I can lose a lot of time to video games. I love action-RPGs, although I always turn the difficulty down as low as I can. I’m here for the story, mostly. And also I like being able to tear through enemies without needing any appreciable level of skill. What can I say? It’s very cathartic.
Some games though go beyond just entertaining me in the moment. Some games spin off ideas for stories, and leave me wanting to go away and create something of my own. I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I’d assume not! So, I want to know whether you also find yourself inspired by gaming. And if so, does your imagination get fired up by the same video games as mine?
The Sims 4
This one probably goes without saying. There really isn’t any story to The Sims that you don’t invent for yourself, particularly in The Sims 4 with its notorious lack of lore… but jabs aside, I love playing around with different imagined backstories for my sims.
I often make sims from characters in stories that I’m working on, partly to help me get to know them better, mostly just because I like the game. But I’ve found that it can work the other way around as well! Sometimes I’ll come up with a sim, or a family of them, that I find interesting enough to want to explore beyond the bounds of the game.
Skyrim
I used to be a writer like you, until I took an arrow to the knee. The much-memed Bethesda classic is a staple of my video gaming stints. Skyrim can eat up hours of my life. And by hours, I of course mean days. And by days… well, you get the picture. It usually gets to the point where I have to uninstall it again just to get something else done.
But before I reach that point, I’ve usually been inspired by something in that wide fictional world. A line of dialogue from an intriguing NPC, a convoluted but strangely involving side quest, or sometimes just the view from the top of a mountain. As a side note, let me know if you also find some scenery (real or computer-generated) makes you weirdly desperate to write!
When I finally set Skyrim aside to rejoin the real world, it’s usually with a story idea or two nestled in the back of my brain.
Pokémon
The Pokémon video games have a more prescriptive storyline than the previous two I’ve talked about, but there’s still some room for exploration. And, like in Skyrim, the player character is pretty much a blank slate. While you don’t have as much scope to take different sides in Pokémon – I’m pretty sure there’s never been an option to join up with Team Rocket, for example – you’re pretty free to imagine whatever personality you want for your character. And personally, when I’m faced with an empty vessel of a character, I feel compelled to come up with something to fill it.
Weirdly, I think the very fact that there isn’t as much freedom to choose different paths in the Pokémon games is what sparks my imagination. It makes me want to come up with interesting ways my character might have decided that this was the right choice for them. I wonder whether they might doubt earlier decisions, and whether they might be frustrated with the limited range of options available for dealing with a given situation.
Am I overthinking a simple series of children’s games? Almost certainly. Does it get me itching to sit down and write something with my own characters? Apparently so! And hey, whatever works, right?
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
I’ll tell you what I think does it for me in this game: all the space. I’m staunchly opposed to fast travel in most games, because I’m big on immersion, but never have I been so determined to walk or ride everywhere as in this game. With its minimal soundtrack between official points of interest, and its determinedly empty patches of world, there’s something almost meditative about travel in Breath of the Wild.
In much the same way that walking in real life can allow ideas to slosh around in my head and combine in new and interesting ways, walking around Hyrule in this game has a tendency to produce unexpected new ideas. Whether that’s solving a problem that’s been bugging me in my work-in-progress, or opening up a whole new story idea to explore. But I don’t even have to leave my sofa for the benefit, plus I might get to smash up a bokoblin or two along the way. Win-win!
If you’re a writer who also games, what kind of video games do you like to play? And do you find that they ever inspire you to write? If you’ve got any recommendations for story-sparking games, drop them in the comments – I’m always on the lookout for new virtual adventures!
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