I forget who said it, but somebody smarter than me said something along the lines that "every story has already been told" and I think that idea goes along with what you are saying. I've noticed that the weak links seem to be what you touched on already, and that is the dedication to cliche stories/characters - Another is a lot of developers/producers seem to get caught up in making the story work for the game mechanic instead of the other way around or the two working hand in hand. But, how does one make the goals personal, again, without seeming cliche and thus boring?

First, I'm curious as to where in "How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy" you get "It can be defined this way: A story is characters, with goals, fighting against obstacles to achieve those goals -- or failing nobly in the attempt." I've read the book before, but I don't recall it being stated in that way.

Second, I will point out that your fundamentally definition of a story is inaccurate (or more accurately, too narrow). A story is nothing but a series of events (as well as characters, milieu, and ideas). Yes, it usually boils down to "characters, with goals, fighting against obstacles to achieve those goals." But it can, and sometimes does, include different aspects. In Card's book, he defines the common used Acronym of MICE (p.76).

Though I do like your breakdown to a game level (game-wise it makes sense - just not so much story-wise), and hitting on the basic issues with current games and story inclusion.

It's true, often the gameplay and the story/message inherent in the game just don't match up, or if they do, they don't do it very strongly. Also if your building a game that links story and mechanics quite intimately, then the most satisfying reward should really be successfully doing whatever you were attempting.

Take for instance a mission based first person shooter, set in a modern era.... all right think CoD4 if you wish. The story is usually the brief justification before you launch into your mission and it's assumed your player is doing these things "because he's in the army now". If your chasing after a tyrant, why not have a smaller mission before hand where you try to find and meet with an informant who has an emotion filled story to relate about why he's helping you. Why not generate a rapport with your allies, give them personalities and morals that make themselves apparent through game play. If your going out of your way to save these men, then give the player a real want to do so.

If your message was to be about the horror of war, then you need to break the black and white world view that many army personnel have to maintain to do what they do. You can't go around killing hundreds of people that just yell "Allah!" at you and expect to make an impact on the player (like a lot of games these days seem to). You'd want to make the player think they're firing on an insurgent, only to find out that they killed a young boy who was trying to protect his mother and sisters from a perceived threat. You'd do things like show how mistakes can occur, you'd be ordered to paint a target for an air strike only realising after the fact that it was a civilian target with a bunch of kids just playing in a play ground. But you'd also see horror's perpetrated against you, you'd see the brotherhood that usually keeps people fighting far more than any cause will, and you'd see it ripped apart by loss. It would be a mixed message because war is a mixed message, not just a romping thrill ride through an urban jungle shooting everything that moves.

A lot of first person games are finally making use of the entire "in game cinematic" which doesn't break up gameplay as much, especially when there are various cut scene's where you're given a chance to actually do something, CoD4s ending for instance. But there are a lot more, almost cinematic, techniques a game could use. Why not when your running down an apartment building hallway have the camera wrest control off the player, slowly pan about to look inside a room as you pass to see the family huddled down terrified within, and then pan back out and have the game accelerate back up to normal pace. This doesn't give the player time to fully process what they saw and means they'll continue to think about it continuously as the game progresses.

Overall it would be nice to see a lot more of the "using gameplay to achieve those objectives" actually executed, and less of the "gameplay in between objectives". Also noting that you can actually do a lot, and cover some very emotive and meaningful ground using cliché characters. Stereotypes have the advantage of being easily identifiable, making the message your trying to deliver far easier to interpret.

Jay, I definitely agree that "every story has been told." All we can do is try to put an original twist or an original voice on it -- that is one of the great challenges of writing for any medium. And I think that you can definitely tell when a story has been stapled onto a game as an afterthought, rather than being developed as part of a whole.

Lance, I'm traveling right now, but I'll pull the book off the shelf and try to quote a page number when I get back :) I agree that the definition I use is very simplistic; however it is a definition that covers the vast majority of commercial fiction (Hollywood film, bestselling novels, short stories, etc.).
Another simple definition of a story (I can't remember which SF writer came up with this) can be paraphrased as: "Get your protagonist up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Then get him down." Story revolves around conflict, and the rocks-tree paradigm is another way to look at it.
The universality of this definition is why I chose it, plus the fact that it ties so well into the process of game development. Other definitions of story are not less valid, but they may not be quite as convenient.
The MICE categorization of OSC, as I recall, had to do with the type of story being told, not the structure of the narrative; I wanted to find a good structure definition to help myself think through game development issues.

