[Gubbi]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

In fact, what I really miss is the old days when games were games and didn't try to be something else. these days it seems everyone is trying to create a Hollywood busting cinematic story experience.

QFT.

More and more games with un-ending cut scenes with inane dialogue. *Hate* it !

Game producers with wanne-be-movie-director aspirations should just quit, - or take a page from games like the original Halflife where the story were told through the gameplay/action.

Cheers

[Arwin]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

In fact, what I really miss is the old days when games were games and didn't try to be something else. these days it seems everyone is trying to create a Hollywood busting cinematic story experience. There's nothing wrong with cinematic experiences and some of the best games ever have gone that route. But we don't also have just games to play.

Is that really true though? I don't really agree, personally, unless you are saying that there aren't enough AAA titles that focus on just gameplay. But I think many wouldn't consider titles AAA because they lack 'production values' when they don't have a significant story arc.

Many times when imho a great game is released but story is, well, budgetted seriously there are big complaints, even when totally skippable (e.g. MotorStorm 3).

For me personally most genres that I like to play benefit from having a good story that drives me forward and immerses me into the gameplay. I'm not 100% sure I can see your criticism. What bothers me more than most things, is that the story telling is often still so incredibly bad. People still buy those games though, so my guess would be that most of that stuff is not that important to many. When games offer more story telling than gameplay, that may also be because some games actually want to target people who miss the days of the mostly story driven adventure games. I actually applaud this movement, but then greatly deplore that so few, especially in the West, seem capable of creating something that my wife could play, without obligatory first person shooting sections.

How many games are getting shown these days where the developers presenting them smile and boatst, "this is so much fun"? It's like Saturday Morning cartoon creators have all turned their hands to creating feature-length Cannes-winning stories and ditched the notion of fun entirely. PlayStation's mashup game, whatever it's called, comes to light as one that's about story-less fun, but it's with characters mostly based in story-driven 'gritty' games.

Cannes winning stories ... that will be the day! And All Stars, or whatever, contains characters such as Fat Princess, the guy from Twisted Metal, Sly Cooper. And Kratos, well, for me, in his own way, he's all about fun and games if you ask me. So of those five characters that were being played, it didn't seem that bad.

In fact, that's one of the big reasons why I enjoy Sony - they still cover a big, diverse range of gaming experiences. I'm glad that we're reaching the end of the generation, because I've wanted to see more good 'kiddy' games for a while now.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Arwin

Is that really true though? I don't really agree, personally, unless you are saying that there aren't enough AAA titles that focus on just gameplay. But I think many wouldn't consider titles AAA because they lack 'production values' when they don't have a significant story arc.

Perhaps the issue is the whole notion of AAA? We hear that being bandied around a lot. What about AA games, and A, and B and C rated games? Looking back at what I played in Olden Days, games like Tekken had silly player stories but was just a bunch of fights. Driver was great, but the story was weak and ignorable - we just loved the gameplay. Baldur's Gate: DA had a story but just to take you from point to point. The game wasn't sold on its incredible motion capture and realistic acting. Crash Team Racing was just a Mario Kart clone. It was sold on its gameplay. Metal Gear Solid was spent mostly doing the VR training. I don't recall if I ever completed the story. I know I didn't care about it! R-type, going back further, was just a game - shoot baddies. Almost everything on 16 bit was just a game. A challenge to be beaten, rather than a story to be told.

Since the earliest days of gaming, story didn't come into it because the tech couldn't handle it. But that was a Good Thing, because gaming is about playing games, and not watching/partaking in movies. I have no complaints with movie-type games, but I do lament the disappearing sense of gaming for the fun of playing games. I don't recall any board-game that was story led, or any game played as kids that followed a divergent story arc.

Many times when imho a great game is released but story is, well, budgetted seriously there are big complaints, even when totally skippable (e.g. MotorStorm 3).

Why did MotorStorm 3 bother with a story? Why not just have races?

For me personally most genres that I like to play benefit from having a good story that drives me forward and immerses me into the gameplay. I'm not 100% sure I can see your criticism.

