ABSTRACT
Tropes become tropes because they work. They are functioning narrative design devices we can employ knowing they have worked in the past and have a high likelihood of working again. Audiences are familiar with them, and, for all that video games are, of course, rooted in software and hardware, the real locus for the story, the real medium within which the story is developing, where it is being experienced, is in the audience. So knowing tropes is a way to know how to know an audience, a way to know how they are likely to respond within a certain narrative context. Real time is a key design metric in real-time strategy games and MMOs. Developers often make much of the player/avatar connection, and how keeping an avatar blank and undefined without specific detail, and especially without detail the player hasn’t defined, helps players feel engaged with that avatar.
