In the guise of a farmer, the player collects and spends resources, builds enclosures for animals, ploughs fields, grows their family, and so forth on turn one they oversee two people in a two-room shack, and by turn fourteen they may oversee up to five people whose house sits on a much-developed farm. Fields must be plowed, tilled and harvested.” 3 This sets up a story to supplement the bare rules of the game. People are upgrading and renovating their huts. The Plague which has raged since 1348 has finally been overcome. Consider Agricola, which presents the following introductory description: “Central Europe, around 1670 AD. However, it takes little to recognize that another subcategory, board games, can be included within this. 1 Clearly in a game such as BioShock 2 a story is told, in this case progressing through a shipwreck, a stranding in an undersea city, various discoveries and conflicts, and a dramatic final escape.
This should be uncontroversial, and is obvious at least for certain subcategories of game it has been noted that “even a cursory observation shows that many videogames do involve narratives” ( Tavinor 2009, 20). Games frequently feature fictional narratives.