The criticism is that no-one seems to be making games based on the fun of the gameplay. The emphasis is always on realism and story. It feels like the games industry is trying to make interactive movies rather than just games. LBP's reveal was awesome because it was just a game, obviously. It was all about play.

I want a gaming company to stand up one E3 and showcase a reel of titles published by how fun they'll be. At least, a good amount of fun to balance out the gritty, hardcore, deep entertainment. That's why I find myself more attracted to download titles. Dragon's Dogma is trying to get me to buy it based on feedback in the game's thread, because it sounds like fun experimenting with battles. No-one's selling it to me on the quality of its facial rigging or plot scripted by some famous Hollwood writer!

And All Stars, or whatever, contains characters such as Fat Princess, the guy from Twisted Metal, Sly Cooper. And Kratos, well, for me, in his own way, he's all about fun and games if you ask me. So of those five characters that were being played, it didn't seem that bad.

Hmmm. Fat Princess is obviosuly 'fun', as is Sly. And PaRappa. Sweet-tooth is a bit hardcore as a psycho, but I'll grant the old Twisted Metal game was a game about hacing fun and not story driven, epic experiences. Kratos is similar. Radec is from an Epic shooter. Nte and Big Daddy are from AAA games. Maybe I'm being unfair on this game - it has an okay balance.

In fact, that's one of the big reasons why I enjoy Sony - they still cover a big, diverse range of gaming experiences. I'm glad that we're reaching the end of the generation, because I've wanted to see more good 'kiddy' games for a while now.

What 'it's just fun' games are on your radar? LBP Karting is clearly like that, as is All Stars. I can't think of any more I know, where it's just about the game. Perhaps a further criticism I have is that the games created for simple fun, like Fat Princess, turned out not to be too good due to design faults and/or bugs. Most of those games focus on online play which is fraught with problems, and have significant 'get repeatedly trashed until you learn how to play' issues. Games with bots you can play solo or coop solve that but are few and far between.

Ooo, a good example of how fun is becoming less important in gaming is Starhawk. The solo campaign in that is story led. It leads the player through scenarios and controls what they can do and when to some degree. A more fun approach to their gameplay mechanic would have been allowing the building of forts and strategies in open maps. Even the Prospector coop mode isn't as fun in design as it should be because of the crazy time contraints between rounds. We enjoy it most when we can cheat and leave a guy left, farm energy, and build our base up. If it was me designing that game, I'd have maps where you could set starting amount of energy, enemy types, building limits, and just set up challenges. I think exploration and challenge solving are the key elements to playing games. Portal 2 was exactly that and was celebrated as a result.

All in all, it feels like the childish sense of fun that gaming had is in the decline. There was a Eurogamer article on Kinect that highlighted how kids can have fun with anything, just by exploring. I don't feel anyone's bringing that to gaming, prefering instead to sink their money into big budget production values.

[SedentaryJourney]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Since the earliest days of gaming, story didn't come into it because the tech couldn't handle it. But that was a Good Thing, because gaming is about playing games, and not watching/partaking in movies. I have no complaints with movie-type games, but I do lament the disappearing sense of gaming for the fun of playing games. I don't recall any board-game that was story led, or any game played as kids that followed a divergent story arc.

Narrative is part of gaming, not something disparate that insinuated itself upon it. Many early videogames were simply interactive fiction because the primitive technology meant having to rely on text to construct the game world. The Atari and NES were cinematic in comparison. Even board games like Battleship, Risk, or even Snakes and Ladders employ simple narrative concepts that give the rules and actions some meaningful context.

I won't say narrative is absolutely necessary for gaming because I'm sure you could come up with an example of a game that's completely abstract with arbitrary rules that aren't sourced from a narrative, card games being a good one, but it's such a common feature in gaming that I think it should be accepted as generally part of the phenomenon.

I do agree that most games have heavy handed or intrusive narrative, but that's a matter of taste.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by SedentaryJourney

Narrative is part of gaming...

