Poll: Is gameplay no longer the most important factor in a game?

[Rin Tezuka]

I noticed that quite a few of the big name games this year seem to have gameplay as a secondary importance in the line of how good they are.

If you talk to someone about The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Gone Home or Beyond: Two Souls, most people will never refer to the gameplay first, instead about how they tell a compelling story or have deep characters, or maybe something else.

Whilst I have no opinion on any of these games, I'm interested to see what you think. Do you think gameplay is no longer the most important feature a game should have?

 

[Aircross]

I feel that it depends on what the individual is looking for.

Some players want an engaging stories, some players want deeply developed characters, and some just want good gameplay.

Some want good combinations of several different things.

Me? I'm happy to just fire up Dragon Quest III, insert myself into the world, find a party at a tavern, and explore the world while making up my party's personalities.

So, yes, for some video game consumers the gameplay is not the most important factor while for others it is.

 

[Lucyfer86]

Graphics or gtfo..

No but seriously, for me nowadays a good story and atmosphere is more important, gameplay is secondary.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

If gameplay is secondary, then it's hard to make the argument that gaming is "art".

If gameplay is secondary, then it's not really a game. Especially when you can watch these games on YouTube.

 

[Exhuminator]

Right now, I'm playing Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time. This game is from 1997... it's sixteen years old. And you know what? I'm having a great time with it. That's not because of the graphics, which have aged... elderly. It's because the game design is rock solid and thusly the gameplay is fantastic. Truly good game design does not decay with time. Because of this, I hold game design far above the merits of graphical achievement. Unfortunately by and large, gameplay has always come second to graphics when it comes to selling to the masses. That's nothing new. Most people want eye candy more than brain candy.

 

[Lucyfer86]

If gameplay is secondary, then it's hard to make the argument that gaming is "art".

If gameplay is secondary, then it's not really a game. Especially when you can watch these games on YouTube.

You tell that to everyone who loved telltale games like Walking Dead, or anything similar.

 

[Dark Knifer]

Well gameplay should be gaming's suit. If you're going into story, you'll have a hard time convincing me the advantages it has over shows, books and movies. I enjoyed bioshock infinite but I would much, much rather watch breaking bad.

If gameplay becomes secondary then it becomes a bit of a grind to get to the next story element, then it's a question why you would even play the game to begin with when you can get a full story from a movie in 2 hours.

 

[Raikas]

If you talk to someone about The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Gone Home or Beyond: Two Souls, most people will never refer to the gameplay first, instead about how they tell a compelling story or have deep characters, or maybe something else.

Whilst I have no opinion on any of these games, I'm interested to see what you think. Do you think gameplay is no longer the most important feature a game should have?

I don't think gameplay has been the most important feature of a game for decades. Look at some of the point-and-click (or text-entry) adventure games of the early 1990s - very story driven, sometimes minimal gameplay (or nonsensical gameplay "type this specific random word" or "combine these random items" never made the games that included them).

Personally, I think gameplay only makes or breaks certain types of games - strategy ones, for example, since the gameplay is central. Most of the story-driven or character-driven ones need those elements to be the strongest. But of course some people will want gameplay to always be king, but I believe that would actually take away from the power of certain stories.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I went with...

Yes, [Your opinion] is the most important

... because I think the situation isn't quite so black and white, for me at least, because I think gameplay and story both compliment each other. To me, if a game has both solid gameplay and a compelling story, that's where I'm going to find myself most entertained. A game that's great at one but terrible at the other tends not to hold my interest for very long.

 

[JazzJack2]

The trouble with this sort of question is that it assumes gameplay, atmosphere, art direction and story etc are separate distinct elements when they're not, they're a blurred gray mess. Is what is often called 'emergent storytelling' story or is it gameplay? Can the atmosphere and immersion a game offers be consider gameplay if it is obtained through interaction?

Take for example STALKER, STALKER is one of my favourite games for (among other reasons) it's enthralling atmosphere, but this is not taken in favour over the gameplay, because the atmosphere is derived from the player exploring the world and the challenge the world offers the player and thus the atmosphere and lore is gameplay (or at least blurred with it).

EDIT: To answer your original question however, it doesn't matter really, it depends on the game in my opinion. I would say I am a person who prefers gameplay (whatever that is) but have found myself enjoying heavily linear story focused games (mainly adventure games) and really I think making arbitary judgments on what games should do (I.E how they balance their different elements) isn't interesting nor helpful.

 

[sethisjimmy]

There's no universal here. It depends game to game.

A lot of gamers seem to have this odd notion where they think games with engaging stories are going to ruin gaming, and storytelling in games becoming more popular in the mainstream is somehow a bad thing.

I think gaming is diverse and massive enough to carry both ideologies. There are plenty of hugely popular games still being made to this day with extremely minimal story elements, just full on gameplay, as well as games with deep stories and minimal gameplay. And there's plenty in the middle for everyone as well.

