Games Hurt Stories, Stories Hurt Games

[BoogityBoogityMan]

Hi Keith, I hope I didn't mangle your article too much in my summary. ;-)

I'll just reiterate that gameplay, game mechanics, and game design are fundamentally different than storytelling. And in many ways, they are contradictory activities. People can look elsewhere for a better understanding.

The best videogames for me are the ones where story doesn't get in the way of gameplay, mostly because videogame stories are nothing more than cliche-ridden simplistic dreck that would embarrass a comic book writer. I liked Kieth's article because actual gameplay in AAA videogames doesn't seem to be a priority for most companies.

And what I like is the gaming part of Videogames, you know the part that can be frustrating and challenging and rewarding. The part of Videogames I don't like is a relentless story that makes me feel like the gaming parts of the game are getting in the way, and that the only reason to go through the motions is to get to the end of the story. ymmv

I would classify most (not all) AAA videogames as marginally interactive fiction with some gameplay elements. The actual -game- part of AAA video games has been marginalized. But instead of theorizing, I'm just going to look at a few real life examples.

Heavy Rain: Enjoy it for it's novelty value, but as a story it was dreck and the gameplay mechanics were garbage, nor will I buy another game like it because I've been-there-done-that. It is the epitome of interactive video game story telling.

Super Mario Galaxy 1&2: My 2 all time favorite AAA videogames. Sure you have a goal, but thankfully there is almost zero story. It is however chock-o-block full of great gameplay and interesting characters and game ideas. Completing those games 100% was a real challenge, and actually skill based. Nintendo still make actual games.

Mass Effect 3: Maybe when it's $5 and I'm between girlfriends. But even then, I doubt it because I know the story will be terribad and the gameplay simple, everybody's a winner type of stuff, and will be almost no different than ME2. & I've Been there done that.

Crysis: My favorite fps because the gameplay actually has some depth to it. Yes the graphics are nice etc, but being able to approach things your own way was great fun. & the story? I really couldn't have cared less and couldn't tell you what it was, even though I played through it 3 times.

Crysis2: Once and done.

Blizzard Games: Blizzard actually cares about the gaming elements of their games, and spends real money developing them, not tacking them on as an afterthought. Starcraft, Diablo, WOW all have much in the way of replay value. Many people think that WOW doesn't actually begin until you've maxed out your levels and complete the story, which is why there are players there who have been playing that game for years. It will be interesting to see how SWTOR fares after people have completed those stories, will the game part of their mmorpg be good enough to keep people playing?

New Vegas: One of the things that I appreciated with that game was that the developers gave you a nice open world with lots of interesting characters and no real imperative to finish the story (i.e. the world wasn't about to end, and only YOU can save it by killing a bunch of enemies). In that game, the devs were clever in that the stories were part of the gameplay mechanics. I would argue that part of the gameplay was wandering and interacting. The first time I played it, I never finished the courier's story arc because I didn't feel compelled to. It was enough to have wondered around for 50 hours, and to have gotten a good sense of what the devs had created.

 

[Kahunaburger]

The best videogames for me are the ones where story doesn't get in the way of gameplay, mostly because videogame stories are nothing more than cliche-ridden simplistic dreck that would embarrass a comic book writer.

Is the solution to bad stories in games to have no stories in games, or better stories in games? I would argue the second - especially since none of the games you listed as enjoying are actually games without stories. No plot =/= no story.

 

[Yopaz]

Games need a story. If I am to ramble around without any kind of purpose I am unlikely to finish a game. A LOT of games are linear so the figure in the first post is genuinely flawed. A good story can be portrayed by any kind of media. Books, visual novels, movies or even games.

A story doesn't have to be as simple as beginning, middle and end. Take the movie Memento it starts with the end ans then plays the story backwards in segments that get fleshed out as the movie moves forward jumping between past and present. Even the great authours have unconventional builds on their stories. Take Shakespeare and the use of a play within a play. Authours and those who make movies are praised for any kind of creative twist when it comes to how to tell a story. Why is it a bad thing when a game gives you the very same thing?

Also remove all story from some of our most popular games and what do we have? We have combat. We wont have adventuring without a story. We will simply move from A to B. Fight monster X who blocks the way to B. We will get hollow games that leaves us with no discussion value, no feelings beyond winning each fights. There wont even be a sense of satisfaction from beating the game since we don't know who the boss were or why we bothered to fight it.

