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[IceDoesntHelp]

and yet Bioshock is one of my favourite video games of all time.

Constantly replay it.

 

[Kremzeek]

Stories give games context for what you're playing.

Otherwise it's just a short repetitive arcade game.

 

[eyeball_kid]

Here's a couple of related games.

1979 Revolution is about the Iraq-Iran conflict, it's Telltale style and really well told.

This War Of Mine is about civilians surviving in wartime conflict, inspired by Bosnia.

I'm looking forward to RIOT Civil Unrest where you can play as police or protesters, and it's inspired by real events.

Yeah, 1979 Revolution has been on my radar; I haven't played it yet, but it's definitely the kind of game I'm talking about. As for This War of Mine, well I appreciate what they tried to do, but the game they made is absolutely terrible and actively destroys any pathos they're trying to create. I wrote a long post in the OT on that if you care to know more. But it doesn't really apply because you don't play as and inhabit a character. It's more of a god game where you're a narrator that orders people around. Any empathy that arises is from a traditional 3rd-person perspective. From what I've heard, it also doesn't really tell an accurate story of the Bosnian war, as in that conflict communities actually banded together to help each other.

Haven't heard of the riot game, I'll have to check it out, thanks.

 

[Dyle]

I really enjoy most of Bogost's work and respect his role in the academia of games criticism, but I cannot stand how often he, and others following Roger Ebert, use the absurd analogy of comparing games to great novels. It's a garbage comparison that requires the reader to assume so much about what the author means by what is and isn't a great novel and never explains how such radically different media are to be compared.

What criteria separates a young-adult novel from a masterpiece? Is it the quality of its prose? The multi-dimensionality of its characters? Or does it deal more with the subtlety of thematic imagery? Bogost, and most others who make this type of argument short of Clement Greenburg's Avant-Garde and Kitsch, never provide a reasonable explanation. And without providing a structure in which the reader can see what separates the high and low art he compares to games, how can they be expected to clearly comprehend his argument? I'm not denying that there are clear differences between truly great masterpieces and lesser works, but without providing a logical framework with which to delineate the qualities of works it is impossible to apply such a structure to a medium as wildly different as video games.

On the whole I agree with his argument, that games should not attempt to tell the same stories in the same ways as other media and should take advantage of what makes the medium unique. That's totally valid and strong enough to stand on its own, so why does Bogost keep trying to attach the valid critique of games narrative to an incomplete and pointless comparison between diverse media?

 

[Basketball]

I agree

skipping cutscenes all the way

WHERE IS THE MEAT

 

[Garibaldi]

Nope.

 

[Soldiussnaku]

He is on point.

Damn, Druckmann dropping dem bombs. Yep he's on point alright.

 

[kurahador]

Well somebody's nerves are a little raw!

Dude spent a decade making games that excels at writing and some nobody preach, "You know what, video game stories ain't shit".
Can't blame him.

 

[Mathieran]

I don't like it when people make these definitive statements about what kind of game is best. A variety of games are best.

I like to play games with strong narratives, no narratives, and also games that just have strong enough story to get me from a to b. As long as it's fun it doesn't matter. If no games had stories it would get old. Same for the opposite.

 

[Messofanego]

Ludologists need to Shut the Fuck Up about Narrative

Hehe, this is great.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

I feel like all these points could be leveled at other story telling mediums except books perhaps where writers have much more flexibility in things by the very nature of the medium.

I don't think so at all. Especially number three. Very rarely do I watch a TV show and think that the people writing don't know how to write to the format of television.

That doesn't mean every TV show is well written, but I can at least tell that they're aware that they're writing a TV show and are trying to plot themselves accordingly. Whereas there are plenty of games that downplay interactivity when it comes to plot and instead of making us get from point A to point B through game play, they opt to tell it through cut scenes like a movie or TV would.

 

[More_Badass]

Ludologists need to Shut the Fuck Up about Narrative

The thing is, humans make stories. They make stories with everything they can. They make stories with spoken words, written words, sung words, how about JUST notes? How about a single or multiple paintings? How about telling a story through a Rube Goldberg machine? We sit down and tell stories with our own choices and dice or just standing around pretending to be vampires with a GM that’s nothing but a glorified referee. Stories in videogames are something to be expected and is “Business as usual” for humanity.

I like this

 

[Memorabilia]

He is on point.

