of the same name. He describes it as “one of the first games to place an overt emphasis on narrative exploration and showing rather than telling.” That game, and by extension Holmes’ history, refers in turn to a passage in The Prelude, Wordsworth’s long poem, where the “mind” belongs to a Newton of the poet’s imagination. I only know this bit about Wordsworth because the book’s epigraph makes the connection, citing the relevant lines of iambic pentameter; and as for the Steve Meretzky text adventure, I would never have heard of it but for the note in the book’s appendices. Recounting it like this may seem pedantic, telling rather than showing, but if, like me, you enjoy learning new things right from the title of a book, digging into the layers of meaning behind a single resonant phrase, A Mind Forever Voyaging will make for an illuminating read.
Through this play of allusions to literature and science, Holmes’ analysis of video game narratives gets underway. It opens with a short preface, asking “what do we do with interactivity? How do games make choice–not just the individual choices, but the act of choosing, of influencing a narrative–interesting?” Each chapter that follows takes on a single game, exploring how its affordances of player choice further our experience of the story and expand our sense of the possibilities of storytelling.
The first chapter, on The Secret of Monkey Island, is the only one placed out of chronological order. Serving as the author’s point of coming to consciousness with respect to games, the way so many game protagonists wake from sleep at the start of their adventures, the Monkey Island chapter sets the trajectory of Holmes’ tastes. It also previews some of the book’s main concerns and reveals certain assumptions behind the argument. Here and throughout the book, Holmes strikes a balance between memoir, summary, and explication. We get enough of a sense of why he cares about the games he’s chosen from a personal standpoint, and enough of a description of the games’ most important features to then dig into some of their particular storytelling qualities. In the case of Monkey Island, this entails descriptions of his first impressions of the game before he could even read, of the game’s comedic dialogue, and a critique of its use of pacifism and (the illusion of) player choice. In this way, Holmes begins to engage with questions of genre, narrative, cinematic storytelling, and other themes that will run through the book, without either wading into overly academic territory or pretending to be anything but a subjective guide.
His gaming palette is much broader than my own. The succeeding chapters circle back to touch on Planetfall, Ultima IV, and System Shock, before reaching the original release of Final Fantasy VII, the only game in the book which I’ve played to any significant extent. The inclusion of text adventures, PC games, and western RPGs ranging over so many aesthetic gradations, from the goofy to the pretentious, greatly expanded my understanding of how far video game storytelling had already come by the time I first sat down to play Mario, Zelda, and 90’s JRPGs like EarthBound and Xenogears.
Thus, I value and appreciate the new insights this book holds for me and, I have to imagine, for many people who might have had a similarly narrow exposure to games (whether that might be limited to Sega consoles, 3D platformers, fishing sims, or something else). This also means that I’m not really in a position to assess Holmes’ critical eye, lacking firsthand knowledge of Half-Life, Shenmue, or Deus Ex (beyond the first mission or two), to say nothing of the more recherché likes of Façade, Dear Esther, and Heavy Rain. Based on what I’ve read, I’m grateful to Holmes for introducing me to all these titles and sparing me the significant investment of time and money necessary for playing them. His work of distilling out their essential contributions to an art form, helping me to see it in new ways, seems very much a labor of love. To extrapolate from the discussion of FFVII, which is excellent and concise, I’m inclined to trust his judgment.
Ultimately, AMFV builds up a coherent history of the medium circa 2012. Without, as far as I can tell, discovering anything earth-shattering about any particular game under discussion, Holmes’ approach of bringing these games into conversation with one another makes a strong case for their development of new and unique ways of telling a story with the participation of players. Besides the games so far mentioned, there are separate chapters on both Metal Gear Solid and MGS2, which strikes me as a somewhat strange choice. It makes sense, though, given Holmes’ interest in the cinematic qualities of games and in the ways in which games have increasingly acquired self-awareness of their potential to subvert player expectations. Still, I couldn’t help wishing these chapters had been combined to make more room for discussions of games that didn’t make it into the book. The single “intertitle” chapter similarly seemed like it could just as well have been integrated into a spotlight on another game. He appends a shortlist of such games he would have liked to include, dedicating a paragraph rather than a chapter to noting what innovations each brings to the development of storytelling in games: Myst, Grim Fandango, and Planescape: Torment, to name a few, along with console games like Legend of Mana and Silent Hill 2.
While there are plenty of reviews, analyses, and postmortems out there of individual games, series, and even genres, it’s not so common to find a welcoming, well-written book for the general reader that consolidates so much about whole generations of the medium. The only other one I’ve encountered, which was published around the same time and which Holmes cites approvingly, is Tristan Donovan’s Replay: The History of Video Games. But if my recommendation of A Mind Forever Voyaging isn’t sufficient, I hope that Gabrielle Zevin’s seal of approval convinces more people to pick it up, as it’s one of the handful of books she mentions in her acknowledgments of her brilliant novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
Rounding out the book, there is a conclusion in which Holmes sums up his argument: “What makes video games so exciting is not that they tell great stories, but that they tell stories differently.” Through the use of player choice, cinematic cutscenes, a whole panoply of gameplay yielding real-time interaction, plus more literary tools like flashbacks, playful self-reference, and intertextuality, video games continually experiment with the art of storytelling. In the relatively short space of 240 pages, hardly “forever,” Holmes manages to take us on a fantastic voyage showing how these disparate elements combine in the worlds revealed by video games.
