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Jaffe Ditches Games With Stories

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the those-are-the-ones-i-like dept.

1up reports on David Jaffe's latest post to his blog, where he rails against games with stories, claiming that moving forward he'll be all about play for the sake of play. From the article: "Jaffe goes onto explain his thesis, believing many modern cinematic games don't properly play upon the raw 'real' emotions videogames can elicit: tension and release, fear and anxiety, triumph and defeat, and confusion and joy over challenges. We're wondering how Jaffe intends to make us cry without playing up the story elements, but we're interested in seeing him try. Maybe Project HL will simply feature an extended Path of Hades sequence ripped from God of War. I simply loved climbing those spiked poles for over an hour."

2 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. What about dynamically generated stories? by spun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone who has GMed a RL RPG should know about the 36 plots, and anyone familiar with drama should know about Aristotle's Poetics , which outlines the science of drama: plot, tension, characterization, all the way down to things like color, shape, harmony, and rhythm. We understand all that is necessary to dynamically generate interesting story lines which raise and release dramatic tension. Done by a computer, this could be customized to create stories the individual player finds interesting. Brenda Laurel did some intersting work in this field with her game company, Purple Moon. Although it was a commercial flop, the time may now be right for her approach. She also wrote a great book on computer-human interaction, analyzing it throught the lens of Aristotalian Poetics.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  2. Stop paying attention to this guy by StocDred · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Jaffe is just dropping quasi-incendiary weblog bombs to keep his name out there. He has one of the shortest resumes in the business, but everybody bends over backwards to hear his latest "insight."

    The division between gameplay and story is a false one. You can have great games with great story, and great games with no story. Why do people feel the need to argue about this? It's not like Jaffe is suddenly going to banish all bad games forever just based on his next non-story project. More than likely he's just out researching something public domain that he can decorate in spikes and blood anyway.

    "Story games suck! My guy has tribal tattoos and bitchin' attack chains!" Yeah. I'll pay attention to Jaffe when he stops being mediocre.