Stanford Conference Puts Games Under Spotlight

Thanks to GameSpot for its pair of articles discussing initial proceedings of a day-long Stanford-hosted symposium on games, and further discussions on storytelling in games from the same event. Highlights included Kevin O'Hara of Sony Online Entertainment discussing "encouraging players to create the content for the game themselves" in Star Wars Galaxies, and Will Wright of Maxis commenting, with relation to storytelling in games: "I've never really wanted to tell a story in a game", with Sheldon Pacotti, writer on Deus Ex and its sequel, arguing "...a good game lets players create their own stories."

Comments

Re:There are two different concepts getting mixed.

[darkmayo]

"but would people be as obsessed with GTA3/Vice City if they had no story to speak of?
"

Probably not so much, behind the story is a great gameplay but the gameplay is molded by the story. If there was no story line then I could see the gameplay of GTA moving from a single player game to a multiplayer game. Without the story you take away the main reason for conflict so the developers would have to look elsewhere for competition/conflict which would be other players.