I disagree. Non-computer gaming has zero narrative. Battleships and snakes-and-ladders don't have any story. It's just a direct competition against rules, dressed up with a theme. That's not narrative. Obviously, a bit of story to string levels together makes a more cohesive experience than random levels, but developers didn't used to worry so much about creating story experiences in the past.

[Nesh]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

I disagree. Non-computer gaming has zero narrative. Battleships and snakes-and-ladders don't have any story. It's just a direct competition against rules, dressed up with a theme. That's not narrative. Obviously, a bit of story to string levels together makes a more cohesive experience than random levels, but developers didn't used to worry so much about creating story experiences in the past.

I think its obvious he was refering to video-gaming
Edit: nope he wasnt

I think though that as videogames evolved people demand good narrative. Its similar to why with better graphics we need also the appropriate animation and physics to accompany the visuals otherwise the sense of believability is greatly reduced. Bad physics (or its absebce), robotic animation, or bad facial expressions stick out like a sore thump nowadays. Similarly story concepts evolved too. People want a good narration and plot to accompany sime types of games.

Some games have good narrative and plot that blend well with ths game as a strong point. When these are basic, badly executed, non cohesive that exist just to shoot stuff or in other occasions intrusive its annoying and destroy the believability of the game world.

[Arwin]

Since the earliest days of gaming, story didn't come into it because the tech couldn't handle it.

Almost all the games you mention are still around with new versions releasing even this year, and many variations also don't really feature much of a story.

Why did MotorStorm 3 bother with a story? Why not just have races?

They basically did just that in the first two. The story wasn't much more than just cartoon pictures, and what they generally achieve is that loading times become transparant. So maybe that's the root of all your frustration - load-times this gen are too big.

Ooo, a good example of how fun is becoming less important in gaming is Starhawk. The solo campaign in that is story led. It leads the player through scenarios and controls what they can do and when to some degree.

I was just going to say that the single player is just a skippable tutorial for the multiplayer? The story is just a way of presenting that tutorial. Keeping in mind that Warhawk was multiplayer only, and that people complained back then that there was no single player ...

If it was me designing that game, I'd have maps where you could set starting amount of energy, enemy types, building limits, and just set up challenges. I think exploration and challenge solving are the key elements to playing games. Portal 2 was exactly that and was celebrated as a result.

I think that in general, the move towards being able to design your own level in games is a good move towards that ideal. I think in general, it should be good for developers to create a mode where you can set the parameters whatever way you like anyway, just for testing and designing purposes.

All in all, it feels like the childish sense of fun that gaming had is in the decline. There was a Eurogamer article on Kinect that highlighted how kids can have fun with anything, just by exploring. I don't feel anyone's bringing that to gaming, prefering instead to sink their money into big budget production values.

I do think that money could sometimes be better spent elsewhere. Personally in something like a first person shooter or Uncharted, I really enjoy a decent story and acting. I agree that many times it is better told as part of the experience.

I do however think that there are plenty of gameplay games. There should be more, agreed, but they are there. These are the Joe Dangers / Trial HDs, Super Stardusts/Geometry Wars and so on type of games. There are quite a lot of them.

Perhaps a more general issue is that designing a new gameplay experience has been comparatively harder than giving the same gameplay experience a new story / skin. We saw a lot of reskinning back when story was a smaller part of the package, and the few gameplay innovations we see are quickly copied by others.

Mind you, you don't have a Move controller, and for sheer gameplay innovation, that has been the highlight of this generation, to the point that many genre's I don't want to play anymore without it. So I definitely agree that it is an important area of innovation and focus. Same reason why Nintendo games work - I don't think there are many of those that people buy for the story.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Arwin

I was just going to say that the single player is just a skippable tutorial for the multiplayer? The story is just a way of presenting that tutorial. Keeping in mind that Warhawk was multiplayer only, and that people complained back then that there was no single player ...

Single player was a great addition as a tutorial, much needed, but it was also presented as a story rather than a set of more flexible training programs. I'd have prefered the option to set up local servers with bots than a story-driven game that limits what you can experiement with. The story for Starhawk is basically unnecessary. No-one bought the game for it's story. Why waste time creating it then?