There are games with a bad story, or a bad way of delivering their story, but even a bad story gives us something to grow attached to.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Also remove all story from some of our most popular games and what do we have? We have combat. We wont have adventuring without a story. We will simply move from A to B. Fight monster X who blocks the way to B. We will get hollow games that leaves us with no discussion value, no feelings beyond winning each fights. There wont even be a sense of satisfaction from beating the game since we don't know who the boss were or why we bothered to fight it.

I'd submit that without stories (if we use the Hemingway definition of story) we aren't even fighting monsters. We're moving objects around in coordinate space, and interacting with other objects in a way that reduces numbers associated with those objects before they reduce numbers associated with our object. In fact, even that's a layer of "story" - what we're really doing is interacting with a variety of numbers, some of which we have direct control over and some we have indirect control over. Our goal is to make some numbers big and some numbers small. I don't know about everyone else, but I prefer slaying monsters.

 

[PotluckBrigand]

I would say multiple paths of a story don't really devalue the story you get to experience. Not in a good game, anyway.

Mass Effect, while perhaps not the best example of multiple story paths, is the first one that springs to my mind. I have two Shepards, and they both have different personalities, different ideas, different friends and lovers, and they each got to go through their own unique and ultimately satisfying story, and I got to enjoy what I thought was a hell of a game while they did so.

Optimally, a great game would include both an excellent story AND an excellent game to hopefully provide positive stimuli from two directions at once. Bastion is a good (and cliche) example. Fun to play, fun to listen to.

Of course games aren't movies... they aren't really supposed to be (I know, I know... tell that to Call of Duty). I guess I would have to disagree with the distinction that a story is only allowed one possible path and ultimately one outcome to be considered a story.

If I may be SPECTACULARLY pretentious for a moment, I would remind you of Sturgeon's Law which (condescendingly) states that 90% of everything is crap. Of course there are piles and piles of games that make the idea of integrating story and gameplay seem laughable, usually due to the developer not putting enough effort into one or the other.

BUT that 10% makes me excited to be a fan of both videogames and stories.

 

[Johnny Impact]

The example that comes to mind is Portal.

Yes, you could tell that story as a movie, but it wouldn't be as effective. The genius of Portal's narrative is that it is delivered by player exploration and discovery, two interactive elements. You are never told, "Something bad happened here...all the people are gone...where did they go?" That's something that your brain puts together as you explore the hauntingly empty offices of Abstergo Laboratories.

(performs Double Air Assassination on Turret and Companion Cube)
Sorry, couldn't resist.

OT: I would argue the intertwining of story and gameplay is almost a third element itself. The same rules that apply to story and gameplay apply to integration: Done well, it makes the good great and the bad tolerable; Done poorly, it drags the good down to its level and renders that which is already bad into something positively execrable.

To express it more visually:

(Story Quality) + (Gameplay Quality) + (Integration Quality) = Game Quality.

Thus, for example, a terrific story, average gameplay, and poor intertwining results in an average or slightly above average game.

I recognize this is a somewhat flawed representation. Stories can be great with no gameplay whatsoever -- I've got a wall of books behind me to prove it. Games can be great with no story whatsoever -- I love Pac-Man and Tetris, they don't have stories, they don't need stories, trying to add story would only hurt them. But for those games that try to have both, I think it works well enough.

 

[Johnny Impact]

But honestly, do any of us want to play a game where you can invest 40 hours and then LOSE? That'd be fucking irritating. It'd also probably be revolutionary.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Not forty hours, but I defy you to play through that sucker and feel like you won.

 

[Jdb]

Illusion of Gaia for the Super Nintendo. That's a game with both good gameplay and story. I have a hard time thinking of a game more imaginative than it.

Front Mission: Gun Hazard is another example.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

If a story is only meant to be experienced once, then why are we able to buy movies and watch them multiple times? Why do people read their favorite books dozens of times throughout their life?

A good narrative shouldn't be thrown in a garbage disposal after you've experienced it for the first time. Do you have any idea how many times I've read Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone? The amount of times I've watched The Dark Knight? I still love these stories just as much as I did when I first read them.