 

[krazykidd]

For me personally, story always game first. It's why i enjoy Jrpgs so much ( and can't stand most Wrpgs and sandbox games). Hell even when you put massive stories in fighting games( blazblu) people go ape shit. My first thought when reading the title was , when was gameplay ever the most important aspect? We had text adventures, point and click, table top Rpgs that proved that people really wanted story.

 

[Silvanus]

For me, like Lucyfer86, story and atmosphere are the very most important elements. It was atmosphere that make me enjoy Bioshock and Silent Hill and Amnesia as much as I do, more than gameplay.

It's still important for them to be games, of course; the medium lets me experience it all a little more personally. Horror works better when a wrong turn on my behalf can kill me, for example, whereas I have no control over what befalls the characters in a film or novel.

 

[TehCookie]

That's like saying story doesn't matter because games like Dark Souls and Bayonetta exist. Games have more than one criteria when judging them. If a game has a better story than gameplay, of course people will praise that. Just like if a game has a meh story and great gameplay people will talk about the gameplay. I don't see either as more important, but rather what do you want out of it.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

There's no universal here. It depends game to game.

A lot of gamers seem to have this odd notion where they think games with engaging stories are going to ruin gaming, and storytelling in games becoming more popular in the mainstream is somehow a bad thing.

I think gaming is diverse and massive enough to carry both ideologies. There are plenty of hugely popular games still being made to this day with extremely minimal story elements, just full on gameplay, as well as games with deep stories and minimal gameplay. And there's plenty in the middle for everyone as well.

yepp this. just let games stick to their strengths (or the devs who make them), you don't NEED to have one or the other be the most important, it's whatever you are going for on a game to game basis.

personally I get very enthralled in good stories and want to replay the game again and and again if it has a good story/characters, but good gameplay is also great for the people who want just that.

 

[MysticSlayer]

A game starts at the gameplay. Where you take it from there is up to whatever you want to do with that gameplay. I mentioned in another thread that interactivity (i.e. gameplay) is what ultimately separates gaming from other mediums, and ultimately what drives us forward is finding ways to use that gameplay to create compelling experiences that players can engage with and carry with them long after the credits are over.

However, at the same time, gameplay may not be the thing you remember most. Games like Gone Home, The Walking Dead, and No One Has To Die are built around minimalistic gameplay, sometimes even bad gameplay, but at the same time they've managed to stick with people due to how engaging their stories are. Still, I seriously doubt any of them could have been as enjoyable to watch as they were to play. It just simply isn't the same without that interactivity/gameplay, as that ultimately is what engages us on a deeper level than just the writing.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have games like Mario, Call of Duty, God of War, and arguably a vast majority of games where the story is something you are likely to forget shortly after beating the game, but what engaged you was the gameplay. Obviously, these aren't as engaging to a viewer as they are to the player.

There can also be numerous mixtures of these two, but what they all have in common is that they rely on their gameplay to ultimately deliver the experience, even if that gameplay is minimalistic, forgettable, and even horrible. To me, the point is making sure the gameplay is good enough to carry the role that it is given, whether it is what you want people to remember or what you need to carry the other parts of the experience. So, to me, gameplay is the most important part and should be the starting focus of any game, but at the same time, that doesn't mean it has to be what people remember when they start talking about the game.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

I don't think there is ONE answer to what the most important feature of a video game is. It is going to be different for everyone, for everyone plays different types of games, for different reasons and they get different things out of playing them.

I loved games like the Halo series and Left 4 Dead for the gameplay aspects above everything thing else about them, but for me that is rare. If I look at the list of all my favorite games, I didn't fall in love with them for the gameplay, it was the story, the world, the customization/rolplaying, the atmosphere and most importantly, how it made me feel. Gameplay is never the most important thing for me, but I am not saying that it isn't important.

 

[Asita]

"Mu". The question is wrong. At the risk of going off topic, let's look at movies for a minute. Do you know why Citizen Kane is often cited as one of the greatest films of all time? It's not because it had a great story, it's not because it had great cinematography, and it's not because it had great acting. It's because it did all of that (at least by the standards of its day) and more, and because it did many of these things so well that many of its innovations are to this day common convention. Movies incorporate a lot of disparate elements, any one of which can make or break the film depending on how it's handled and how seriously the audience takes it. Because of this, it's often folly to consider any single element of the film to be the most important. They're all important.

Video games operate off of a very similar principle, as they incorporate a similar number of disparate elements. The music has to be right, the sound effects and dubbing have to be right, the visuals have to be right, the gameplay has to work...in many cases (most notably RPGs and Adventure games) a given game can actually be viewed as the step after movies in the same sense that movies could be viewed as the step after theatre, incorporating most if not all of the principles of their predecessors and adding to them. Any single one of those elements can ruin the production if mishandled. They all have to work, and if one is lacking then the other elements have to compensate for that. Gameplay is certainly a critically important element, but so too is making sure that your texture maps actually work, your NPCs appear properly sized and the sound doesn't suddenly cut out.