I do however think that there are plenty of gameplay games. There should be more, agreed, but they are there. These are the Joe Dangers / Trial HDs, Super Stardusts/Geometry Wars and so on type of games. There are quite a lot of them.

As download titles, which I said is where I'm getting most of my gaming these days. Why isn't any console company championing the simple game experience (maybe Nitendo are the best here)? Why aren't fun titles headlining shows presentations? All the emphasis is on AAA story-led epics. Publishers seem to be encouraged to chase big-budget blockbusters rather than entertaining games. And that seems to be why developers are going indie and getting back to just creating games. Which end up being smaller download titles, rather than having large investment to make Epic Funness.

[Prophecy2k]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Single player was a great addition as a tutorial, much needed, but it was also presented as a story rather than a set of more flexible training programs. I'd have prefered the option to set up local servers with bots than a story-driven game that limits what you can experiement with. The story for Starhawk is basically unnecessary. No-one bought the game for it's story. Why waste time creating it then?

As download titles, which I said is where I'm getting most of my gaming these days. Why isn't any console company championing the simple game experience (maybe Nitendo are the best here)? Why aren't fun titles headlining shows presentations? All the emphasis is on AAA story-led epics. Publishers seem to be encouraged to chase big-budget blockbusters rather than entertaining games. And that seems to be why developers are going indie and getting back to just creating games. Which end up being smaller download titles, rather than having large investment to make Epic Funness.

Perhaps because "gamey" games don't need big budgets o make them in the first place. There are many different types of games available on consoles, and I would argue that the existence of the online platforms show that consoles do indeed put emphasis on the less story-driven, more "gamey"-type experiences.

Big budgets for AAA story driven epics are a necessity, as those ballooning budgets go into the graphics, art assets, voice acting and orchestral scores etc. All these things are developed and heavily invested in to help the player to feel more immersed in the game world and thus more able to believe the story or narrative being put forth.

Simple games don't need all that stuff because the emphasis is purely on "fun", and none of these things will significantly increase the "fun-ness" of those games to make them sell more or be more appealing to the avergae gamer. Fun games are no frills because they sell well without the multi-million dollar development and marketing investments that story-driven games NEED. It's simply a business risk thing. Thus these more simple game are more prevalent and more suited to download platforms & handhelds because it's the most cost effective way to distribute those games.

There are loads of non-story driven simple games though. On consoles, handhelds, phones & PC. Accessible to all on almost any device they own. I can't understand why anyone would try to say that we need more of them, or that most games are becoming too story-driven. That's nonesense. It's simply not true.

What does it even matter how the games are distributed too? Why would you discount downloadable games because of how you buy them and their cost?

Gaming is probably as diverse in terms of different styles and genres of games available now than ever before. The only clinch is that its all spread across many platforms and not a single one. Even then it's not a really major issue.

AAA console gaming has simply become more focussed, true. But the download platforms do cater to most other game-type and genre needs. As well as PC.

We don't need less story driven games at all.

Plus, these person rants that pervade the internet also seem to miss the point that many other people actually enjoy stories and narratives in their games. I personally have no problem with them.

P.S. Portal 2 was a story driven game. And for the most part was lauded for its story-telling, characters and atmosphere. As a puzzle game it was actually very tired and extremely repetitve imho. Not at all a game that stands as a pinnacle of exploratory goodness and non-story driven gameplay.

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by SedentaryJourney

Narrative is part of gaming, not something disparate that insinuated itself upon it. Many early videogames were simply interactive fiction because the primitive technology meant having to rely on text to construct the game world. The Atari and NES were cinematic in comparison. Even board games like Battleship, Risk, or even Snakes and Ladders employ simple narrative concepts that give the rules and actions some meaningful context.

I won't say narrative is absolutely necessary for gaming because I'm sure you could come up with an example of a game that's completely abstract with arbitrary rules that aren't sourced from a narrative, card games being a good one, but it's such a common feature in gaming that I think it should be accepted as generally part of the phenomenon.

