Games generally do narratives poorly, but what do they usually do well?

Recommended Videos

Nick Cave

New member
Jan 2, 2017
33
0
0
The question is mainly meant in comparison to other mediums. And in an attempt to avoid the inevitable discussion: yes games are different from other medium and what makes something work in a game wouldn't necessarily work in any other medium, yadda yadda yadda.

Anyways, the point overall is that games (compared to other medium) tend to usually have worse sorytelling (compared to film and literature), but this seems to be the only aspect of games that is compared to other meidum. Gameplay obviously is inherent to games, but there are other aspects as well, some of which seem to be taken for granted.

Music for example, is something I feel games are generally pretty darn good at. Sure there's a few games here and there with terrible soundtracks, but generally the way music in games have evolved, it's still shone with quality. All the way from simple catchy tones from the '80s, to genuinely well composed music. It's not all brilliant, but it's actually rare to see a game with a genuinely bad soundtrack, and most I see tend to actually have good ones, so much so it's almost taken for granted.

*Artstyle and visual design*, this one I don't think is all together as strong as music, but still not all that often outright bad, or atleast for the time they were released in. There's games like Okami, Bastion, Transistor, Limbo or Journey, which look darn great even without cutting edge graphics, and with the ones that do, I can only really think of Dragon Age: Origins, Oblivion and Fallout 3 that look outright hideous despite a massive budget. Most AAA games do tend to atleast make somewhat of an effort to atleast look decent, now that the greybrown era is over.

*Costume design* is a category almost completly ignored, yet it's still one that shouldn't be completly ignored. Here there are again cases that are mostly for a gameplay reason, such as the necessity to make TF2 classes look distinct, yet there's still things to mention. Like how costumes in, say, Mirror's Edge Catalyst or Witcher 2 look pretty sweet, and Dragon Age: Origins (sorry, but the game looks like arse in several categories) looks terrible.

I don't really have an end point, but these aspects of games tend to be rarely discussed, and almost never compared in quality with other medium, so I though it'd be fun to see if someone else's given it a thought.

PS: Yes of course these thigns change from game to game, but you're still able to judge things from an overall basis.
 

Johnny Novgorod

Bebop Man
Legacy
Feb 9, 2012
19,347
4,013
118
Soundtrack is usually serviceable and that's it, most of it goes unnoticed. I don't remember the last review that drew attention to a game's soundtrack, unless it was composed by someone famous or featured chiptune music.

As for art direction and costume design... it's all pretty derivative isn't it? Don't know why you bring up Mirror's Edge as an example of costume design (black top, white pants?) but most of it you've seen already in comic books and cartoons. Same deal with art direction - most games are either a medieval fantasy or a steampunk fantasy, so most games look like each other to some degree.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
20,519
5,335
118
"Original" stories, I suppose.

Sure, we get loads of sequels, but the game's industry isn't as weighted down by the need for brand recognition as movies are right now. When's the last time you saw a summer blockbuster with the premise of Bloodborne, Horizon: Zero Dawn, or Nier: Automata? For as much as the AAA industry gets criticized for being stagnant there's still plenty of new IPs getting released. Where as movies... Yeah, good luck finding a new IP amongst all the superheroes, nostalgia grabs, and shared universes.
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

Alleged Feather-Rustler
Jun 5, 2013
6,760
0
0
Gameplay, usually. I mean at least compared to other mediums. Books don't usually have great gameplay. Oh and oral history?! Forget about it! My grandpa once tried to tell me a story about the 50s and I just kept tapping his head trying to skip the cutscene.

Oh and soundtracks. At least once or twice a console generation there's a somewhat okay soundtrack that's kinda sorta' worth listening to.
 

CaitSeith

Formely Gone Gonzo
Legacy
Jun 30, 2014
5,374
381
88
In case of games with narrative, the audience is the actor. As a player you get to act the role and be the audience at the same time. When done correctly, it gives experiences that can't be replicated easily in other mediums.
 

Nick Cave

New member
Jan 2, 2017
33
0
0
Games generally have the advantage of immersion due to the interactive element. Maybe not as relaxing as movies, but it's nice that there are enough differences to appreciate each medium on its own for what it offers.
 

Mr.Mattress

Level 2 Lumberjack
Jul 17, 2009
3,645
0
0
Silentpony said:
Gameplay, usually. I mean at least compared to other mediums. Books don't usually have great gameplay. Oh and oral history?! Forget about it! My grandpa once tried to tell me a story about the 50s and I just kept tapping his head trying to skip the cutscene.
I was about to say this: Video Games do Gameplay better then most other genres, including other kinds of Games.

Also, "Costume Design" hasn't really been a thing in Video Games since real 3D Graphics have been on the scene. "Costume Design" on most Modern Video Games would also fall under "Art style and Visual Design" because they aren't real clothes but 3D Models designed to act like clothes.
 

hermes

New member
Mar 2, 2009
3,865
0
0
Immersion
Exploration
Escapism
Non-lineal narrative

Not that some of those elements are not present in other mediums, but games handle them better than others.
 

klaynexas3

My shoes hurt
Dec 30, 2009
1,525
0
0
World building is often something that games can do extremely well without the need for many resources. All a game needs is a few lines of text in the right place and you have a war for a whole region, or a story about an explorer lost in the woods. While books and movies can have small lines that allude to massive amounts of the world around that main plot, they're very limited in what they can put in without screwing up the pacing or tone of the piece, hence why many of the bigger settings stretch across multiple mediums to allow for multiple stories to spring from one piece versus a game just having text entries in a computer or a scroll in a cave.
 

