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Video Games Are Better Without Stories

jg4xchamp

Member
I just wanted to say that I liked your post, but again argue that he is not saying to creators to give up on their ambitions. He is arguing, however, that if videogames reach their potential as a medium, they will do so without trying to become narrative media. That isn't a slam on games with narrative. It's just that he feels they won't be able to break through to the next level because the medium simply isn't suited to doing narrative media.

Now, personally, I don't entirely agree.
However, his argument is well made, and he's well-qualified to make it. It would be nice if we could start from there and actually discuss that like mature adults (like we've seen with some great posts lately) that actually want to discuss the medium on a critical level and recognize that criticism is just that.

Sure, it's something I can get behind. I think The Article itself is good, but he did go with the title he went with, and that's naturally led to a pretty obvious reaction from people. It doesn't help that you apparently gotta do homework on the dude to get a better understanding of his larger point, like we Halo 4 or something.

Because on balance there is a lot of what he says that I agree with, I wish games were more about exploring their gameplay, and I don't like the story over gameplay as if it's trying to be this higher learning version of "art". I have a huge problem with the way some people in the gaming community use the term "art". Like it's this fucking award to be proud of.

I never once watched The Wire, and thought man, that was some art there. Nah I think it was an excellent show, and for money the greatest tv show, and it will stay that way probably forever. Likewise I also don't understand when "art=good" became a thing. Bad art exists. Shitty paintings are a thing, they are still art, they just aren't good. Plenty of bad films exist.

Likewise bad games, still technically if you believe games are art. And I have a huge problem that only the story driven stuff is somehow art, but Mario Bros isn't? Mario, like the quintessential example of the strengths of this medium? The joys of pure play, isn't art?

So on some level the dude is right up my alley, but I don't think a one direction fits all type vibe works. Again my issue the critical side of things, they are too often not willing to criticize short comings in gameplay, in fact majority of the reviews I do end up reading can't even describe the gameplay of the game beyond a twitter post description. Usually less than a twitter post description.

I think being more detailed about mechanics and their interplay are far more important and should be a valuable part of a review, and if that sounds like a boring read to people, maybe they need to start question exactly how much do they really like the "game" part of a game.

Otherwise yes games have some pretty notorious short comings in their make up that should lead them trying something other than what movies do. I also think it's weird how much immersion is this defacto universal positive. In some cases it might be a detriment.

Take for instance, Gears of War and all those other cover shooters, rightfully get knocked that sometimes the cover walls make the arena feel gamey, and telegraph the combat from a mile away. That's pretty true, but it ignores that they are fundamental in making the game work. In fact I want to know how much more elaborate our cover arenas and how absurd they could have been, if devs weren't handcuffed to "well, we sort of gotta, maybe, fake make this believable, sort of, kind of" routine.

Because there are tons of possibility spaces in 3d gaming, that are probably ignored because the easier thing is creating a space that makes the most obvious sense and has a parallel to the real world.
 
Is it really necessary to compare TLOU to those films though? Just because those films are better at storytelling doesn't mean The Last of Us shouldn't have bothered with storytelling. The article is claiming that because video game stories have not been better than the best stories of other mediums, they shouldn't bother with storytelling.

There is nothing wrong with wanting storytelling in games to be better; there is something wrong with wanting games to abandon storytelling altogether.

He doesn't say they shouldn't bother with telling stories (well, the title does, but it's not reflected in the article). He says that the stories in games like The Last of Us are dragged down because they're grafted onto games, and that in turn the games get dragged down because they're putting the emphasis on these mediocre stories instead of the actual strengths of the medium.

I do think we're seeing progress with games integrating storytelling and gaming in such a way that you can't fully experience the story without playing the game, but almost all of this is coming from indie games and not from the AAA titles that stick with the safer cutscenes and found-text formula.
 
I think my entire post (as well as Bogost's article) went way over your head if that's what you got out of it. Come on.



It's a running theme in this thread.




His next sentence literally says it's nothing to be ashamed of. I guess it comes down to whether you think YA is, or CAN BE, the pinnacle of the written word. Personally, I love YA. But I wouldn't point to it and say, this, this is what literature can aspire to. This is the pinnacle of the medium.

Bogost is arguing, by contrast, that a YA level of storytelling IS the pinnacle of storytelling in videogames. That videogames have come up to the wall, and its best examples, the ones we point to, are mostly told via mediums co-opted into the game environment. Cutscenes/movies that we insert, or the spoken word (oral storytelling), etc.

