Slay the Dragon was a particularly interesting read, mainly due in part to the fact that it really hit home on the idea of story driven titles, at least for me.  There are a lot of obvious rules to making a great video game, but these rules can be overlooked and taken for granted unless one pays close attention.

I learned that the characters drive the story, no matter what type of game--whether it's a first person shooter, fantasy RPG, survival/horror, etc.  Characters and story give the player something they can invest in emotionally. Couple them with great controls, well-designed and well-implemented mechanics, creatively constructed levels, impressive graphics, and physics running within a smooth engine, and you have a potential hit.

But even that's not enough.

You've got to have that extra special something.  A compelling hook that will immediately grab people and bring them in.  Something that will make them want to stay.

The importance of storytelling cannot be overstated.  All the pretty stuff--graphics, extra CGI, etc.--is meaningless without a compelling tale that pits a protagonist against another force and creates a conflict.  This simple idea goes back to role-playing games from the 1970s.

I realized that storytelling works in unison with your gameplay.  The more your story can be told through gameplay, the more the protagonist can control the narrative--through player-initiated actions perhaps--the better a game it will be.  Don't show it.  Play it.

It also seems that it's all to easy to diminish the role that the protagonist has to play.  The protagonist--the hero--should be the strongest character in the animated universe, but often times creators make him/her the dumbest or weakest character.  Maybe they have amnesia and can't remember who they are/what they did (classic), or maybe they have just experienced some sort of colossal loss.  Either way, they always seem defeated before they (maybe) rise.  People are always telling the hero what to do, making his decisions and dictating his actions for him.  This book focuses a lot on the idea of storytelling, and a strong hero would make for a great champion in a compelling tale.

Lastly, and this is a more personal note, but the idea of the cut scene really came to mind as I was reading. Cut scenes are used in almost every really successful RPG/first person shooter today, and it's not something I realized until it hit me as I was reading.  Some of my favorite games, like Halo and Skyrim, both employ the use of awe-inspiring cut scenes to advance the story.  Halo is a linear story, fueled on by the mini movies that tie the whole story together.  Skyrim is more of a mission-based game, where you are allowed to freely roam the world you create for yourself, but are periodically handed quests to evolve the story at a more glacial pace.  Both have different structures--linear and more non-linear--but use cut scenes to achieve similar success.

Overall, a very interesting read.  Even though I probably could've spent more time re-reading certain parts to better understand and learn, I was still very satisfied with the way certain parts made me think critically about game design.  I went on my own tangents and ended up have a great independent learning experience.