I do agree that most games have heavy handed or intrusive narrative, but that's a matter of taste.

Not really. How much story was there in Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Defender, Donkey Kong, Sinistar, etc.

Even something like Mario Bros. (original), Golden Axe, Ghost N Goblins etc. just had a tacked on story. Doom and Quake had very little in the way of a story.

Sure, games have gradually incorporated more and more story driven elements. But it was never intrinsic to video gaming. Most of the video games on the Atari 2600 had no story attached at all, and the few that did just have a light veneer. On the NES, most of the story and plot driven games were RPGs.

And if you fast forward to the present what is one thing lacking in most of the best selling game franchises (Halo, COD, etc.)? A robust storyline. Gameplay rules over storytelling.

Myself, I love proper CG cinematics ala. Blizzard games which advance a storyline to progress gameplay but doesn't actually affect the gameplay. I even like it when the storyline is part of the gameplay ala. Half-Life as you can choose to ignore most of it if you choose.

I hate it when it's done like Uncharted, however. Where it pulls you out of the game.

I agree with Shifty. Action games seem to be focusing less and less on actual gameplay and more and more on storytelling and a "movie like" experience. That's time, money and developement effort that could have been spent on the gameplay.

There's a few genre's that are almost dependant on storyline, however. Adventure games and RPGs. But even then, some of the first CRPGs had little to no storyline. The first Wizardry Trilogy for example. Or Rogue. Even Dungeon Master, which had a fairly faithful recreation and release recently in the form of The Legend of Grimrock. Which by the way far exceeded its developer's most optimistic sales expextations. They recouped all developement costs and made a profit within the first week of it going on sale. Pretty good for featuring just a bare shell of a storyline which wasn't even needed.

Some of the best selling games on computers have no story as well. Sid Meier's Civilization series, for example.

Storylines are nice, but they can be really annoying if they get in the way of gameplay as appears to happen more and more frequently.

Regards,
SB

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Storylines are nice, but they can be really annoying if they get in the way of gameplay as appears to happen more and more frequently.

Regards,
SB

See, that is where the two of us differ. The first PC game I really got into was Dune 2, because it had a storyline. For me, every time the gameplay gets in the way of the story (like making me do the same level over and over because I suck at twitch skills) it annoys me. Often enough for me to put down the game and never pick it up again.

[Scott_Arm]

Originally Posted by bkilian

See, that is where the two of us differ. The first PC game I really got into was Dune 2, because it had a storyline. For me, every time the gameplay gets in the way of the story (like making me do the same level over and over because I suck at twitch skills) it annoys me. Often enough for me to put down the game and never pick it up again.

This is exactly why there is no "correct" formula for a game, and console makers need huge install bases and large game libraries if they want to make money. Each and every game only attracts a small subset of the total gaming population.

[Arwin]

There were definitely more games back int he day that had all their story in text. But there were also games that were all story, like text adventures, that while they later got graphics added to them, they started to suck more imho as the inputs became ever more limiting - I hated going from free text typing to mouse clicking everything, to mouse clicking blinking stuff. That's how adventure games died. I'd hate Microsoft for making me buy Kinect for voice controls when they could be done with a simple Microphone, but if they'd get Al Lowe to make a remake of Leisure Suit Larry with voice controls and it would only work with Kinect, I'd consider getting it just to support that. I could live with an iPad or Vita version of something like that as well, even if I could just type my commands / lines in freely again. Text interfacing could be so much better these days than it was back then, and back then it could already be pretty exciting to interface freely with the game and see what the game would respond to and how.