Many in this thread seem to think Bogost is saying these games shouldn't be made. This is a fallacy borne out of defensiveness. Please, cite for me where he says these games should stop being made. Bogost isn't saying to stop making walking simulators any more than he's saying to stop writing YA fiction.

His article has his justification for his opinion laced throughout it. Unfortunately, since you disagree, you are blinded to it and therefore think the justification does not exist.



Believe whatever you want. I don't entirely share his opinions, but I do think they are justified and that he has an argument. If the best that you have is that he wrote "stifling drivel" and you feel it should be disregarded, please do us all a favor and remove yourself from a critical conversation the rest of us are trying to have.




I'd argue that we don't see that in book reviews because (1) the medium is well-established by our standards and (2) we recognize already that books are a stellar medium for storytelling.

As far as videogames go, (1) may come in time, but part of Bogost's argument is that videogames aren't exploring the medium as much as they're attempting to ape other mediums. And as far as (2) goes, I think it's clear that culturally we don't view videogames as one of the best places to find great stories.

Beyond that, we do argue constantly the merits of stories told in book form vs. movie form, of comic stories vs. their cinematic counterparts, etc. The method storytelling is inevitably DIFFERENT from medium to medium, and I think we can agree on that. If we can agree on that, however, we must accept that videogames therefore cannot tell stories in the same way as these mediums. And yet, that is mostly how videogames try to tell stories: through cutscenes, through comic inserts, through oral storytelling, through a picture.



Well, if we take Sid Meier's definition, you could say that a game is a series of interesting choices. It's critical to establish that a choice is not inherently interesting, however. The choice to stand still or walk forward in Dear Esther is not an interesting choice. It makes no comment on its story. I actually enjoy Dear Esther, for what it's worth, and I'm friends with its creators. I'm not in any way trying to disparage it. But its story is not really told through gameplay at all. It could arguably have been told just as well (or better!) by having the character automatically walk to the required places. But the strength of the game is in the feeling you get having that agency -- though again, that is still not storytelling. And so we get to your next segment.

And thirdly, of course we have method through play. Play itself is storytelling, a part of the storytelling. Character movement and animations, design, the way the character attacks and reacts, the kind of actions your controls prompt, the expectations and subversions that are built by your familiarity with the controls and mechanics. Taking controls away, limiting mechanics, is a means of storytelling too.



We have to recognize that this is essentially just a Pavlovian effect, though. It is certainly used to good effect, but that's not really gameplay either. You didn't make an interesting choice. If you watched the film of TLOU, you would be conditioned in the same way, and indeed many films use that tactic.





I just wanted to say that I liked your post, but again argue that he is not saying to creators to give up on their ambitions. He is arguing, however, that if videogames reach their potential as a medium, they will do so without trying to become narrative media. That isn't a slam on games with narrative. It's just that he feels they won't be able to break through to the next level because the medium simply isn't suited to doing narrative media.

Now, personally, I don't entirely agree.
However, his argument is well made, and he's well-qualified to make it. It would be nice if we could start from there and actually discuss that like mature adults (like we've seen with some great posts lately) that actually want to discuss the medium on a critical level and recognize that criticism is just that.
You are doing the same thing that he is doing by suggesting that YA fiction is at a particular level of literature. It isnt. YA is YA only because of the audience it is written for and the typical age of protagonists. There are plenty of great examples of superb storytelling in YA. Why does one have to determine the pinnacle of the medium? That's not something we will ever have a consensus on, and whether or not a YA work could be considered the pinnacle of literature is irrelevant to the fact that he is placing YA at a lower level than other types of literature. He makes that claim, doesn't support it, and uses it as a justification for another claim about game narratives. He may not be saying 'stop writing YA fiction' but he is saying 'YA fiction does not and cannot represent the best in literature'. He isn't saying 'don't make narrative games' but he is saying 'narrative games will never represent the best in games'. Those arguments are both born of the same place, which is a value judgement that he has made, based on his preferences, without justification.
 
we shouldn't be required to read his books to fully comprehend this stand alone article, right?

It shouldn't be necessary to read his book to get an explanation for an argument he makes in this article. The purpose of this article is to successfully argue the claim he makes at the beginning, and he fails to adequately do so in the article.

I have no interest in reading his books if this is the kind of mindset he has. It's reductive, dismissive, and he is unnecessarily insulting in it without justification.

