I think the definition of 'story' is what's the problem here. To illustrate: I recently saw some works of art by one Yao Lu, a chinese artist. Check them out: Yao Lu [http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2009/11/2627]. A second passes, and then you realize the beautiful, traditional landscapes in fact depict landfills, covered in tarp. Ta-daa, a story is told, through the sheer contrast of it all, through the mismatch between what we're used to perceiving and what is actually depicted.
Games can do this kind of story without having a single written word in them. Even better, in games you could cover the landfill up with an authentic-looking fake lawn, and then actually, physically, have the player move up to the fake and peel it away. This is essentially what happens in Portal (and to a lesser extent in Portal 2): the shiny veneer is peeled away and the abandoned, rusty underbelly of Aperture Science laboratories is revealed. Even without narration, that story structure could have worked just fine.
It's not like the Mass Effects or Dragon Ages have a monopoly on 'story', just because they put such a huge emphasis on it (and they do - they tell the story in dialogue, cutscenes, world-building and background text): any game has the potential to tell a story. The only difference is, I guess, that a game doesn't HAVE to focus on telling a story. In my view, a game that has no interest in story (not even incidental story found in art direction and music) is more akin to a sport than a video game. Sport tells stories too, but only by virtue of being played by human beings (each of us being a story in ourselves).
Then my personal bottom line is: every video game wanting to just be a sport is squandering the limitless opportunities offered by this art form, and for that reason alone a video game with no story is inferior to one with a story. You -can- create a game with great mechanics and no story, but why would you, when you can create a game with great mechanics AND a great story (or at least -a- story, for crying out loud)? So to answer the question: yes, I find 'stories' to be incredibly important, whatever way they're told.
Games can do this kind of story without having a single written word in them. Even better, in games you could cover the landfill up with an authentic-looking fake lawn, and then actually, physically, have the player move up to the fake and peel it away. This is essentially what happens in Portal (and to a lesser extent in Portal 2): the shiny veneer is peeled away and the abandoned, rusty underbelly of Aperture Science laboratories is revealed. Even without narration, that story structure could have worked just fine.
It's not like the Mass Effects or Dragon Ages have a monopoly on 'story', just because they put such a huge emphasis on it (and they do - they tell the story in dialogue, cutscenes, world-building and background text): any game has the potential to tell a story. The only difference is, I guess, that a game doesn't HAVE to focus on telling a story. In my view, a game that has no interest in story (not even incidental story found in art direction and music) is more akin to a sport than a video game. Sport tells stories too, but only by virtue of being played by human beings (each of us being a story in ourselves).
Then my personal bottom line is: every video game wanting to just be a sport is squandering the limitless opportunities offered by this art form, and for that reason alone a video game with no story is inferior to one with a story. You -can- create a game with great mechanics and no story, but why would you, when you can create a game with great mechanics AND a great story (or at least -a- story, for crying out loud)? So to answer the question: yes, I find 'stories' to be incredibly important, whatever way they're told.