- or see this review at https://www.the-pixels.com/2024/02/21...
Through this play of allusions to literature and science, Holmes’ analysis of video game narratives gets underway. It opens with a short preface, asking “what do we do with interactivity? How do games make choice–not just the individual choices, but the act of choosing, of influencing a narrative–interesting?” Each chapter that follows takes on a single game, exploring how its affordances of player choice further our experience of the story and expand our sense of the possibilities of storytelling.
The first chapter, on The Secret of Monkey Island, is the only one placed out of chronological order. Serving as the author’s point of coming to consciousness with respect to games, the way so many game protagonists wake from sleep at the start of their adventures, the Monkey Island chapter sets the trajectory of Holmes’ tastes. It also previews some of the book’s main concerns and reveals certain assumptions behind the argument. Here and throughout the book, Holmes strikes a balance between memoir, summary, and explication. We get enough of a sense of why he cares about the games he’s chosen from a personal standpoint, and enough of a description of the games’ most important features to then dig into some of their particular storytelling qualities. In the case of Monkey Island, this entails descriptions of his first impressions of the game before he could even read, of the game’s comedic dialogue, and a critique of its use of pacifism and (the illusion of) player choice. In this way, Holmes begins to engage with questions of genre, narrative, cinematic storytelling, and other themes that will run through the book, without either wading into overly academic territory or pretending to be anything but a subjective guide.
His gaming palette is much broader than my own. The succeeding chapters circle back to touch on Planetfall, Ultima IV, and System Shock, before reaching the original release of Final Fantasy VII, the only game in the book which I’ve played to any significant extent. The inclusion of text adventures, PC games, and western RPGs ranging over so many aesthetic gradations, from the goofy to the pretentious, greatly expanded my understanding of how far video game storytelling had already come by the time I first sat down to play Mario, Zelda, and 90’s JRPGs like EarthBound and Xenogears.
Thus, I value and appreciate the new insights this book holds for me and, I have to imagine, for many people who might have had a similarly narrow exposure to games (whether that might be limited to Sega consoles, 3D platformers, fishing sims, or something else). This also means that I’m not really in a position to assess Holmes’ critical eye, lacking firsthand knowledge of Half-Life, Shenmue, or Deus Ex (beyond the first mission or two), to say nothing of the more recherché likes of Façade, Dear Esther, and Heavy Rain. Based on what I’ve read, I’m grateful to Holmes for introducing me to all these titles and sparing me the significant investment of time and money necessary for playing them. His work of distilling out their essential contributions to an art form, helping me to see it in new ways, seems very much a labor of love. To extrapolate from the discussion of FFVII, which is excellent and concise, I’m inclined to trust his judgment.
Ultimately, AMFV builds up a coherent history of the medium circa 2012. Without, as far as I can tell, discovering anything earth-shattering about any particular game under discussion, Holmes’ approach of bringing these games into conversation with one another makes a strong case for their development of new and unique ways of telling a story with the participation of players. Besides the games so far mentioned, there are separate chapters on both Metal Gear Solid and MGS2, which strikes me as a somewhat strange choice. It makes sense, though, given Holmes’ interest in the cinematic qualities of games and in the ways in which games have increasingly acquired self-awareness of their potential to subvert player expectations. Still, I couldn’t help wishing these chapters had been combined to make more room for discussions of games that didn’t make it into the book. The single “intertitle” chapter similarly seemed like it could just as well have been integrated into a spotlight on another game. He appends a shortlist of such games he would have liked to include, dedicating a paragraph rather than a chapter to noting what innovations each brings to the development of storytelling in games: Myst, Grim Fandango, and Planescape: Torment, to name a few, along with console games like Legend of Mana and Silent Hill 2.
While there are plenty of reviews, analyses, and postmortems out there of individual games, series, and even genres, it’s not so common to find a welcoming, well-written book for the general reader that consolidates so much about whole generations of the medium. The only other one I’ve encountered, which was published around the same time and which Holmes cites approvingly, is Tristan Donovan’s Replay: The History of Video Games. But if my recommendation of A Mind Forever Voyaging isn’t sufficient, I hope that Gabrielle Zevin’s seal of approval convinces more people to pick it up, as it’s one of the handful of books she mentions in her acknowledgments of her brilliant novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.