No, Just for some nuance and better understanding where he comes from. And even them If you dont agree with his points thats fine too.

Just commented because some of lord's questioning falls directly in some topics the author further discuss in "How to talk about videogames". In my opinion this kind of short form writing is not suited for the subject.
 
He says that the stories in games like The Last of Us are dragged down because they're grafted onto games, and that in turn the games get dragged down because they're putting the emphasis on these mediocre stories instead of the actual strengths of the medium.

The thing is: why is that? Is it because the story has to adapt to the medium? I have read the article and yet I do not understand his reasoning for it. For all it's worth, you could say the same thing about movies in contrast to books or even plays. Does a movie need a compelling story or can it be just a big showcase of special effects and camera work? Why does it need to imitate the story of books? The actors will never be as perfect as how we read them, nor the sets. I don't think games and narrative are so far apart as the author thinks they are.

My gripe with this article is that nobody alive today really knows how to handle the interactive medium that are video games. Not absolutely one person really knows the ins and outs of it. Definitely not the author. I don't mind discourse, but this reads more like a death notice than an actual invite for debate
 
He doesn't say they shouldn't bother with telling stories (well, the title does, but it's not reflected in the article). He says that the stories in games like The Last of Us are dragged down because they're grafted onto games, and that in turn the games get dragged down because they're putting the emphasis on these mediocre stories instead of the actual strengths of the medium.

I do think we're seeing progress with games integrating storytelling and gaming in such a way that you can't fully experience the story without playing the game, but almost all of this is coming from indie games and not from the AAA titles that stick with the safer cutscenes and found-text formula.
I understand the argument he is making. The article itself doesn't adequately support that argument. The interesting thing is he doesn't actually say that Edith Finch is dragged down by narrative. This is actually what he says:

And yet, the game is pregnant with an unanswered question: Why does this story need to be told as a video game

His argument is that Edith Finch fails because the story could conceivably be told as a book just as well as it could be told as a game, not that it is worse because it is a game.

Do you see how this isn't really a convincing argument? Like, sure, maybe Edith Finch doesn't make use of many of the unique aspects of video games in telling its story. Maybe it could just as easily have been a novel, or a film. But if the storytelling isn't affected at all by that change (and to be clear, he never claims that Edith Finch being a game makes it worse) than who cares? What matters is that it IS a game, and that the storytelling (by his own estimation, mind you) is effective.

He doesn't really prove that Edith Finch is just as good in the form of a book or a film either, just to be clear. He says it's possible that it might be, and then acts as if that suggestion proves his point. It doesn't, because perhaps some aspects of Edith Finch's narrative can only be understood through the interactive lense of a game. I wouldn't know, I haven't played the game. But he doesn't establish that either, and the burden is on him to do so, as he is making the argument.
 

RM8

Member
I agree :/

I realize different people enjoy different stuff, but it's true that a lot of games would be much better without the terrible, pacing-destroying stories that plague the medium.
 

Laughing Banana

Weeping Pickle
The problem right now with many games is not that they have story, but the way they implement the story beats it is as if they're trying so hard to become things that they aren't (we want to be like a movie, weeeeeee!)
 

JoeM86

Member
I agree to an extent. Stories are a good thing for games. However, when games are more focused on story than gameplay, then I have issues with it. I didn't like The Last of Us as a game, for example. It had a great narrative, but the gameplay elements were just so blah for me. I also hate it when all the cool parts of the story of a game are often shown in cutscenes. I don't like that. It's wrong for this medium for that to be the case. Hell, in an ideal world we shouldn't have cutscenes but have everything happen through gameplay. Half-Life 2 did it fantastically but the whole cinematic focus that AAA games take right now bore the hell out of me. That's why I resonate more with Nintendo and indie titles.

Game first, story later. Have both if you can, but focus on being a great game first.
 
The thing is: why is that? Is it because the story has to adapt to the medium? I have read the article and yet I do not understand his reasoning for it. For all it's worth, you could say the same thing about movies in contrast to books or even plays. Does a movie need a compelling story or can it be just a big showcase of special effects and camera work? Why does it need to imitate the story of books? The actors will never be as perfect as how we read them, nor the sets. I don't think games and narrative are so far apart as the author thinks they are.