This. And we're done here.

 

[PSFan]

Didn't Miyamoto say something like that that to the Paper Mario Sticker Star devs? And look what a disaster it turned out to be.

 

[VincentMatts]

Last of Us would have sucked ass without a story.

 

[More_Badass]

I don't think so at all. Especially number three. Very rarely do I watch a TV show and think that the people writing don't know how to write to the format of television.

That doesn't mean every TV show is well written, but I can at least tell that they're aware that they're writing a TV show and are trying to plot themselves accordingly. Whereas there are plenty of games that downplay interactivity when it comes to plot and instead of making us get from point A to point B through game play, they opt to tell it through cut scenes like a movie or TV would.

The format of television is extremely defined though. Either it's a long-form story divided into chapters, or it's a mini story every episode that ties together in an overarching story

And downplaying interactivity is not a bad thing

 

[JimmyRustler]

If it wasn't for stories, I probably wouldn't play videogames any more.

 

[Can Crusher]

Everything is storytelling.

 

[HStallion]

I don't think so at all. Especially number three. Very rarely do I watch a TV show and think that the people writing don't know how to write to the format of television.

That doesn't mean every TV show is well written, but I can at least tell that they're aware that they're writing a TV show and are trying to plot themselves accordingly. Whereas there are plenty of games that downplay interactivity when it comes to plot and instead of making us get from point A to point B through game play, they opt to tell it through cut scenes like a movie or TV would.

I'd say that still accounts for crappy story telling. Knowing the medium their writing does nothing for me if they can't do anything with it. A lot of authors of books know they're medium they're creating a story in and still drop the ball in all manners of ways across all genres.

 

[hatchx]

I'm pages too late to jump in what people already said, but no. Just no. Don't put an entire medium into a box.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

The format of television is extremely defined though. Either it's a long-form story divided into chapters, or it's a mini story every episode that ties together in an overarching story

And downplaying interactivity is not a bad thing

In a medium where that is most stand out, unique and integral aspect of the art I don't know how you could argue that downplaying interactivity is a good thing. At that point you're downplaying the mediums greatest and most distinctive strength.

I'd say that still accounts for crappy story telling. Knowing the medium their writing does nothing for me if they can't do anything with it. A lot of authors of books know they're medium they're creating a story in and still drop the ball in all manners of ways across all genres.

Well yeah, obviously you can still fail while knowing the medium, but literally every good piece of art plays to its medium well.

I think you would have to design some games completly different to avoid cutscenes. There are some things some games tries to do with their story that wouldn't really work only with gameplay. Some games work better without cutscenes, some don't. I don't think having cutscenes means the devs failed in writting a story for a game, because it depends on what kind of game they're making.

What do you feel is an example of this?

 

[Mosse]

I don't think so at all. Especially number three. Very rarely do I watch a TV show and think that the people writing don't know how to write to the format of television.

That doesn't mean every TV show is well written, but I can at least tell that they're aware that they're writing a TV show and are trying to plot themselves accordingly. Whereas there are plenty of games that downplay interactivity when it comes to plot and instead of making us get from point A to point B through game play, they opt to tell it through cut scenes like a movie or TV would.

I think you would have to design some games completly different to avoid cutscenes. There are some things some games tries to do with their story that wouldn't really work only with gameplay. Some games work better without cutscenes, some don't. I don't think having cutscenes means the devs failed in writting a story for a game, because it depends on what kind of game they're making.

 

[Messofanego]

Everything is storytelling.

Damn right it is.

 

[Necron]

Whynotboth.gif

No, really. We can have great videogames with or without a story. I wouldnt want to live in a world where games like The Last of Us didn't exist.

1st post and all that. Neil's blood probably boiled after seeing this article.

I love The Last of Us, BioShock and Dark Souls/Bloodborne all for very different reasons. They all tell their story in very different ways. I couldn't imagine these games with absolutely no storytelling whatsoever... that would feel entirely soulless.

 

[More_Badass]

In a medium where that is most stand out, unique and integral aspect of the art I don't know how you could argue that downplaying interactivity is a good thing. At that point you're downplaying the mediums greatest and most distinctive strength.

The abscene or limiting of something can be an effective means of storytelling, presenting tone, etc, especially when that something is so integral

But yeah, even in general, I always find the hatred for stuff like the dreaded "forced walking" really ridiculous. I get why people dislike it, but the reaction shouldn't be irrational hate but rather "how can this be used most effectively".