I also remember that Warhead was a great integration of a powerful story and gameplay. There was a very strongly directed narrative, but certainly a big part of that was a natural integration of narrative and gameplay. Mission structures with briefings and de-briefings lend themselves to that setup pretty naturally. I definitely also like how Metal Gear did it - in fact, I liked the story in those games better than the gameplay itself, even though the gameplay was pretty good anyway (loved the boat in the rain mission, even if I never actually finished it, I messed up when I got the real game and played as Raiden right away). I loved also the strong characters and their introduction into the game. Final Fantasy had this very strongly for me too. VII and VIII I liked as adventure games with cool story hints and powerful cinematics that were something to look forward to and keep you going, although for me I never connected well enough with the gameplay to persevere very far into the game, even if I tried most of them since VII. Ironically I really liked XII more in terms of gameplay than story, thought that was wonderful, but it was too difficult for me.

But definitely, games and narratives don't always need each other, and they can get in the way of each other as well very easily. When they match up well, though, some great experiences can be had. I remember for many games, I would consider a story cinematic a great reward for succeeding at progressing with gameplay.

[SedentaryJourney]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Not really. How much story was there in Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Defender, Donkey Kong, Sinistar, etc.

Even something like Mario Bros. (original), Golden Axe, Ghost N Goblins etc. just had a tacked on story. Doom and Quake had very little in the way of a story.

Fair enough, some of these are abstracted and many do not employ explicit narrative in the form of a written story. If you take a game like Battleship, the form of conflict, role of the players, and basic objectives rely on a popular narrative communicated visually by the game.

Another way to look at it is if you removed narrative from gaming completely you wouldn't have games like Frogger, which tells a story about a frog trying to cross a road during traffic. You could have a game about an object trying to cross perpendicularly to the path of other moving objects with some other stated and arbitrary rules. Some would argue that even this anti-narrative must also be a narrative because all endeavours that require a sequence of events in some context are essentially narrative.

This is going way off topic, but I read a blog post that describes not only explicit game narratives but the implicit narratives that are part of the experience of playing games.

[dlm]

Originally Posted by SedentaryJourney

Fair enough, some of these are abstracted and many do not employ explicit narrative in the form of a written story. If you take a game like Battleship, the form of conflict, role of the players, and basic objectives rely on a popular narrative communicated visually by the game.

Another way to look at it is if you removed narrative from gaming completely you wouldn't have games like Frogger, which tells a story about a frog trying to cross a road during traffic. You could have a game about an object trying to cross perpendicularly to the path of other moving objects with some other stated and arbitrary rules. Some would argue that even this anti-narrative must also be a narrative because all endeavours that require a sequence of events in some context are essentially narrative.

This is going way off topic, but I read a blog post that describes not only explicit game narratives but the implicit narratives that are part of the experience of playing games.

Thank you for making this post for me.

The notable distinction is that narrative is a framing device and is different from story. Narrative is present in almost every action we take and every piece of information or entertainment we consume.

I would actually argue that one of the biggest problems with a lot of games is that their story is not based on a strong narrative. Narrative isn't about including an encyclopedia of data about your universe in your game (I'm looking at you, Mass Effect). It's about having a world and characters based on a consistent set of characteristics with rational motivations.

Where you see this the most is in level design. Frequently the spaces that you're fighting in simply don't make sense. "Why is this hallway here? Why am I fighting through it?" More often the answer is, "Because it's between here and there" and handwaves why I didn't just drop in to the level closer to "there" in the first place.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by SedentaryJourney

Fair enough, some of these are abstracted and many do not employ explicit narrative in the form of a written story. If you take a game like Battleship, the form of conflict, role of the players, and basic objectives rely on a popular narrative communicated visually by the game.

That's just theme though, in my terminology. Games are typically based in what we know. Once you've set the scene, the story aspect can be forgotten and the players left to play the game.

This is going way off topic, but I read a blog post that describes not only explicit game narratives but the implicit narratives that are part of the experience of playing games.

If the page would load, I'd read it.

Originally Posted by dlm

The notable distinction is that narrative is a framing device and is different from story. Narrative is present in almost every action we take and every piece of information or entertainment we consume.

I've not heard that definition before, so we're hearing different semantics friom each others arguments.

Originally Posted by Arwin

But definitely, games and narratives don't always need each other...

Right, but I feel these days developers are of the impresion that they need story and put it in when it's not warranted and they could do without. Even to the point that it provides less gameplay.