My gripe with this article is that nobody alive today really knows how to handle the interactive medium that are video games. Not absolutely one person really knows the ins and outs of it. Definitely not the author. I don't mind discourse, but this reads more like a death notice than an actual invite for debate

Movies and books already tell their stories in vastly different ways, a fact that has been accepted for decades. TLOU doesn't, it just grafts another medium (movies) on top of a game.

The Last of Us may not work as a novel or movies, but I think the story of The Last of Us would be better if told through such mediums. We can debate how valuable the experience of shooting through the city at your own pace is, but that is not the story of The Last of Us.
 
I understand the argument he is making. The article itself doesn't adequately support that argument. The interesting thing is he doesn't actually say that Edith Finch is dragged down by narrative. This is actually what he says:



His argument is that Edith Finch fails because the story could conceivably be told as a book just as well as it could be told as a game, not that it is worse because it is a game.

Do you see how this isn't really a convincing argument? Like, sure, maybe Edith Finch doesn't make use of many of the unique aspects of video games in telling its story. Maybe it could just as easily have been a novel, or a film. But if the storytelling isn't affected at all by that change (and to be clear, he never claims that Edith Finch being a game makes it worse) than who cares? What matters is that it IS a game, and that the storytelling (by his own estimation, mind you) is effective.

He doesn't really prove that Edith Finch is just as good in the form of a book or a film either, just to be clear. He says it's possible that it might be, and then acts as if that suggestion proves his point. It doesn't, because perhaps some aspects of Edith Finch's narrative can only be understood through the interactive lense of a game. I wouldn't know, I haven't played the game. But he doesn't establish that either, and the burden is on him to do so, as he is making the argument.

That's not his argument at all:

The whole way through, I found myself wondering why I couldn't experience Edith Finch as a traditional time-based narrative.

...

But a more compelling answer is that something would be lost in flattening What Remains of Edith Finch into a linear experience.

He's saying the game succeeds because it actually takes advantage of what gaming as a medium offers, instead of aping movies.
 
Movies and books already tell their stories in vastly different ways, a fact that has been accepted for decades. TLOU doesn't, it just grafts another medium (movies) on top of a game.

The Last of Us may not work as a novel or movies, but I think the story of The Last of Us would be better if told through such mediums. We can debate how valuable the experience of shooting through the city at your own pace is, but that is not the story of The Last of Us.

its deliberately written as to be complimentary to the game design. Its not a self sufficient story that functions without flowing in and out of the gameplay segments.
 
its deliberately written as to be complimentary to the game design. Its not a self sufficient story that functions without flowing in and out of the gameplay segments.

Then it was poorly done, because I never got the impression that the story wouldn't work in a movie or book.

Exactly, I don't get how people are missing this.

Discussing these things on Gaming side is always going to be an uphill slog. People take (inferred) criticisms of their favorite games too personally.
 
Read through it and pretty much disagree with it on all accounts.

Without story you have no sense of progression. Games, movies, music, any type of art is telling you a story. Remove the story and you have mechanics that mean nothing and no goal. A simple progression from a town, to a desert, to a castle, to an evil boss is still telling you a story through locations (basic environmental storytelling) and increasing danger.

If the game starts telling you a story that seems out of place, that goes against the player's progression (a cutscene that has no value or takes you out of the experience) I can understand the frustration. But if a game does a good job mixing mechanics and progression, you have a great game regardless on how big the story is. I love the mix in Grim Fandango. The dialog is always funny and engaging, and once I solve a puzzle I immediately feel rewarded with a sense of progression in the story.

A complex, multiple hour narrative can do just as good of a job moving a game forward as a simple NES game telling its story through clever use of environments, music, and bosses. It is a spectrum and a good game can fall anywhere on that spectrum.
 
I must say I disagree, for me all of the games I play must have stories. That's maybe because I love a good story, and apart from sports and driving games every single game I've enjoyed most has had a damn interesting story. Sure some of them aren't as well done as books, movies and even television but games such as Horizon, Diablo, Warcraft, resident evil and the Last of Us are my stable diet in gaming.
 
Sure, it's something I can get behind. I think The Article itself is good, but he did go with the title he went with, and that's naturally led to a pretty obvious reaction from people. It doesn't help that you apparently gotta do homework on the dude to get a better understanding of his larger point, like we Halo 4 or something.

...

Good post, I see where you're coming from. And I completely agree re: mario bros. If we're to get all caught up on gaming as an art form, then it already succeeded wildly with Super Mario Bros.
 

ffvorax

Member
No.