Interactivity is as much a tool to storytelling in games as cuts are in film. We should embrace stuff like that. It's no different than filmmakers experimenting with how editing can tell a story a century ago

 

[NathanS]

So I'm guessing this is what made Walt Williams put out the equally eye rolling declaration that only narrative matters in games?

 

[Alienfan]

I can handle average to poor gameplay, but a poor story will make me lose interest fast. I like having an end goal / ending I'm working towards, I don't think grinding towards in-game bullshit has ever been a good system. I think the way video games can tell stories has always been the most impressive thing about the medium, whether it's a more scripted story, one the level design conveys or one that you create yourself through the gameplay mechanics, stories are an integral part of games. And we seem to have many great examples for all those different types, so I don't think there's a right or wrong method

 

[Radical Edward]

I think most games have shitty stories but I'd rather have them than not.

 

[Bakkus]

Did you need NPCs telling you to go places to justify going to them? I think if anything, the problem was that the discoveries you found in places were mostly shrines. If they mixed those up and they were shrines, mazes, unique overworld bosses that would help, but I don't think story would necessarily aid that

But that's a completely different topic

Or maybe used a lot of the area to be filled with interesting characters who had a story to tell and connected them with other characters in the world which ultimately was connected to the overall story. But no, Shrines, shrines, and certain quests which lead to shrines...

 

[Zen_Arcade]

The abscene or limiting of something can be an effective means of storytelling, presenting tone, etc, especially when that something is so integral

But yeah, even in general, I always find the hatred for stuff like the dreaded "forced walking" really ridiculous. I get why people dislike it, but the reaction shouldn't be irrational hate but rather "how can this be used most effectively".

Interactivity is as much a tool to storytelling in games as cuts are in film. We should embrace stuff like that. It's no different than filmmakers experimenting with how editing can tell a story a century ago

I see. You're interpreting down playing interactivity as things like forced walking, which I have no problem with. When I say downplaying interactivity, I mean taking control out of the players hands and using cutscenes as the main means of progressing the story.

I'd take forced walking over cutscenes any day. Like you said, it can mold the pace of game play and change tone. All things completely lost when I have to sit there watching two people talk in a cutscene for five minutes.

 

[MikeyB]

I think most games have shitty stories but I'd rather have them than not.

Yep. Give me my McGuffin.

 

[Glix]

THEY MEET

Even the best, most pure, arcade experiences are enhanced with some story.

 

[Budi]

Ayy Druckmann trigger.

Anyways, the best stories in videogames for me came from games that fully, proudly embraced the videogame as a medium and weren't wannabe movies ashamed of what they are. I.e: Souls, Bloodborne, SotC, Portal/Half-Life.

They're far beyond what any gameplay-cutscene-gameplay-cutscene game could ever achieve. It doesn't matter how much Hollywood or "cinematic" they make the cutscenes and press-forward gameplay at Naughty Dog or how many more cutscenes can Kojima cram into his new game, I'll still be more interested and impacted by the world of SotC and BB than I ever will from any of these.

Don't even make me mention the walking simulators.

I don't think I've played many walking simulators with tons of cutscenes, could you point me what they are?

yes that is true. because that is obvious. Do i have to repeat myself? G...A..M..E. Gameplay should always come first. It is the thing most people play games for. I thought it should be a no brainer idea, but apparently not. Bad stories don't harm gameplay. Bad gameplay cannot be saved by good story.

Wouldn't it suck though if we only got games that most people play? The fact is, it's better for everyone to get wide variety of games in different genres and styles. That grows the medium and keeps people entertained and challenged.

I love posts like this as they act like movies, books, tv or any entertainment medium arent full of tripe more often than not. For every show like The Wire we get a dozen like The Big Bang Theory.

Yuuup, I wonder how many of these people use movies to see CGI spectacles instead of great stories. And no, Marvel movies aren't those with great stories. Games should be only about gameplay, but film can be used to deliver explosions or tits and ass?

I feel like people put words in his mouth. He hasn't said that games with stories are bad, just that they are better without them. There is a difference.

Also, the market seems to agree with him. If you look purely at play time of all
the most played games come with little to no story. Are the most played games the best games? I tend to think so, but maybe that is debatable.