I'm not against believable worlds for those reading 'narrative' as different to 'story' in my argument! I'm against an excess of stories where they aren't needed. eg. Imagine if football games no longer allowed you to play out a season, but instead turned into a sports soap-opera where you have to play a particular footballer and had to go through particular experiences and certain games with forced losses and the like. you're running around in Madden/FIFA and then your player suffer a scripted injury and then you can't play any matches until you solve a load of minigames or dialogue trees to their right ends. As one game, like Heavy Rain, an interactive story, that may be a great title. But if all football games went that way and you coudln't just jump in and play matches, the genre would be destroyed. Sports are suitably understand that no-one would force the genre into a story-driven package, but other games are being forced into that style. At least, all the attention is on games in that mould.

We don't see that in download titles, but the download space doesn't have the backing, publicity, or investment of the disc space. So top developers are being discouraged from pure gameplay and pushed towards story experiences, pushing up the costs and adding complexities and giving them more room to get things wrong ("Great gameplay but lousy story and acting" instead of just "great game.")

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Scott_Arm

This is exactly why there is no "correct" formula for a game...

Right. I think this kinda sums it up. Each game needs its own forumla, like baked goods. Trouble is, lots of games these days, seems to me, are following the bread (story) formula which means less cakes (just games) are getting made, or cakes are being made to a slightly bready recipe and aren't as nice. (Bread and cakes are both good and we need them all!)

Better gameplay can be had in some cases when the story is just there to provide a narrative explanation for the game universe. eg. Starhawk only needs the "space cowboy blue-gold rush" explanation. The addition of the story to the solo training experience was the wrong focus IMO, as the solo fun could have been much better with just a load of parameters and experiences to play with. The decision by the developers to create this story-driven game mode was the wrong one, but was led by a current gaming culture that is trying to add more and more explicit story to games.

Game makers shouldn't be afraid to just make games. I feel like they see games for the sake of fun as immature, and story-driven games give the industry maturity and credibility with the larger populace. Download titles, on handhelds especially, show everyone enjoys simple fun, so game makers can go back to picking their targets with more focus, and not feeling like every game has to have at least a 2.5D cartoon plot exposition between linear levels.

[Gubbi]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Not really. How much story was there in Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Defender, Donkey Kong, Sinistar, etc.

For Asteroids, Defender and Donkey Kong the narrative is implied, instead of being fleshed out.

In Asteroids, you're not a random blob shooting other random blobs. You're a spaceship shooting Asteroids; You're Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck saving the world from giant space rocks.

In Defender you're saving the poor colonists from an alien invasion.

In Donkey Kong you're saving the love of your life from a giant beast (classic King Kong story)

There is story there, but it isn't intrusive. You can use your imagination to fill in the blanks or completely ignore it.

That, IMO, is good game story telling. Of course, the gameplay mechanics themselves are strong with these titles.

Another example is Rez. You start out as a weird wireframe thingy, shooting other wireframe thingys, you don't know your purpose. It isn't until towards the end you realize you're an anti-virus program cleaning up a mainframe,

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Myself, I love proper CG cinematics ala. Blizzard games which advance a storyline to progress gameplay but doesn't actually affect the gameplay. I even like it when the storyline is part of the gameplay ala. Half-Life as you can choose to ignore most of it if you choose.

I hate it when it's done like Uncharted, however. Where it pulls you out of the game.

The strength of games as a media is the involvement it requires, the gamer is part of the story instead of a voyeur (as in movies). Everything that removes your ability to participate, lessens the experience, IMO. Very few cutscenes add to the experience in modern games. It doesn't help that the stories often seems to be written by twelve year olds (Modern Warfare 2, all of Gears of war, Lost Planet etc).

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

I agree with Shifty. Action games seem to be focusing less and less on actual gameplay and more and more on storytelling and a "movie like" experience. That's time, money and developement effort that could have been spent on the gameplay.

Never mind developer time, it removes the gamer's time from playing the game.

I love a solid story in games, but it has to be experienced, not told.