Videogames evolved, like any form of entartainment or art do.

There is not better or worse, there are just different form of it, and there are good and bad of both.

It's like saying that movies were better without the audio or in black & white, or without CGI... or books were better on paper than on digital, in original language or translated...
 
Then it was poorly done, because I never got the impression that the story wouldn't work in a movie or book.

it doesn't need to be something only possible in games to be well done. Which games that feature a narrative focus do you think could not be adapted into a movie?
The cutscenes perfectly set the tone and the objective for the gameplay, and flow in and out of player control thanks to being an interactive medium. Thats a kind of direction you cant have anywhere else.
as an example, the segment tying the running around to being upside down is pretty seemless
 

Stiler

Member
RHlbovb.gif


Games can be whatever the hell the maker wants it to be, and people can enjoy different games.

I for one LOVE story focused games. Growing up in the 90's some of my favorite games were adventure games, Gabriel Knight, Tex Murphy, Grim Fandango, Syberia, TLJ, etc.

Modern adventure games, like Soma, Gone Home, Firewatch, and others still focus a lot of the narrative and story drive, and that's why I love them.

I am not a huge fan of Minecraft, yet i can see why some people love it, and I don't want to get on a soapbox and say "ALL GAMES SHOULD HAVE A STORY!"

Because that's just like, my opinion man.
 
Movies and books already tell their stories in vastly different ways, a fact that has been accepted for decades. TLOU doesn't, it just grafts another medium (movies) on top of a game.

The Last of Us may not work as a novel or movies, but I think the story of The Last of Us would be better if told through such mediums. We can debate how valuable the experience of shooting through the city at your own pace is, but that is not the story of The Last of Us.

Perhaps, but that is the case for one game, not the entire medium. TLOU tells a great story that is stretched forever because it's in a game, sure, but I wouldn't use that to undermine the potential that games have as storytellers. The very act of being able to be the protagonist is a different way enough than movies and books and I think it's terribly unfair to overlook that. We could do better with less cutscenes, no doubt, but these are still baby steps. It's too early, video games that actually tell a story are barely 30 years old (yes I'm counting from Famicom era only). We have very few examples of why some games need to be games, there's not enough history yet to make a compelling argument for why the medium should not even bother.
 
I feel like the art of designing cutscenes to start and end gameplay segments is completely overlooked as its own thing

I don't think there are any, which is my point.

maybe The Stanley Parable? but that might just be a choose your own adventure book
you can probably adapt any kind of story with a few tweaks. Like instead of exploring a museum of the games development which is super meta, you would need something relating to the medium.
 
When a story can only be told through a video game format such as a the Nier series or mgs series then story has a place in gaming. A good story can't replace bad gameplay so Story should have less value if it causes poor gameplay.
 

Melchiah

Member
When a story can only be told through a video game format such as a the Nier series or mgs series then story has a place in gaming. A good story can't replace bad gameplay so Story should have less value if it causes poor gameplay.

I think Silent Hill 2, Mass Effect, and Witcher 3 prove that idea wrong, at least when it comes to clunky combat.
EDIT: Hell, the Mass Effect sequels are still considered to be inferior by many, eventhough they improved on the combat mechanics, while the quality of the story arguably declined, particularly in the 3rd entry. The same goes for Bioshock and its sequel.
 
The article uses Edith Finch as such a reference point that I don't feel qualified to comment on it in detail.

But in a broader sense, I'll say I agree that most video games are better without stories. Make it mechanically solid, have the framework to let your mind fill in the blanks, and have a good time. That's not to say that stories can't enhance a game or put them on an elevated level, they absolutely do, but most game stories are just there to be there, and not really to take advantage of the way the medium can uniquely change storytelling.

The thing with how video game stories are presented is that they usually require a greater deal of suspension of disbelief than you'd need for other mediums, and it's often because of various abstractions in video games and how they're paced as ones. I'll avoid the obvious shooter examples and go with something else -- I loved Gone Home, but turn it into a comic book or a show or a movie and it suddenly becomes ridiculous. This girl comes home, finds a single note from her sister, then rummages through the entire house to find secret passage ways, uncover dark secrets irrelevant to that about her family's past and present, and is crumbtrailed to knowing the exact nature of her sister's whereabouts? It works as a game because it's interactive and you can move onto the next thing without thinking about it entirely realistically, but take it outside of that and it is just incredibly contrived.