Multiplayer games? Free to play games? You are right, not much storytelling in those. No wonder everyone in GAF seems to love MOBA:s so much.

 

[More_Badass]

I see. You're interpreting down playing interactivity as things like forced walking, which I have no problem with. When I say downplaying interactivity, I mean taking control out of the players hands and using cutscenes as the main means of progressing the story.

I'd take forced walking over cutscenes any day. Like you said, it can mold the pace of game play and change tone. All things completely lost when I have to sit there watching two people talk in a cutscene for five minutes.

I don't mind cutscenes either, when they're Last of Us or Uncharted quality, or even Max Payne 3 (really loved MP3's stylish noir-ish presentation). At that level, the good voice acting, animations, etc. just make it an enjoyable animated scene that can enjoyed in the same way that a scene in a movie or show can

But they shouldn't be a crutch. Take The Last of Us for example. There were cutscenes, sure, but a lot of the relationship between the characters came from the gameplay. The cutscenes were the cappers on those segments, letting the story intensely focus on the characters in a way that's hard to do during direct control

 

[hertog]

Paper Mario thousand year door, best Mario

 

[Bold One]

Honestly, this is true.

I am getting tired of these pretentious articles written by pseudo-intellectuals moaning about how they think video games should be.

I think you are right, I also think its ironic that you would quote a Druckmann tweet re: pseudo-intellectuals.

 

[Tarextherex]

Didn't Miyamoto say something like that that to the Paper Mario Sticker Star devs? And look what a disaster it turned out to be.

Nah fans complained about Super Paper Mario having too much story via Club Nintendo feedback

 

[More_Badass]

I think you are right, I also think its ironic that you would quote a Druckmann tweet re: pseudo-intellectuals.

He's a game designer and writer. It's like you discussing film theory versus Villeneuve talking about film. It's not a matter of dueling pseudo intellectuals, but of "pseudo-intellectual" and experienced person in the industry

 

[Mosse]

What do you feel is an example of this?

I feel some of the more intimate scenes in Uncharted 4 and The last of us works better as cutscenes for example. You could give the player something to do during these moments, but I think that would distract a bit from the dialouge and acting depending on the scene and I think the more directed cutscene works better in those cases.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

I don't mind cutscenes either, when they're Last of Us or Uncharted quality, or even Max Payne 3 (really loved MP3's stylish noir-ish presentation). At that level, the good voice acting, animations, etc. just make it an enjoyable animated scene that can enjoyed in the same way that a scene in a movie or show can

But they shouldn't be a crutch. Take The Last of Us for example. There were cutscenes, sure, but a lot of the relationship between the characters came from the gameplay. The cutscenes were the cappers on those segments, letting the story intensely focus on the characters in a way that's hard to do during direct control

This is the crux of what I'm trying to say. I feel that anymore cut scenes are overused. You shouldn't be taking control out of the players hands unless it's something you can't convey through game play. Cut scenes used to be rewards for progressing the story through game play, and now they're used TO progress the story. Which ends up downplaying the mediums strengths for no good reason.

Add in the fact that the dialogue during a lot of these cut scenes isn't very good in the first place and you have a situation where you're killing the pace of your game play just to clumsily convey something that probably could have been conveyed through a handful of other interactive ways.

I feel some of the more intimate scenes in Uncharted 4 and The last of us works better as cutscenes for example. You could give the player something to do during these moments, but I think that would distract a bit from the dialouge and acting depending on the scene and I think the more directed cutscene works better in those cases.

But given that it's interactive, couldn't you just stand there like you normally would during a cutscene if you really wanted to?

Giving the player the ability to do something else doesn't mean that they have to use that ability.

 

[Cyanity]

Videogames are better without gameplay. Ok now when can I get my editorial published?

 

[Nepenthe]

Oh dear.

There's some direct quotes from the article I wanna address because they're kinda doozies.

A longstanding dream: Video games will evolve into interactive stories, like the ones that play out fictionally on the Star Trek Holodeck.

He starts out with this which I feel is somewhat of a strawman? Does the gaming community at large advocate for advancement of the medium to a point where we are physically inserted in the games and have direct agency on the way the story plays out, or do we just want better stories within the frameworks we have that aren't embarrassing? Seems like an odd and assumptive way to start out the whole thing, and if that's the assumption he's basing the rest of the article on, we're already in trouble.

