Words Worth Knowing: The Lore
Words Worth Knowing was a vertical I wrote weekly explaining key pieces of gaming jargon to parents, guardians and teachers, as part of the larger overall GameHub outreach effort. The column ran for nearly two years and resulted in around 60 WWK articles. GameHubHQ.com closed in late 2017. This piece originally appeared on Aug 03, 2015.
Some games are about fitting square pegs into square holes and some are about shooting bad guys in the face. But some games have an incredible rich and detailed written cannon, known as The Lore. What is the Lore, what do you need to know and why do you need to care?
What It Is: Lore = The written cultural history of a digital world
What It Means: Lore refers to the written and verbal backstory and setting of a game. In franchises such as Dragon Age, Mass Effect, The Witcher or The Elder Scrolls, this lore is massively rich and complex, with its own unique mythology, philosophy, theology and linguistic. Players can read notes, scrolls, inscriptions, poems, novels, biographies, maps, codexes and letters to learn more of the lore, or through having conversations with in-game characters.
Why You Care: Games with a deep and complex lore are trying to present an engaging and immersive experience to the player, by constructing a believable alternative world in the player is a hero. The questions of our Engagement section look into these kinds of matters - what kind of world is the player entering and is it a good fit for their preferred play-style? A player who enjoys abstract puzzles or quick-fire shooting is unlikely to find a lore-heavy game interesting. The Lore builds the world and makes it more believable, with reference to religions, myths, historical events, geography, culture and so on. Many players enjoy spending time reading about a favourite game's myths and legends by picking up scrolls, books and diaries kept in libraries and written by characters. Interested players can take up respected positions as community lore-keepers, and those with a talent for creative writing can embark upon a career as a Narrative Designer, writing Lore and game story content.
