Interactive storytelling

In this article Crawford says

'They don't bother with people other than as willing dolls the preform mechanical functions'


Crawford is explaining that in a game the story will have to live up to its fundamental expectations. If said expectations are not met then the players view and overall understanding of the game will be questionable and somewhat anti-climatic.
Crawford gives us 6 lessons on creating  successful story telling.

Lesson 1: Stories are complex structures that must meet many hard to specify requirements.
- Many games don't pay attention to the structural requirements needed in stories. Because of this lack of attention to this detail, games concern themselves with things instead. Example of Things are thing you obtain, things you use, things you destroy etc. Stories are not stories if it is about an object, rather it should be (and always should be) about people.

Lesson 2: Stories are about the most fascinating things in the universe: people.
- Just like lesson 1 it is the people that make the story. In games, they use conflict (specifically violence) to drive the story, it is simple, direct and a much more crowd  pleaser. Other conflicts include social, race and  indirect. In CSI puzzle is the drive of the show, they use science, photographs and amazing machinery  to help solve the crime, but it is the minds of the characters that fascinate the audience.

Lesson 3: Puzzles are not a necessary component of stories. 
- Stories are made by the choices the character makes and with that single (or multiple) decision the story will build up on that. Games have taken that idea and have added spectacle to it.  Spectacle dominants the film industry and is very close to dominating gaming as well. In my personal experience, I found that i shamefully do judge games on their graphics, I'm not sure if its because of the pretty colors how amazing the designers have created the game, but i recently played final fantasy 8 (rated the worst game play graphics in the series) and realised that it i love the game, the story, the characters, and most of all their personalities.

Lesson 4: Spectacle does not make the story.
-As a game player i do enjoy a little spectacle in a story, but I do admit that the minds eye is a much more satisfying element. Visual spectacle is limited , in games you would not be able to know the characters personality by just looking them,or be able to know what they were thinking. A spectacle is somewhat important in a game, but it limits the players imagination.

Lesson 5: Visual thinking should not dominate a story.
-I'm not sure if i read this lesson wrong, but i have to totally disagree with this lesson. In Lesson 4 a spectacle does not make a story, in lesson 6 stories take places on stages not maps. so what is in between? If a player cant use their minds eye to work on the story and there are not words on the screen to tell them what has happened in a certain amount of time, then surly they game should just flick between frames.

Lesson 6: Stories take place on stages, not maps
-Crawford give the example of saying that stories skip how the character arrives at a certain place, or what they did on their journey. In my opinion, if i was to read a story i would not like to listen to every detail of what the character did on their way to a place (unless it was important to the story or comical).

Crawford explanation on storytelling was insightful (event though i disagreed with some of his lessons) but the main conclusion to this is that it is the characters that make the story.  True it wouldn't be a very good story without visuals, objects and maps, but at the very core, characters are what makes a story enjoyable.