As far as gaming goes, I need a reason to care about what I'm doing. A game can have fantastic gameplay without a story, but the ones that always keep me coming back are the ones that immerse me. And they actually have an advantage over any other form of storytelling, because the story can potentially change depending on the actions of the player. Let's talk about Dragon Age for a moment. I'm on my fifth character right now, and each iteration of the story has had differences from the last. No matter what you do, the story will have the same basic structure: Tragic backstory, become a Grey Warden, raise an army, defeat the Blight. But the things that happen during these events can produce totally different outcomes. You can leave an entire village to die at the hands of an undead horde (Thus entirely skipping about 8-10 hours of the game). You can determine the fate of the Dwarve's political structure. You can practically commit genocide on the mages or Dalish elves if you so choose. These decisions can drastically alter the final battle and epilogue.

A game's narrative CAN be linear, and a lot of the time it is. But the strength of the medium lies in games like Dragon Age, where the narrative can be as diverse as the people experiencing it.

 

[AdamRBi]

Hey all - I'm the author of the article in question.

Firstly, I want to mention that it is *entirely* possible to jam a mediocre story into a game, or vice versa. My point is that there will be damage, usually on both sides of that battle.

What's really the most important thing in a good story? Character arcs. The transitions characters make as the story progresses. How do character arcs develop? When the characters make decisions. Now, writing a good story is very hard precisely because you have to have several characters, each with interesting and meaningful character arcs, all working together in unison. This is not easy at all.

So now, we throw the player into the game and allow him to make decisions, instead. You should be clear on this point:

If you are saying that this player's decisions won't damage the fragile structure of a story, then you are saying that stories are very easy to write. They can be written by authors on the fly, for that is what a player is doing when he is making in-game decisions: he is writing the story.

So can you improvise a great story? I'd be impressed if you could improvise a mediocre one.

-Keith

We already have plenty of users here backing up the importance of story and narrative in games; I just wanted to point out one other bit of your argument that I feel is flawed. This whole notion that the most important thing is a good story is a character arc is a flawed way of thinking of it. Sure, it's important, but it's not the most important. The most important element in a story in my opinion is the presentation of the story.

Presentation is key, we've all heard great jokes completely butchered by someone who just parrots what they heard instead of how they heard it. Games just offer a new way of presenting stories; if games just try to parrot things like character arcs then of course they'd be lousy stories. Same with lousy movies and books that try the same thing.

The way good games tend do this is by giving value to items, characters, and ideas, then building a world around them to reinforce it's importace. Goals are set up and the player is off. Without all of this, the goals seem mundane and would never hold a players attention.

When you think about it this way, one can improvise a good story as long as it's presented right. Minecraft, for example, has absolutely no traditional story. The design of the game, however, and the aesthetics that compliment it allow the player to experience their own improvised story each time they play. Material is given meaning by virtue of obtaining them, making you feel more concerned when enemies attack; adding conflict. The story ends when you complete your goals, be they building a massive structure or defeating the final boss; it's a completely open ended narrative improvised by the player and engaging enough to be memorable. It's also

I'd go as far as to say sports have this same non-linier narrative as well. Nobody watches or plays to kick a ball around, they go for the conflict and the three act structure. Act 1, teams arrive and enter the field; Act 2 is the game; and Act 3 is the final moments when the last team scores and the story ends with one team defeated. If you stripped this from professional sports all you'd have is a boring and repetitive game.

Board games as well; Chess benefits from a carefully crafted story about two warring kingdoms. Value is added to the pieces in the back by virtue of their movement and limited supply while pawns are often used as cannon fodder. The goal is to defeat the opposing army by capturing their King, a piece given the most importance by it's name. The King's movement is so that in order to win and be the victor of this story you must balance defense and offense. Strip away the titles, aesthetics, and story and all you're left with is a boring old game about little marble or wood pieces knocking each other over.

I suppose it all breaks down in your definition of a story. If you feel a story and a narrative is based solely in the characters and their progressing from point A to point B, a process deemed mandatory by linier media like Movies and Books, then yeah games will suffer. Looking at story from a presentation perspective, crafting experiences by adding value to ideas and establishing goals, then it benefits all creative media to tell a story.

Thanks for the interesting topic.