But despite that, I would still say Gone Home is one of the better examples out there because it's entirely framed for its story telling. When games actually incorporate their systems with their storytelling they become something unique to games, unfortunately the great majority of games out there don't do this and do have their stories come off as frivolous or poorly matched. Undertale has a fantastic video game story, and it does so with how well it melds and subverts the understanding the player has between its mechanics and how that integrates with how the characters interact and the player's understanding of the rules of the game's fiction. It's a game story that can only be done in a game, and that's how they should be. Whereas something like Uncharted? That might as well be a movie.

So with games I often find that there's a mismatch there. The story can be there, but I think it should be completely in service of your mechanics as opposed to little bits of cutscenes spliced here and there, or convenient audio logs and journals strewn about. Any time you are stopping me from playing the game you are failing. And that's the problem with most games, they're just not integrated seamlessly. You can often see the water and oil separation of the two.

And since I can't really fit this elsewhere but wanted to blurt it out anyway, despite the Souls games having pretty understated narratives I still find their delivery method of having inexplicable knowledge divined unto you from every item you pick up pretty stupid. But hey, at least that's pretty easy to ignore.

Edit: Something I failed to mention but wanted to is also stories that come from game mechanics. Games don't need to have some prescribed narrative to them to have stories. Make the game systemically deep enough and players can generate their own stories from the interactions, with that you have something far more personal and interesting.
 
I think Silent Hill 2, Mass Effect, and Witcher 3 prove that idea wrong, at least when it comes to clunky combat.
EDIT: Hell, the Mass Effect sequels are still considered to be inferior by many, eventhough they improved on the combat mechanics, while the quality of the story arguably declined, particularly in the 3rd entry. The same goes for Bioshock and its sequel.

It's even weirder that Nier itself (and Drakengard 1 and 3) does not have the best combat or gameplay even and is purely reedemed by it's narrative and what it does, lol
 

Melchiah

Member
It's even weirder that Nier itself (and Drakengard 1 and 3) does not have the best combat or gameplay even and is purely reedemed by it's narrative and what it does, lol

On a more personal note, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is something I would never have played to its end without the story, dialogue and characters. The platforming in particular was something I hated with a passion, and controlling the camera was awkward, but the story makes it one of my all-time favorites.

Another example would be Bloodborne, where the story and atmosphere elevated it to a whole different level. It wouldn't have been as powerful and memorable experience if they had been stripped away, despite of its excellent gameplay.
 
I would argue some of the most powerful narrative experiences in the last 10 years in anyform of media have taken place in video games...
 

ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
When I was a kid and a video game didn't have a story I would make up one in my head to make the experience more enjoyable. I need a story I'd say 90% of video games don't really hold up without a good narrative like if it was just gameplay? Most video games suck lol I would have stopped playing video games after the 16-bit era.
 

SomTervo

Member
The entire "why does this have to be a game, it could just be another form of storytelling, the neat technical aspects of the game engine aren't storytelling," part comes off like saying, "Why did Welles make Citizen Kane a movie instead of a stage production, all of the fancy cinematography is just technical wizardry, not artistic expression."

Why have interactive elements in a game when you could have an animated film.
Why show off your fancy props and actors with a play when you could have a tapestry.
Why show off your pens and pencils in a graphic novel when you could have orally transmitted stories around the hearth.

That's an excellent analogy. I love inter-medium analogies.

Heck, narrative videogames have a lot more in common with theatre than cinema.
 

Melchiah

Member
The entire "why does this have to be a game, it could just be another form of storytelling, the neat technical aspects of the game engine aren't storytelling," part comes off like saying, "Why did Welles make Citizen Kane a movie instead of a stage production, all of the fancy cinematography is just technical wizardry, not artistic expression."

Why have interactive elements in a game when you could have an animated film.
Why show off your fancy props and actors with a play when you could have a tapestry.
Why show off your pens and pencils in a graphic novel when you could have orally transmitted stories around the hearth.

This post deserves to be...

giphy7cduxd.gif
 

Paracelsus

Member
An amazing game is amazing forever even with terrible/poor/lousy/forgettable storytelling. You can go back now and enjoy Ninja Gaiden (both the NES series and the first two reboot entries), DMC3 and Bayonetta 2, and in sixty years it'll be the same, because it does not get any better than that. If anything, it gets worse.

Games relying on graphics and lots of talking to make up for the gameplay shortcomings (or worse, games deliberately whoring their gameplay to kowtow to the movie element) will be forgotten sooner rather than later.