Rounding out the book, there is a conclusion in which Holmes sums up his argument: “What makes video games so exciting is not that they tell great stories, but that they tell stories differently.” Through the use of player choice, cinematic cutscenes, a whole panoply of gameplay yielding real-time interaction, plus more literary tools like flashbacks, playful self-reference, and intertextuality, video games continually experiment with the art of storytelling. In the relatively short space of 240 pages, hardly “forever,” Holmes manages to take us on a fantastic voyage showing how these disparate elements combine in the worlds revealed by video games.
- or see this review at https://www.the-pixels.com/2024/02/21...
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May 17, 2020El primer libro que acabo en esta pandemia, me he forzado a mí mismo y ha dado resultados. Estoy contento. Quizás se convierta en uno de estos libros que recomiende a gente que quiere saber por donde empezar o no tiene muy claro de qué va la historia. Pese a comenzar con cierto acercamiento más académico, analizando técnicas y mecánicas de diseño narrativo, en los capítulos más intermedios y finales se lanza directamente a la observación cercana, al estudio del diseño de las emociones y cómo estas son creadas mediante los mecanismos intrínsecos del medio. Las constantes referencias a su propia partida, a la historia que se ha contado a sí mismo, me parecen fundamentales y lo diferencian de otros textos que sirven más como caja de herramientas o como estudios distantes, fríos y con pretensiones de objetivización superflua.
May 20, 2020
"A Mind Forever Voyaging" gives a history of the way stories have been told through video games. It's an interesting premise to specifically address the narrative qualities of games and describe how they and the player interact with each other.
The book was written in 2011, and thus is obviously missing what are, in my opinion, the most important innovations in storytelling since. Games like Der Souls, Her, Papers Please, Undertale and countless others have found new and impactful ways to tell stories, and would fit in well to Dylan Holmes' books.
The book was written in 2011, and thus is obviously missing what are, in my opinion, the most important innovations in storytelling since. Games like Der Souls, Her, Papers Please, Undertale and countless others have found new and impactful ways to tell stories, and would fit in well to Dylan Holmes' books.
September 24, 2020
Un libro que podría estar mejor escrito. No pasa de ser una serie de reseñas o análisis de una lista de videojuegos que considera importantes para la evolución de los videojuegos narrativos. Sin embargo, disfruté mucho leerlo y me recordó por qué me gusta tanto este medio y me hizo dar cuenta de todo lo que me hace falta por experimentar.
July 21, 2018
my therapist gave this to me and it’s ok I guess. fascinating historical context given on the games themselves, less so thrilled by the various analyses. a few too many years out of date.
May 28, 2023
Critically examines thirteen innovative video games that each defined new ground in how video games tell engaging stories.
January 7, 2026
A good overview of story telling in games with some very good insights. Covers games up to 2010, so it is already a bit dated. But the book knows its limitations. Worth a read!
November 29, 2012
I found it hard to put this book down, and even found myself laughing out loud on occasion. The typical appeal of non-fiction (for me) is learning something interesting, but in this case the analysis was presented with an extra dose of humor and wit.
I expected to learn about the history of a certain type of media, (story-focused videogames), and I did. What surprised me was that reading this book brought up new ideas for me relating to game design, story telling, and culture in general. I might recommend this book for someone who has an interest in art, technology, or culture, even if they are not interested specifically in videogames.
The only real disclaimer that I would give is that "A Mind Forever Voyaging" includes spoilers, and it is (I think) highly unlikely that any one person would happen to have played all 13 of the games profiled, as well as the many other games referenced tangentially.
Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine. While that is the reason I heard of the book initially, my enjoyment of it was independant of that friendship.
(this review also posted to Amazon.com)
I expected to learn about the history of a certain type of media, (story-focused videogames), and I did. What surprised me was that reading this book brought up new ideas for me relating to game design, story telling, and culture in general. I might recommend this book for someone who has an interest in art, technology, or culture, even if they are not interested specifically in videogames.
The only real disclaimer that I would give is that "A Mind Forever Voyaging" includes spoilers, and it is (I think) highly unlikely that any one person would happen to have played all 13 of the games profiled, as well as the many other games referenced tangentially.
Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine. While that is the reason I heard of the book initially, my enjoyment of it was independant of that friendship.
(this review also posted to Amazon.com)
December 22, 2015
I loved it! The reading was super enjoyable, and it's been super useful to reflect on every narrative progress that has been made in games since the 90s. I'm glad this book exists, I can just thank the auhtor to take the time to digest for us the history of videogame narrative and let us take e driver seat on his journey.
June 22, 2015
An examination of the history and archetypes of narrative told through games. Each chapter constitutes an analysis of a particular video game, it’s strengths and weaknesses as well as impact on the larger video game culture.
November 26, 2019
Excellent overview of the role of narrative in video gaming up to about 2011. I would like to see an update or an addendum, because I think there are better (or at least more recent) examples of some of the covered topics that could be addressed, at least in the manner of "further gaming."
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