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."

Comments

It's not that important.

[mashuren]

Good gameplay can save a game with a terrible story. But a good story can't save a game with terrible gameplay.

Re:It's not that important.

[Gulthek]

But a good story can't save a game with terrible gameplay.

Counterexample: Interactive Fiction (Infocom) games. Of course I don't think their gameplay is "terrible", but it is certainly lackluster for most people when compared with graphical games.

Re:It's not that important.

[Sentry21]

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.

It's really simple.

[truthsearch]

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.

If stories mattered in games

[hey!]

Wouldn't they hire great known writers to create game-friendly stories, instead of cobbling some kind of nonsensical mishmash together themselves?

And I don't count movie adaptions, because you already know how the story ends.

Re:If stories mattered in games

[joystickgenie]

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.

Gameplay first. Story second

[digitrev]

Like what mash said, you need good gameplay. Without it, you have nothing. I would much rather play a 2 hour game with great gameplay and no story, than a 5 hour game with piss-poor gameplay and an amazing story. Half the time I end up skipping the story anyways. I want to play, not watch a damn movie or read a book.

Go to the Forge

[Valdrax]

The Forge is a website dedicated to trying to create indy, table-top RPG games. It was created by the author of the indy RPG Sorceror who wrote an essay that defined three broad different player agendas for playing a game: Simulationism, Narrativsim, and Gamism.

Roughly defined:
Simulationism is about experiencing or exploring a setting, situation, character, etc.
Narrativism is about story.
Gamism is about defeating challenges.

Most good games contain elements of all three, but the best focus on one or two areas to deeply satisfy a kind of gamer.

All this guy is doing is what many game snobs have done time and time again before -- stating that one of these three play style is The One True Style and demanding that everyone else create games that satisfy his gaming goals. I personally enjoy the very kinds of games that he is bashing the most and find the open-ended exploration RPG to be boring and pointless. That doesn't mean that I think they shouldn't be made, though -- unlike him.

In other words, let's just leave this guy to his own elitist irrelevance, move on, and create games that satisfy different players.

When's the last time

[Astarica]

You heard anybody recognized in a game for writing the story? Sure, the designers get recognized, but even if they wrote the story, they do more than just that.

Games have the disadvantage in that a poorly designed system constantly undoes any sense of immersion. If I wrote: "The heroes fought against the supreme evil, and it was a hard battle but they won", you can at least believe that this thing I wrote about is supposed to be hard. If you act it out in a movie, even with pretty bad acting it's not hard to make a reasonable pass that this is supposed to be a hard battle. But how can you possibly take something seriously if you demolish the supreme evil in 3 hits? It's a lost art to balance game remotely as difficult as what your story claims to be. In theory, the final battle in any game is supposed to be the climatic one, and the most difficult one which is why victory has meaning. But there are plenty of games where the last battle isn't remotely the hardest one, not even counting super extra hard gimmick bosses.

Stories matter in Games...

[Overzeetop]

...like articles matter in porno mags.

Re:Stories matter in Games...

[ichigo 2.0]

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important." - John Carmack, iD Software

And we all know how fun his games are...

Not always...

[kabocox]

I hated the story in FFX, but it was an excellent game besides the story or the characters of Wakka, Yuna, or Tidus. I found FFX fun inspite of the story not because of it. I'd almost say the same thing about KH2. I love playing KH2 and the actual game playing excellent, but the story isn't something that I really cared about.

I'd like to see Square make a game that wasn't a super environmentalist the world will end because the life blood of the planet is running out because of our single evil corporation/empire. I've been kinda of sick of that plot thread for awhile. I'd actually like to see the reverse that the evil Mana/heart of the world is flourishing creating monsters and its your group's task to stop/kill off the evil heart of the world so that humans can continue to live peacefully in a hightech civilization.

Stories matter to me.

[EnsilZah]

There are two kinds of games i like to play, Story based and Skill based.
Story based ones are like a good book or a movie, games like Fallout, Homeworld, The Dig, Half Life 2 to a lesser extent.
I don't really mind that the gameplay is pretty linear.
Skill based ones are games like HL2DM or Warcraft 3 on battlenet.
The fun i get out of those is that i learn how to beat other people.

