Last week I took part in a discussion panel at the Edinburgh Festival entitled "Are games anti-story machines?" – based on a Guardian article in 2007 that suggested games are the opposite of stories, and far less good for us as a result. This sort of dichotomy is a fun way to get a debate going, but is often taken a bit too literally: not all stories are "good" for us, some games are and, anyway, there is no reason we should only do things that are good for us.

But the question of how games create stories is interesting. As a games writer, I know there is a problem with creating stories within games. It's a difficulty in motivating the main character that boils down to: if you give the player autonomy, then, to some extent, where your main character's motivations and thoughts should go is a white head labelled "your face here". It's the reason that player-characters often feel a bit empty, quiet or sometimes – in a game that involves a lot of shooting – puzzlingly brutal.

Columnist and composer Stephen Poole says "games suffer from cinema envy" – they think they should be Hollywood epics, when actually the enjoyment of play is enough. But I was struck by an excellent point by author Trevor Byrne: "When kids are playing cops and robbers, are they playing a game, or are they telling a story?" The obvious answer is that somehow, they're seamlessly doing both.

Some of the best game stories I've taken part in have been tabletop role-playing games where, as in cops and robbers, you collaboratively create a story with the other players. So do games tell us stories, or should they be giving us a place to create stories of our own? Like most dichotomies, the answer is probably: both.