In 2024 the combined market for console (i.e. gaming platforms you plug into your TV) and PC games totalled roughly $95 billion. But that figure was almost matched – and if current trends continue, will soon be eclipsed – by the money made by mobile games played on smartphones and tablets.
Another way to look at this is by player counts: in 2024, the combined audience of console and PC players was roughly 1.5 billion people, while the mobile game playing audience was 2.8 billion.
While these mobile games initially began as simple ways to pass the time, they’ve become increasingly sophisticated as studios look for fresh ways to engage players. That engagement is critical because the vast majority of mobile games are ‘free-to-play’ (as opposed to what the games industry calls ‘premium’ games). Being free-to-play means these games have no upfront cost for players and instead make their money from people making (often small) purchases for ‘boosters’, cosmetics, or extra content.
If a game fails to engage players and keep them hooked for days, months and even years (the most successful free-to-play games have been running for over a decade now) then those players either leave entirely or no longer make purchases.
Naturally studios strive to make their core gameplay compelling and present players with medium and long-term goals to aim for, but attention has increasingly turned to how video game writers can contribute to keeping players engaged.
The question is: how do you get players to come back to the same game, day after day and year after year, rather than being done with it in a few hours?
I would encourage anyone looking to write for video games – particularly freelance writers – to look into how soap operas work, because mobile free-to-play games look set to form an increasingly large portion of the gaming market.
– Stu Maine
Overlapping arcs
Rather than thinking of a game’s narrative as a ‘one and done’ movie, or even an episodic TV series, the answer has been to consider the game as a soap opera.
These stalwarts of TV channels across the world also rely on keeping their audiences hooked, ideally forever. BBC’s EastEnders (which, by the way, our very own John Yorke helped achieve success) is a soap opera which has been running several times per week for nearly 40 years. So how do they manage to stay fresh and engaging for so long?
On our online Story for Video Games course we break down the five-act-structure for writing stories, with each act bringing something specific to the narrative. Free-to-play games have adapted this structure by overlapping multiple arcs across different time frames:
- Each realtime year might have an overall arc that explores a central topic, or focuses on a specific storytelling pillar, giving long-term progression and ensuring events gradually evolve.
- Meanwhile, you might have smaller arcs that span, say, three months, with each presenting a ‘season’ that revolves around specific characters, events, locations, etc. These arcs give the game a satisfying pace, with a particular story being set up, escalated and resolved in a timeframe that players can hold in their head.
- But on top of all of that, major characters and plot threads have their own arcs which bring them into or back out of the limelight as they play a part in unfolding events. This allows the game’s team to respond to player feedback and lean more heavily on popular characters or quietly retire characters that aren’t resonating, but it also means they can set up cliffhangers or have characters reappear, ideally with changed circumstances setting them on a fresh arc.
This soap opera setup gives something for every player, with those that have been with the game for years spotting elements that new players miss, while those new players get to see arcs begin and complete, hopefully getting them invested in the game’s unfolding narrative.
But this structure also brings challenges. Obviously there’s the never-ending work involved in keeping the game fresh and exciting, but that’s not a topic unique to video games. Something that is specific to games is who ‘you’ are in these games, because giving the player a virtual avatar with the depth to remain compelling over such a long time is difficult.
There’s also the question of how to bring new players into a game that’s been running for years, gradually accumulating characters and backstory all the while. Some games run standalone arcs that don’t rely on any prior knowledge, while others put new players through pre-set introductory story arcs that teach them about the game’s world before letting them join the larger community and whichever ‘real’ narrative event is running at the time.
Look at [these games] through the lenses of their overlapping arcs, who their intended audience might be, and what they’re doing to bring you back for that all-important next play session.
– Stu Maine
Examples
When I helped write for a Strictly Come Dancing / Dancing With The Stars mobile game, the overall narrative was ‘your’ dancing career, but to try and capture the feel of the TV shows we included weekly ‘shock twists’. Each of these introduced a professional or ethical dilemma that could go either way and then presented challenges that players could overcome to get a good outcome, otherwise they suffered a setback.
As another example, an as yet unreleased game is using narrative seasons to ask difficult questions (like ‘how far will someone go for power?’) and then explores that question through how it impacts a gradually growing and changing cast of characters.
If you’re not a fan of soap operas, then consider that sports are more or less real world ‘soap operas’, with fans following the trials, tribulations, successes and failures of their favourite players or teams over the years. Sports like wrestling blur the lines between competition and fiction even further, but, like soap operas, pretty much every sport comes down to its cast of ‘characters’ and how they respond to the always changing situation they find themselves in.
Something final to consider is how mobile games actually tell their stories. Console and PC games can call on spectacular ‘cutscenes’, which big-budget games are making increasingly difficult to tell from real life. But many mobile games are played in bed, on a train, or as a ‘second screen’ experience while the TV is on in the background. As a result it’s pretty common for the phone to be silenced, meaning that rather than voice acting, sounds and music, it comes down to the writer’s ability to deliver evocative, punchy text to be able to tell their story.
Like soap operas, pretty much every sport comes down to its cast of ‘characters’ and how they respond to the always changing situation they find themselves in.
– Stu Maine
Conclusion
I would encourage anyone looking to write for video games – particularly freelance writers – to look into how soap operas work, because mobile, free-to-play games look set to form an increasingly large portion of the gaming market. Of course a good story is a good story, but if your skillset is purely focused on delivering narratives that span two to three hours then you’re cutting off a lot of potential writing opportunities.
I’ve only scratched the surface of the topic here, so to dig deeper I suggest checking sites like PocketGamer.com, GamesIndustry.biz and GameDeveloper.com to get up to speed with industry trends and current concerns.
Then deep-dive with sites like DeconstructorOfFun.com, or narrative-focused events like LudoNarraCon.
Also, as with anyone wanting to work in the gaming industry, it’s important to play and study as many games as possible. The advantage of free-to-play games is that you can try them for nothing, so give successes like Love and Pies, Genshin Impact, Destiny 2 and Episode a go.
I suggest looking at them through the lenses of their overlapping arcs, who their intended audience might be (more than premium games, free-to-play titles are laser focused on specific audiences), and what they’re doing to bring you back for that all-important next play session.
It’s true that live, regularly updated games and soap opera storytelling present specific challenges, but they also present opportunities, particularly as the ‘rules’ of this new storytelling paradigm are still being explored and established.