Now if you look at a game like Oblivion, which i think was rather boring, you have a huge world with lots of side quests, lots of eyecandy, but when you get down to every element it's rather simple and uninspired.

I think that game makers shouldn't try too hard to make games seem nonlinear because they eventually will be anyway, only crappier.

Stories DO Matter

[TooMuchEspressoGuy]

Think about it... how many games do you know of that have been made in the past few years that don't have a story? There's a handful of puzzlers, true, but the number of those pale in comparison to the myriad FPS's, RPGs, strategy games, etc. being released every year.

And what do they all have in commin? They have a story.

Everything these days - down to the deep-engrossing plot of Farenheit/Indigo Prophecy to the spiritual journey of Prey - has a story. Sports games have a story; see the "career mode" that most have. Open-ended games like GTA3 and Oblivion have a story, though it's skippable. Heck, even the "gameplay-based" games released for major consoles these days have one; they may be forgettable - who really remembers the premise for Katamari Damacy? - but they're at least there to give the character, and by extension the player, some motivation. They keep us playing, to an extent, because we have a reason for playing beyond beating our high score or getting the next uber weapon.

And while some may consider them an artificial or contrived way of doing so, they aren't any more than the plot to your favorite concept album is a contrived way of keeping you listening. Sure, "Operation: Mindcrime" is good music, but would people love it as much if the music wasn't framed around a story of the dangers of fanatical devotion to an ideology? Just so, would Half-Life, Warcraft 3, or Diablo II be the same if you removed the story behind them? Sure, they'd still be fun, but there would just be something missing.

So, yes, stories are important in modern games. (Note that I added the qualifier "modern" to pre-empt the usual reply of, "but games from 1982 didn't need stories!" Yeah, and they also didn't need more than four bits per scanline.)

For me, yes. See "Marathon" vs. "Doom" and Bungie

[interactive_civilian]

Back in the early/mid-90s, when FPS were just starting to grow, everyone was all about Doom and Doom II. You know: Run around. find red key. find door. push button. next level. All while shooting anything that moved.

Then a small company called Bungie Software(now Bungie Studios, owned by Microsoft) came out with Marathon. It didn't look all that different (at a glance) to Doom (well, IMHO it looked better, and you actually had to aim your weapons with no reticle). You could still shoot anything that moved, even civilians with no consequences (it wasn't until Marathon 2 that the NPCs started shooting back if you killed too many of them). However, suddenly you were immersed in this incredibly awesome, intricate story. IMnsHO, it had one of the best balances of gameplay and story and actually made the game really worth playing and replaying(the Doom games were great for stress relief, but not much more).

I wasn't much of a gamer then, and still am not one (being a Mac user has its drawbacks), but that set the standard for gaming for me. Give me a good story AND good gameplay and I will buy your game. I have and still do follow Bungie, even after Microsoft bought them, becuase they have always focused on excellent gameplay combined with an interesting story, and usually excellent replayability. The Marathon series had both, the Myth series had both, Oni (though it was finished by...RockStar?) had it, Halo had it, Halo 2 had it (though not quite the replayability of Halo).

Anyway, like I said I am not much of a gamer, but, with the exception of the Dead or Alive series, story does matter (DoA is strictly for stress relief). And Bungie has done admirably in these respects.

Battletech/Mechwarrior

[BlueStrat]

There's a game series in which the story came first, with an entire universe created in board games and a sci-fi novel series. The story and timeline in the Mechwarrior games are a vital part of the game IMO.

In the Mechwarrior4: Mercenaries game, the player actually interacts with the story, in that choosing different mercenary "contracts" affects future contract/mission availability, as well as factional relationships with "employers".

Overall, I suppose the importance of the story in a game depends on the game, and what a particular player wants from a game. Someone that wants 20 minutes of FPS or arcade-type non-stop action isn't too worried about a backstory. Others that want a more involved experience will place more importance on the backstory.

Cheers!

Strat