Chirstopher -- Wow! Another long and thoughtful post.
I am in one hundred percent agreement that we are only a limited range of cinematic possibilities for telling game stories. And I think that particularly in military games, we have only recently started moving away from the opponents-are-evil-good-guys-are-perfect game story. We as a media haven't made the change that Hollywood did, for instance, when films about he Vietnam war went from "The Green Berets" to "Full Metal Jacket," and films about WWII went from "The Battle of the Bulge" to "The Thin Red Line."
Your image of the family huddling in a room while a soldier runs by is exactly the kind of thing that would lift the standards of the industry.
And as for clichés -- it is true that stereotypes like "gruff sergeant," "naive lieutenant," "ambitious officer" are useful for painting a rapid sketch of a character and helping the player understand them. However, I think it is important that even these kinds of characters get some sort of twist or personality trait that provides a bit of differentiation.

@ Lance Hildebrand:

"A story is nothing but a series of events". Ok, but that's probably not a good one then.
STORY = STRUGGLE

@Jeff
"Goals are too often epic, but not personal."
1000% agree here!

Utilizing bland stereotypes to slap ideas in the audience's faces doesn't sound like the greatest way to go. If your goal is to provoke thought from the audience, it's much more effective if the characters themselves actually have deeper (and conflicting) thoughts. Sure, a character might possess some stereotypical traits that will pull a few inferences from the audience, but I would hate for that first thought of who and what a character is to be the second, third, and final thought. Characters need to grow and/or have some depth, otherwise that character is a close-to-worthless extra.

Jeff, I appreciate that. Memories have a funny way about them, and do to my love of the subject matter I would love to be able to reference it. Though I would argue just because it covers a lot of material, doesn't make it valid (though possibly necessary for your analogy). Take scientific theory for example, you just need one to break it.

I would like to point out how I was not referencing how authors define a story, but how it is defined in general. Authors, mostly due to their style, have very skewed views of what a story is and is not. While that definition is convenient for your analogy, I'm pointing out that it is not a "fairly standard" definition, it's the way you want to present it. If you remove that last sentence from the first paragraph, you would be fine.

As to the MICE Quotient, it is a story structure theory (though Card mentions it in that chapter of story construction). The author picks which pillar has more in their particular story.

Nino, while most good stories do use a struggle of sorts, it is not a part of the definition of a story. Take for example most couples stories about how they first met. They are still stories regardless of a struggle. I was not referencing good stories, which is very subjective, but what a story is to begin with.

The use of stereotypes starts at identification, it goes far deeper than that. If the gruff soldier starts to cry that makes someone sit up and go.."wow that's something serious that's happened right there" The closer to an accepted norm something is, the further you can twist it and the greater impact it can have. Also I object to stereotypes being bland, they are nothing of the sort, it's what makes them stereotypes, and not "average" (I'm aware that average in and of itself is a stereotype). In fact stereotypes run a lot deeper through our cultural grain than most people realise, and some of the greatest works of literature (not going to bother quoting something here, go read some books people =D ) make heavy use of them.

Simply put having the stereotypical war loving yahoo in your story is useful, because then when the gruff sergeant begins to confide in the protagonist that he wasn't cut out for this, the yahoo provides the contrast. He's the white background that the silhouette is painted on top of, while the blubbering gruff sergeant becomes the mark of red in the middle of the silhouette that is striking because it's not the norm.

Points #2 and #3 are the ones that I would say are most to blame for the lacklustre storytelling in most games.

re #2 - its true that in a huge percentage of games, the goal is save the world/princess/etc. The few games that have managed to successfully wrap me up in their story have typically been games with more interesting objectives. For example, the main character's motivation in Indigo Prophecy is to figure out why he unwittingly murdered a man he never met before. That's compelling!

One of Kurt Vonnegut's rules for fiction is quite simply "every character should want something". No one should ever be tagging along just because the main character needs a companion, and no villain should ever be there just because the player needs an enemy.

I also think something that's often overlooked is that the characters shouldn't be the only ones with motivations, the writer should have them too. Yes, Character A wants to accomplish Objective Q because she has Motivation Y. But why have you, the writer, decided that the character should want those things? What is the broader purpose of the narrative, the motivation(s) that ties everything else together? That part is very easy to overlook.

