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Stories in Games Matter, Right?
1up has a piece looking at what exactly David Jaffe meant when he said he was 'no longer doing story'. They examine how this ties into the Lester Bangs discussion, and hear from some other designers on where they think story falls within the realm of game design. From the article: "Warren Spector: Games are all about the player experience -- about DOING things, not about watching things or hearing about things. And that means that a narrative game has to put the player experience first and the narrative second. However, left to their own devices, most players aren't very GOOD at crafting compelling experiences -- just as most readers aren't good writers, and most moviegoers aren't great directors. And that's where story comes in."
You can make a game where there's no story at all and the player gets total freedom. That can get boring if the average player doesn't know how to create an experience or there feels like there's no point to being in the game. You can make a game where there's a strict story and the player has few options. That can get boring because the user doesn't have to think much.
So every game needs to strike a balance depending on its goals.
Developers: We can use your help.
I look at Fable as an example contrary to your assertion. Fable had good gameplay (the core was solid, anyway), but there was no reason for me to progress. I didn't care about my characters, I didn't care about the world, I didn't care about my sister or mother, or the town I grew up in. I played through the game in the hopes that there would be something redeeming at the end, and not just 'You killed the bad guy. The end.'
Fable was a disappointment in that a lot of the gameplay innovations that were promised were never delivered on, but it was such a bland game that there may as well not have been a story. It would have been just as compelling if the 'story' had just been presented as 'Go here and kill this guy', which is not far off from what they provided.
When I compare that with a game like Jade Empire, where I actually felt bad for doing bad things when I was playing evil, and felt good for doing good deeds. I read every letter of the scrolls I found, because I was truly interested in the world around me and in finding out the history of the world and who the people were that I was always hearing about. The gameplay in JE wasn't that fantastic - in fact, it was astonishingly repetetive - but I enjoyed the game immensely more than I did in Fable, because it was a compelling story that I wanted to unfold, and because I had an emotional investment in the characters and their situation.
You don't need a good story to have a good game (look at Mario or Tetris), but for certain genres, it is imperative that the developer give the player a reason to progress. If the gameplay makes up for the poor story, then fine, but I'd rather have a good story.
This is an idea that is brought up in the industry quite a bit. There is a view that people in the game industry can't be good writers and can't fit a story together and that if we hire pro writers the problem will go away.
There is a problem with that though people who write book scripts and screenplays have no idea how to write for a game. In books and screenplays the writer has complete control, the writer has complete control of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of the story, character in the story, and setting of the story. The writer has complete control over all of these things.
All of those factors can be taken away from the designer through games. Game designers do not have that luxury where and when, those aspects are completely up to the player because they have direct control over the characters actions. The what, and how is only partially in the designers control, you may know they have to do a certain action but you don't know what item or skill they are going to use to do it. The who and why can even be taken out of the designers hands at times, in the care of games where the player gets to make a custom character you can't make and references back to who the character is or why he wants anything.
Games are a unique medium where you have to try and tell a story without forcing a the player down it. Every time you define a who what where when why or how in a game the player feels like they are in less control over it. There is a balance you have to keep in games between what is defined and what is not. You have to give the player control over things at times and at other times you have to take it way. This is a balancing challenge that takes a lot of practice and understanding of the medium to work out. Just hiring a professional writer will not solve the problem telling stories in games correctly in fact it may make it harder to overcome. Games need designers who can write compelling stories. Designers have to be able to think like a programmer see like an artist and write like a professional writer while keeping in mind that they will not be in control over the final product. This is very hard to come by hence why stories in games is such a challenge.