Team Fortress 2 is a team-based online game created by Valve. The game itself has a very limited narrative, however in an interesting move, Valve has given the characters and universe of TF2 a fairly detailed history and personality. They have achieved this through the production of a range of web-comics and animated short films (such as the one embedded below).
I think it’s pretty interesting to consider how and why Valve may have done this, seeing as the core gameplay of TF2 relies very little on any understanding of the characters or situations – it basically boils down to ‘shoot the enemies and complete the objectives’. I think it was largely a marketing move, to create a detailed world through which new products could be sold – however it could have also started out as an experiment, to see how fans would react to the injection of a narrative into a non-narrative game.
Anyways, give ‘Expiration Date’ a watch. Just like all of Valve’s productions it’s actually a really well written and polished piece of work.