As for Witcher, rpgs don't count. That was always the case with the genre: it's one thing to have a title with slow, methodical, stat-based combat, huge worlds to explore, lore and loads of talking, another to coordinate the entire development of an "arcade" game (actions are by their very nature) so that every fight is streamlined to look and feel like an action movie.

The movie is the guest in the game, not the opposite, it should never be the opposite.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Film, television, and literature all tell them better. So why are games still obsessed with narrative?

Christ on a bike.

As a medium, games are in their infancy as a narrative delivery experience versus all of those three. I think it's somewhat absurd to say they'll never be able to walk. What a chode.

I'm bastardising something McLuhan wrote here I'm sure but any new medium inherently takes its lead from those that have come before it until it develops and evolves its own language and lexicon that is unique because there are no maps for these territories.

It took years before closeups were established in film for instance, partly due to technological limitations and partly due to directors needing to to conceive of the narrative frame to use them.

Hell, it's only really within the last couple of decades that TV has hit a high point as the drama juggernaut it's become, and that's largely down to the success of the likes of HBO and AMC setting the way for more considered shows, less beholden to instant ratings success.
 

Melchiah

Member
An amazing game is amazing forever even with terrible/poor/lousy/forgettable storytelling. You can go back now and enjoy Ninja Gaiden (both the NES series and the first two reboot entries), DMC3 and Bayonetta 2, and in sixty years it'll be the same, because it does not get any better than that. If anything, it gets worse.

Games relying on graphics and lots of talking to make up for the gameplay shortcomings (or worse, games deliberately whoring their gameplay to kowtow to the movie element) will be forgotten sooner rather than later.

It's exactly the opposite for me. The games that stay with me for years, even decades, are mostly story-driven experiences, whereas more arcadey games are usually forgotten in the course of time. There isn't a single 8/16-bit game I'd remember as fondly as the more modern story-driven games. In fact, I quitted gaming for half a decade in the early 90's, because the way the games were back then just didn't appeal to me. I wouldn't have returned to the hobby in the late 90's, if the games hadn't offered a story.

One size doesn't fit all, eventhough people like to portray their opinions as facts. Everyone can enjoy different kinds of games, without needing to downplay the importance of aspects they might not care about.
 

MarveI

Member
The goal should be to improve it not disregard it. We've had games with good/great stories so the capability is there. It's very possible and if you invest in it the right way you can have a good story.

The sad part is most games just coast through it. They don't commit to it. They shove the story in there for the sake of it. Considering how expensive some AAA games are you'd think they could afford the simplest of things and actually get a good writer on board. Most games have very subpar storytelling not because they can't do better but because they choose not to.
 
For me, this isn't even a discussion. If I think back on my top 5, probably even 10 or 20 videogames of all time, every single one makes story a pretty important element, and would have been less appealing without it.
 

EGM1966

Member
7Z0bLZ6.png

He is on point.

This.

Diversity is where it's at. Too much thought is given to taking the word "games" and deciding what it means for the medium in the same way you could take "films" and decide reductively what they should be.

IMHO there are no such things as "games" in the strict sense when talking about virtual experiences.

Really it's all code - all 1s and 0s - it's just what you chose to create with them and that could be, for example:
  • a game
  • an interactive narrative
  • an interactive narrative with gameplay
  • a word processor
  • an image
  • music

Sometimes I wish the term video games had never been coined but of course we mostly work by cataloging hence genres so it was inevitable.

All I'll not is that some videogames are not games and some videogames are games and some constitute interesting mix of the two to various degrees and the second you try and reduce it to some ideal as Druckmann notes you're immediately getting it wrong.
 
If i read this article properly, the argument boils down to "why put so much effort when you can do it X way". Fair enough, but it's definitely weak af argument that goes nowhere.
On a related note, I want to give a shout out to Joseph Anderson video on Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider, where he talks about how the story is build to fit the game play instead of complementing it. It's a really good look on how game development cycle can affect how the story is written.
Edit: his rise of tomb raider goes more in depth than the tomb raider one
 
This.

Diversity is where it's at. Too much thought is given to taking the word "games" and deciding what it means for the medium in the same way you could take "films" and decide reductively what they should be.

IMHO there are no such things as "games" in the strict sense when talking about virtual experiences.

