Finding Meaning in Interactive Play and Narrative

[EccentricDuck]

I'm posting this as a way of engaging discussion about "finding meaning" in game development. To clarify, I mean this in two (related) ways:

One is about creating meaning for your audience who will play your game and/or follow your story (I purposely separate these since they are fundamentally distinct, even though we often deliver them together through story-driven games). How important do you find it to deliver some sort of meaning to the player(s)? When you're creating a game, no matter how simple, do you ever feel a sense of guilt about delivering certain experiences through your games? Conversely, so you feel good about, or compelled to create meaningful experiences for players (whether that be creating a good multiplayer experience for friends to play together, crafting the evolution of a character in a story, or creating some sort of obstacle that the players can feel good about mastering)?

The second is more about finding/creating meaning for yourself. Like anything we do on a regular basis, it helps to have some reason for waking up in the morning and getting to the task at hand. In particular, when we approach something challenging, it's important to have something we can pull out and say "I'm getting through this to..." If that's something that you'd rather keep to yourself, that's fine. What is it though that imparts a desire to create games? What is it that makes you jump through the many hurdles and commit a large amount of time to something that can be so challenging and require such a great investment of time and energy (with extrinsic rewards being so far away or, in many cases, not that important).

Personally, I have a powerful interest in motivation and meaning - perhaps because I went through periods in my life where I had overflowing sums of it and then lost it (you could say I became disillusioned).

Relevant to the topic, I can recall fond experiences of narrative driven games like Final Fantasy VI-X, Chrono Trigger, Pokemon*, and more. I also have a lot of positive experiences of playing multiplayer games with friends - though I'm realizing this is more true of games where we were in the same physical space than when we were playing over the internet. Recently, I went back to Lost Odyssey and started reading through the "A Thousand Years of Dreams" stories, and I found them to pose some of the most compelling stories on immortality (and consequently, mortality) that I've ever read.

What is it that you want to create in games, and what is it that gives them meaning for you?

[XianForce]

Well, I've always enjoyed "conundrums" I guess you could say. In the past (mostly in math classes), when a challenging problem was presented, I was always able to think of creative ways to solve them... That soon just expanded into Game Development. It allows me to work creatively, yet still logically, if that makes sense? As for an "audience", I don't really think, as indie developers, we create for an audience. I think we create the games that WE want to play, and anyone who will/would enjoy that game sort of hops on the band wagon... But that's just my own opinion...

[D-e-X]

The best story ever invented is by the mind and its imagination, therefore letting the player immerse himself into his own story and world will imo be one of the best ways to go about a game. Being creative and using my imagination is what makes me want to make games, the world gives us an infinite number of possibilities, that's what I embrace, I guess you could say.