"If the gruff soldier starts to cry that makes someone sit up and go..'wow that's something serious that's happened right there' "

That wouldn't be a stereotype then. Gruff would be a characteristic in this case, typical of a soldier. But when you introduce crying, the soldier is that much less of a stereotype. Using stereotypes is fine for non-important characters since the writer does not have time to write a full character sketch or even show all aspects of a character. I don't know of any great works of literature that use stereotypes heavily. Either you're definition of stereotype is very odd or those works of literature shouldn't be considered great.

Plenty of Russian literature from the 19th century (Dostoevski, Gogol, etc.) features pretty racist stereotypes of Jewish people, but they're still considered to be great works of literature.

Jeff, I don't agree with your claims in #1 about "bland" character stereotypes or "2-D paper doll imitations." In fact, I generally prefer 2D over 3D precisely because 2D has advantages (that is, greater freedom) in presenting visual styles for characters compared to 3D. Western artists really need to get rid of the modern perception that visual presentation needs to be "realistic" or even needs to be 3D. I find Japanese and other East Asian nonphotorealistic character visual presentations to be far more emotionally engaging (and aesthetically appealing) than most of the stuff offered in the West.

In addition, I think we need to differentiate between "stereotype" and "archetype" when speaking about characters in stories, or even just specific story elements and storytelling techniques that are utilized. As has been pointed out, stereotypes in stories are not necessarily bad; it depends on how they are used to present the story. Stereotypes are not restricted to humans, either; you also have stereotypes for stuff like environmental conditions, for example, or other elements in the story. However, archetypes are often used for immediate audience identification. Such use is based on widely understood storytelling motifs within any particular culture. Obviously, these archetypes may vary between cultures, but that's one reason why it's critical to maintain diversity of approaches rather than adopt a view such as "we want to make our games appeal to [insert market demographic]." This is what some of the major Japanese publishers have openly stated during the past year by claiming they wish to develop games in the Western way for Western gamers; this is a very bad idea for story and character purposes. It's merely chasing money rather than creating art.

At the same time, these archetypes can be used to lull the audience into a false sense of security and assumption about the character(s). The artists can twist the events and character traits, or completely pull the rug out from under the audience's feet with certain developments or eventual revelations. This is extremely effective if done properly because it engages the audience, first with allowing them to make assumptions and create expectations, then by twisting or destroying those expectations while developing alternatives.

Finally, I'd like to point out that Japanese adventure, visual novel, and simulation games do not fall into most of the failings that are listed here. Such games maintain a very simple gameplay mechanic while placing full emphasis on story and character development. These games are always aware that the player is asking "why is/are the character(s) doing this?" Of course, such an approach requires far more effort in writing as well as character art (different facial expressions, outfits, etc in order to convey emotional empathy with the player, for example). Some of the games that get released in other areas include some of these elements, too, even if such inclusions are not the primary focus of the game (for example, elements such as private actions in Star Ocean or the ongoing development of characters in game entries that are part of franchises such as Growlanser or the Tales series).

In my view, the Western gaming industry needs to realize that there is an untapped customer demographic who wants extremely simple "point and click" game mechanics coupled with a 90% (or more) focus on character and story development. This is why books still sell, movies still sell, and other linear, noninteractive forms of entertainment continue to be enjoyed by many people. Sure, games offer interactivity, but developers can choose to minimize that aspect for people who care about other elements of their entertainment. Western developers refuse to offer such a minimalistic approach for game mechanics and instead focus on game mechanics being the primary feature of games as a storytelling medium. In my view, this is what is holding the industry back from reaching its true potential, at least in the West.

@Louis Varilias

It's an old literary technique known as "breaking a stereotype", you start with something that fits a well known stereotype so that a reader/viewer/player can identify with it and then you rip it apart at the right moment for dramatic and emotional impact. But for the effect to work, you have to spend considerable effort on building that character into a believable stereotype for you to break.

In this way stereotyping is a very flexible technique. The combination of having some characters remain in type and other break form allow our world to be examined through a different lens. If the gruff soldier was already known to be a cry baby, then him crying has no affect on the player, but if you build his character in such a way that he fits a stereotype and then break it, it has a more profound affect.

Ultimately your right though, once the gruff soldier starts crying he no longer fits the stereo type, which is exactly what we desire, but he did fit the stereotype right up until that point. As for literature that makes use of stereotypes, look up any work that deals with one of these subjects, religion, race, politics, gender and war. In every one of those books stereotypes will often be quite pronounced, and quite abundant, and often the slow meticulous destruction of them is a core part of their message.