pixel for a thought: defining "story"

A month or so ago, I was observing a friend play Coin Dozer on her iPod; the object is to strategically push as many coins as possible into a hole. I began to contemplate how the game might have been imagined for pre-production in the first place.

"I wonder if even a game like this has a storyline," I wonder aloud. I know I said something of the sort, because it disturbed another friend, a particularly avid gamer himself, who was sitting within earshot.

"Um, no it doesn't," he laughs at me.

Admittedly I do have a tendency to over-think little things, but this time I believe my question isn't limited to a contemplative nerd's spectrum.

"What about Angry Birds?" I ask, trying to use irony to prove my case. I've seen him absorbed in that particular title from time to time.

"Angry Birds has a storyline," he states, and proceeds to relate to my ignorant ears a tale of evil green swine who kidnapped the incubating unborn children of the perturbed avians in question. I didn't know about this before, and I'm rather impressed that there's a storyline in Angry Birds at all to begin with...

"But Coin Dozer is just as important," I say.

"How?"

"Well, it may not have a storyline per se, but it does have a narrative," I countered. "You could say it's supposed to be existentialist, because ultimately pushing a never-ending stream of coins into a hole is absurd and meaningless."

"But Angry Birds has an actual storyline," he grins. "Not a fake, existential-ly one. A real one."

After we get into a hot-headed debate take a few more turns politely explaining why our respective opinions are correct, we drop the subject and it becomes little more than an inside joke ("Angry Birds has a story!"). Nevertheless, the conversation obviously stayed with me to this day, as it's left me wondering what, exactly, qualifies as a "story." Does it really need a plot? Does it need a player-character? Can you think of any game that doesn't, at the very least, suggest a theme or metaphor? Does a single such metaphor constitute a narrative? For that matter, can we assume that "narrative" means the same thing as "story"?

What you're thinking right now: Alex, you're way overthinking this. I just want my games to be fun. But it's nonetheless a valid question to consider when we're making even casual games. The literary world is classified into multi-volume fictional series, single novels, and short stories. In film we have sagas and trilogies, individual movies, and indie shorts for film festivals. Just because in the gaming industry the casual genre is at the short end of the spectrum doesn't mean that we can't have just as meaningful stories. They probably won't fall anywhere near the level of narrative depth in the Mass Effect titles, but we can't automatically equalize "casual game" with "casual story."