Cheers

[Rodéric]

Having a nice setting to anchor action and to give an atmosphere is one thing, having a story impacting gameplay (that is any cinematic since they remove control from you and you become passive, ie no more gameplay at that time) is less desirable.

Note that in Portal, the story is told while you are playing, not instead of you playing.

Games don't need a story or a world, but it might improve them.

But then don't forget people like different things, I can't stand modern games that are more like broken movies in which I have to push a button to continue to watch, and I can't stand Diablo 3 because to me it's just an e-penis/random thingy addiction either.

I'd also like to note that popular Indy games are mostly gameplay based. (Usually with a strong gfx style to make them stand out and easier to sell.)


--note--
I fixed a number of quote tags guys, please be more careful ;p

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Gubbi

For Asteroids, Defender and Donkey Kong the narrative is implied, instead of being fleshed out.

I think you'll find Silent-Buddha was using the term story as I was, meaning an explicit tale being told. Obviously a background to the game universe is necessary, so that sort of narrative exists in all games (except random blob games). that sort of narrative also just happens without the devs needing to think about it. "Let's have planes fly around shooting each other." "Let's have this little blob dude who's hopping from platform to platform collecting junk." We can read narrative into those without a deliberate narrative ever being a part of the game design and without the game ever leading to a resolution or explanation of the narrative.

[jonabbey]

David Jaffe has been on this topic for awhile now. Calling All Cars! was a deliberate attempt to make a completely mechanics focused game, and it was a lot of fun. Twisted Metal on PS3 has a tiny little bit of story, but the game is all game.

Coincidentally, neither game did all that great in the market, as far as I know. ;-/

LBP, PixelJunk Monsters, Settlers of Catan, even the downloadable Sudoko game on PSN get a lot of my time because they are pure games, but they seem to be harder to sell to the huge mass market.

[Shifty Geezer]

Are they though? LBP has done very well, but in terms of simple fun, it's play mechanics are a turn-off for many. The emphasis was right, but the execution wasn't, IMO. Calling All Cars was too chaotic as well. If you look at Nintendo's catalogue, a lot focuses on gameplay. In fact how many Uncharted-style story driven game has Nintendo produced? I associate them completely with gameplay-focussed titles, which makes sense seeing as they are evolved from a toy manufacturer.

Looking at it another way, would COD:MW2 have sold any less if there wasn't a solo campaign? Iguess that question is unanswerable, but if it could be proven, the developers could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort and in future may want to simplify their game ideas.

[fearsomepirate]

I think what's important is to understand there are many ways to be entertained which we all put under the heading of "game," simply because there are many different people who have different tastes in entertainment. To stick entirely to recent games, Angry Birds, Just Dance, and Wii Fit did just fine without a story at all, or at least not a story anyone notices. Forza and Madden do just fine with more of a "coherent setting" than a "story." Borderlands, Bioshock, and Dead Space did just fine with only a skeleton of an in-game narrative. Call of Duty (I seem to recall reading that around a third of buyers never play online, and those sales alone would still make it a very successful game) and Uncharted did just fine as a "playable action movies." Story-heavy RPGs like Mass Effect have done very well. Story-light RPGs like Diablo 3 have done very well. Heavy Rain actually did quite well as a "choose your own adventure movie."

The important thing isn't whether you've got a story in your game or not. The important thing is whether you're entertaining your audience.

[pc999]

Games should be about gaming and gameplay not about seing the GPU doing stuff.

Gaming is about actions, making decisions, getting better over time/practice, discovery new things that you can do with extra skills, learning levels and its secrets, making strategies, inventing solutions and dieing many times.

That is true if you are playing Mario, CS, Deus Ex, Portal, StarCraft... Not so much about many recent AAA games.

Dont take me wrong I like a nice story, but it should blend well like Portal or Metroid Prime.

[Rodéric]

Originally Posted by pc999

Gaming is about actions, making decisions, getting better over time/practice, discovery new things that you can do with extra skills, learning levels and its secrets, making strategies, inventing solutions and dieing many times.

I quite like that explanation.