PainInTheAssInternet

The Ship Magnificent
Dec 30, 2011
826
0
0
Considering most games don't have the advantage of controlling the camera angles the audience sees or where the characters are, I'd say navigating environments. It's easier when the director controls everything (and therefore is not obligated to create anything off-camera) but when the player can go anywhere of their own free will, it becomes a real challenge. It's interesting how this is handled in games, though it becomes painfully jarring when you come up to a detailed building you cannot enter or interact with.
 

Darth Rosenberg

New member
Oct 25, 2011
1,288
0
0
Nick Cave said:
The question is mainly meant in comparison to other mediums. And in an attempt to avoid the inevitable discussion: yes games are different from other medium and what makes something work in a game wouldn't necessarily work in any other medium, yadda yadda yadda.
That is an important point to underline, though...

Anyways, the point overall is that games (compared to other medium) tend to usually have worse sorytelling (compared to film and literature)...
I'll leave it alone after this, but; define storytelling - and if you're defining it in literature and film, then those cannot explicitly translate, so a comparison is a tad redundant (though games are sometimes clearly more comparable to cinema than literature, given they are at least audio-visual mediums).

Music for example, is something I feel games are generally pretty darn good at. Sure there's a few games here and there with terrible soundtracks, but generally the way music in games have evolved, it's still shone with quality. All the way from simple catchy tones from the '80s, to genuinely well composed music. It's not all brilliant, but it's actually rare to see a game with a genuinely bad soundtrack, and most I see tend to actually have good ones, so much so it's almost taken for granted.
Eh, I disagree. I'd say both cinema and gaming tend to have an even spread of quality, and the vast majority of it is simply humdrum. I'm a big fan of the MCU, but almost all of those scores are simply functional - and I'd say the same for most of the games I end up playing.

Being linear, cinema can far better judge the pace and progression of a piece than any game that relies on player determined exploration/progression. Music can be absolutely meticulous from beginning to end in a film (e.g. Blade Runner, Heat, Assassination Of Jesse James:BtCRF), but it rarely ever can in a game.

There's a case to be made that Japanese scores, for instance, are superior to Western (which is a shame as I almost exclusively prefer Western games), but that's for another thread.

*Costume design* is a category almost completly ignored, yet it's still one that shouldn't be completly ignored. Here there are again cases that are mostly for a gameplay reason, such as the necessity to make TF2 classes look distinct, yet there's still things to mention. Like how costumes in, say, Mirror's Edge Catalyst or Witcher 2 look pretty sweet, and Dragon Age: Origins (sorry, but the game looks like arse in several categories) looks terrible.
Surely it's simply 'character design', not costume?

But yes, I'd say it's a fairly strong element of gaming, but, as ever, I'd say the general split is the same as other visual media where costume designs can be assessed; some good, some bad, most just get the job done.

The emphasis on distinguishing characters - particularly in a genre like 2D fighters - definitely serves the medium well (I think Yahtzee, despite not caring for fighters, always admired the genre for that aspect).

As for one you didn't mention? Personally, I feel gaming as a general rule uses sound better than cinema (or it's at least certainly one of gaming's strongest points). Sound can trick the mind better than the eye can, and so couple the effectiveness of sound design and environmental effects (surrounding and moving around the player) with the interactive element (it's you deciding to go down that creepy corridor, you're not watching something on rails), and you can conjure some uniquely brilliant and immersive[footnote]Immersion due to any game style - it has nothing essentially to do with 'realism'.[/footnote] moments that no other medium could match.
 

Chimpzy_v1legacy

Warning! Contains bananas!
Jun 21, 2009
4,789
1
0
I'd say agency is the big thing games do better than most other forms of media.

Books, movies, tv-series, and so on, are all passive forms of entertainment. In a game, whether or not the story proceeds, the boss is beaten, the puzzle solved, or whatever, is dependent on the participation of the player. Sure, in the vast majority of cases it boils down a binary system of 'player succeeds at challenge' or 'player doesn't succeed at challenge', but that by itself is already infinitely more active input than any passive entertainment, which offers none.
 

DoPo

"You're not cleared for that."
Jan 30, 2012
8,665
0
0
Chimpzy said:
Sure, in the vast majority of cases it boils down a binary system of 'player succeeds at challenge' or 'player doesn't succeed at challenge', but that by itself is already infinitely more active input than any passive entertainment, which offers none.
This is true but good games will actually allow the player few things, for example:

- different way of succeeding at a challenge. Perhaps you have a slilver tongued character who is able to talk his or her way out of a situation or perhaps a brawny character fights instead and succeeds that way. This will provide variety and further allow the player to tailor the story to be their own.
- different degrees of success. The player is almost universally assumed to have to succeed to proceed. However, a challenge might provide different amounts of success - maybe they manage to kill the dragon but not save the princess.
- the freedom to make their own stories and challenges. This is not every game and the ones that do it tend to not really have much story of their own, but when it works it works well. I'll go with an examples:

Been playing a lot of Crusader Kings 2 recently and the game is just a big "do whatever you want" simulator disguised as a grand strategy game. What I love is how every thing you do is your own story which makes it much more impactful. Furthermore, you can fail and take that in stride - failure is usually temporary and can be turned around. I was playing as a merchant republic and simply put there are five families and one of them is the head of the republic called a Doge. When the current one dies, there are elections (a bit simplified) to decide who gets to be the next head of the republic. I worked long and hard with one character to get elected - did a lot of plotting, killing and general dishonesty to assure I got the position. Once there, I started making sure my son got elected after I died. Very shortly before I could actually ensure it I got murdered. By my son and his wife. Damn ambitious brat wanted to be the head of the family and happened to lose the position of Doge in the process. Yet it does make for a very entertaining story. Much more so than the boring old "I won at everything and got to see the end" type of deal.