Lesson 1 - Stories are complex structures that must meet many hard-to-specify requirements
Most games don't look at the requirements needed to create a story. Because they dismiss a lot of these structural requirements, they concern themselves with things instead. Games will focus on things you obtain throughout the game, things to destroy, things to use to help you accomplish victory. Stories can't be called stories if they are about an object, they should be able people.
Lesson 2 - Stories are about the most fascinating things in the universe: people
People play the key role in stories, because people can use conflict to drive a story. Somebody who reads a story will expect progression through human emotions, they also need to be able to empathise with them to an extent. Objects and tools can be important to a story, they will help the character progress further, but it's the way that the characters are feeling and thinking that interests the audience.
Lesson 3 - Puzzles are not a necessary component of stories
Characters make decisions in stories, and these decisions affect the progression and outcome of said stories. Games have taken the idea of decision-making and added spectacle to it. Providing exotic imagery as a form of entertainment is a spectacle, something the audience hasn't seen before. They can take a decision-based story and instantly make it more exciting by adding better graphics and effects; however, Aristotle said that spectacle is the least important of the six elements of a story.
Lesson 4 - Spectacle does not make stories
Games are always trying to improve their appearance, or spectacle, but traditionally visuals are created by using our own amazing tools that are hard-wired into our brains: our imagination. Books are an excellent example of this, as although there is nothing but pages of text, it leaves us to imagine our own surroundings and characters to place the story into. In games you wouldn't be able to tell how a character is thinking by just looking at them, visual spectacle is limited.
Lesson 5 - Visual thinking should not dominate storytelling
Spatial reasoning is when we can work something out by using our knowledge of space. When used metaphorically it works well, and allows us to use statements such as "Your statement is wide of the mark". However, Crawford states that "when people use it too literally in storytelling, it becomes a problem.
Lesson 6 - Stories take place on stages, not maps
Stories will mess around with time, they will break it up, jumping backwards and forwards, as well as skipping parts altogether. They will skip how the character arrives at a place, or what they even did during their journey there. I personally think that this is a good thing, because it would get incredibly boring having to listen every detail given; stories are split up into particular sections for a reason: to keep the audience interested. Modern games use this quite well, cutting out parts you don't need, but most games involve you taking your character to every destination you need to go to. A good example of this would be JRPGs, as they force you to walk to every new area without skipping parts.
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