Really it's all code - all 1s and 0s - it's just what you chose to create with them and that could be, for example:
  • a game
  • an interactive narrative
  • an interactive narrative with gameplay
  • a word processor
  • an image
  • music

Sometimes I wish the term video games had never been coined but of course we mostly work by cataloging hence genres so it was inevitable.

All I'll not is that some videogames are not games and some videogames are games and some constitute interesting mix of the two to various degrees and the second you try and reduce it to some ideal as Druckmann notes you're immediately getting it wrong.

I don't even know what you're getting at here.

Druckmann is strawmanning. The article's point is that:

To use games to tell stories is a fine goal, but it's also an unambitious one.

What Remains of Edith Finch isn't what most people think of when they think of a "gamey" game, but he posits that it's a much more important accomplishment than Uncharted/Bioshock/etc. in gaming because it does things no other medium could do, as opposed to most story-driven games which are basically (mediocre) movies or books grafted onto a shooter or whatever.

One game he didn't mention was New Vegas, which I think is the epitome of "real" story-driven games, as it offers the player unmatched depth for how to drive the story. I asked his opinion on Twitter, but who knows if he'll see it in the inevitable sea of Gamer Rage.
 

KayMote

Member
I guess it's not a great idea to shout out such an overdramatic and generalized statement, but for the most part I have to agree.
In the last years I have been spending more time watching good movies than playing videogames and it's so apparent how much catching up games have to do in terms of good story telling. Take 'The Last of Us' for example - it's been hyped and praised for its story and yet it relies on the same tropes that you can easily see through after maybe watching a handful of Zombie flicks. Nothing overall original.

And yeah, I have to admit - I would always prefer good gameplay compared to a good story in videogames. It obviously differs for certain genres (of course I expect a good story from RPGs), but in some instances I simply skip the cutscenes - even on my first playthrough - just to progress to the next playable area. That was case for the Bayonetta games for example.
 
The Last of Us: The change of point of view and the impact that lands on the player is something only possible in video games.

Left Behind: All the interactivity (arcade machine) and the feels that evokes, only possible in games.

Do not think that because the story and cinematic presentation in TLOU are familiar territory for movies, the game doesn't take advantage of the medium.
If you liked the game it's possible you might not know why but you surely felt it. I just mentioned two instances that shows how it does it
 

KayMote

Member
The Last of Us: The change of point of view and the impact that lands on the player is something only possible in video games.

Hm, could you elaborate a little bit more on that? I feel like you can achieve this shift of perspectives relatively easy in movies with certain visual and narrative elements. Especially the cliffhanger nature of that particular scene could be easily achieved for example in a tv show. I was not under the impression that this game took any advantage of its video game form to create a subjective perspective.
 

Kadayi

Banned
IAs far as videogames go, (1) may come in time, but part of Bogost's argument is that videogames aren't exploring the medium as much as they're attempting to ape other mediums. And as far as (2) goes, I think it's clear that culturally we don't view videogames as one of the best places to find great stories.

The inherent problem with the viewpoint is declaring it an absolute versus recognising it simply as a stage in the development of what is a very young medium that is still finding its feet both from a narrative perspective as well as a technological one.

Certainly, it's fair to say that most game writing is poor, and very few games at this juncture really leverage the strengths of the medium, but this is a transitory state. Titles like Kentucky Route Zero, for instance, do some really fantastic things with exploring that space. Things that simply can't be replicated by other media.

The video series 'everything is a remix' does a great job of explaining how we learn by aping things, and then evolving them, and the principles apply to mediums as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc
 

Ascheroth

Member
it doesn't need to be something only possible in games to be well done. Which games that feature a narrative focus do you think could not be adapted into a movie?

I don't think there are any, which is my point.
I love how Nier: Automata is such a perfect counter-example to this entire topic.
That game absolutely couldn't be adapted into a movie without being noticeably worse as a result.
 
I love how Nier: Automata is such a perfect counter-example to this entire topic.
That game absolutely couldn't be adapted into a movie without being noticeably worse as a result.

This would be the part where you explain how instead of assuming I've played it.
 

Corpsepyre

Banned
I don't think I'd want to live in a world where video games don't have stories. As much as I enjoy playing mechanics-heavy games, elements such as stories, well-written and thought-out characters and world-building are what draw me in and play a big part in me purchasing something. If there isn't a compelling plot to back up gameplay, I'd rate it lower than usual. I need a reason to play than to just jump around and go through hoops.
 
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