UC Santa Cruz

Online communities tell stories with the games they play. As continual updates, recurring monetization, and platforms for community discussions have flourished, we have seen a rise in video games using ongoing development to tell stories and have a community interact with those stories and build upon them. In this dissertation I study this phenomenon, which I call perennial games---storytelling experiences which are perpetual, continuous, and tell an ongoing, communal story where everyone influences its future in big and small ways. I study this especially as it has grown in the years 2010-2025 in the modern rise of the live-service game, which has exploded in popularity. This is a format of storytelling that tells stories in unique ways yet also in ways that hark back to serial fiction, professional wrestling, traditional mythology, and more. Through a three-pronged focus I study: 1) the games as narrative experiences and how they facilitate narrative play through their design, 2) the communities who play them, how and why they play with the narrative and stay in these worlds for decades, and 3) the development, investigating the many joys and challenges of telling an ongoing story, following the inevitable oscillations as developers interact with the community. Through this multifaceted approach, I illustrate how perennial games cultivate community by inherently trading their mystery for familiarity, creating strong social bonds through the communal experience of uncovering, cataloging and deciphering mystery. Pushed forward by the inherent myth that these games will continue to change, the communities around them strain against an increasing lack of mystery, both seeking the safety of their social bonds while yearning for that which brought them there in the first place. Perennial games can be alluded to as a developed garden, requiring maintenance and care, each year taking a subtly new shape, molded by its inhabitants and its caretakers, always a bit more wild than anyone can manage on their own. As it grows the people inside it grow ever more dependent on its continued existence, until the promise that kept them there breaks.