@Bret: Thanks for the catch. I had it in bold and everything.

I'm skeptical that DLC and other content drops in "service-based" games will be that great for more complex and interesting narrative development, because they tend to be so self-contained. On the other hand, since it's so hard to come up with examples of games that use narrative as gameplay really well, maybe it's better to start out small.

@Jonathan: In case I didn't make it clear, one of the things I liked about Koster's essays is that he didn't put a value judgment on game narrative. It was more an attempt to define it, even if I don't agree with the definition.

I've never been a big fan of puzzles, either, and as time has gone on I've had a harder and harder time getting enthusiastic about them. I guess they satisfy a lot of what I'm calling a "game": they've got rules and a win condition, and you can experiment until you find the right solution. But I don't like the sense of "there is one correct solution, I know it, and you have to find it." I prefer "There's a range of possible solutions, but we all agree that this is the most interesting one." It's a subtle distinction, I guess, but it's all in how you think about it.

And you can call what I'm talking about "hints," but that's another place where the connotation of the term makes a significant difference in how you think about it. Calling it a "hint" has a connotation of "I know the right answer, aren't you getting it?" But I'd like to see more attention paid to the context and the setup. So the solution just seems natural.

At Telltale, Dave spent a LOT of time thinking about making a subtle hint system and making the distinction between context and hints. A significant number of players immediately turned off hints just on principle, even though the games were intended to be played with the hints on. Because we tried to make them integral to the system, gradually giving information to guide the player in a direction. Giving clues instead of giving exasperated "I know and you don't" answers.