It's an almost impossible bar to reach, for cultural reasons as much as technical ones. One shortcut is an approach called environmental storytelling. Environmental stories invite players to discover and reconstruct a fixed story from the environment itself....

The approach raises many questions. Are the resulting interactive stories really interactive, when all the player does is assemble something from parts? Are they really stories, when they are really environments?

The bolded effectively answers the first question.

Second, environments can present narratives within themselves, yes. This is the point of mise-en-scene and general staging in films, of which games borrow from not necessarily out of a misguided attempt at emulation, but because they also happen to be a visual medium too. I honestly don't get people's obsession with trying to separate gaming and film into completely mutually-exclusive fields when there is an inevitable overlap of the foundational building blocks of each medium as a result of their shared visual natures, like a camera view or even color.

On the whole, there is nothing to fault in What Remains of Edith Finch. It's a lovely little title with ambitions scaled to match their execution. Few will leave it unsatisfied.

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

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

I haven't played Edith Finch to be able to corroborate his feelings about the way the narrative does or doesn't make use of the interactive elements, so take this entire response with a grain of salt. I hear this sentiment all the time, particularly with people who aren't as gung-ho about animation as I am unless it's entirely fantastic and out of the realm of possibility, because that's when it supposedly "pays for itself," aka "why would I watch an adult animated film when I can just watch a live-action version of the same thing?!" And my answer is that the medium itself and its context changes the perception of any given storytelling element. Marshal McLuhen 101 here.

An easy example is the ballroom scene in Disney's animated version of Beauty and the Beast. Even if you replaced the Beast with a human male and made it so that it would be possible to film in live-action, the animated scene would still be more impressive because the context that the entire dance was painstakingly hand-drawn alone still exists, and thus it elevates the meaning, mastery, and emotional beauty of what is ultimately nothing more than a two-minute playback illusion of colored drawings showing a guy and a girl waltzing.

Similarly, a game about a story that isn't restricted to visual illusion justifies its existence through the medium itself, because it puts you in the position of having to maneuver through an environment yourself, and a level of self-insertion or self-extension naturally arises from this charge (ex. people are more apt to say "I fucked up" than "X character fucked up" when failing a game's challenge). This changes the way the entire experience surrounding the narrative may feel to a player and their emotional investment. So, while Edith's narrative probably could exist comfortably in any other medium, that's not the point.

These are remarkable accomplishments. But they are not feats of storytelling, at all. Rather, they are novel expressions of the capacities of a real-time 3-D engine. The ability to render light and shadow, to model structure and turn it into obstacle, to trick the eye into believing a flat surface is a bookshelf or a cavern, and to allow the player to maneuver a camera through that environment, pretending that it its a character.

I really don't understand how he makes a distinction between video game storytelling and storytelling in more traditional mediums, but inherently slags off gaming's technical features as being valid storytelling devices in and of themselves when other mediums have the same freedom to embrace theirs in such a way. Storytelling is inherently an illusion that is built up by the respective mediums' tools as much as it is the writing of individual stories. Light, shadow, color, detail, perspective- these are as part of the narrative as the scripts themselves!

Subsequently, a camera can be a character in the way that anything else within the framework of a medium can, in and of itself, be a character. A camera's probably the easiest device to make into a character because it ultimately simulates a viewpoint and subsequently creates relationships between settings and other characters. I mean, did we not just have Hardcore Henry? Have we forgotten the whole "found footage" genre?

I could probably go on a little more, but if I were to summarize it, it seems like the guy doesn't understand how a medium itself changes the context of any single narrative, and in general he's working off some really presumptuous bases to try and explain why game storytelling is still under par compared to other mediums. Bah and humbug.

 

[yyr]

I grew up with arcade games of the 1980s and 1990s. Arcade games, both retro and modern, are still my favorite types of games.

I love gameplay, first and foremost. I don't need story to be there at all. But the article is wrong. As we all know, video gaming has grown into so much more since the late 1970s and early 1980s.

There are so many options these days that you can always find something you want to play, even if the type of game you love is now a niche. And, new genres/experiences are being created all the time. That's why video gaming is better now than it has ever been before.

 

[Fishook]

I am a sucker for more story focused games, rather than filler based gameplay, I like having some sort of goal/story playing longer games. My viewing habits are exactly the same, Watching reality or general entertainment shows are just painful to watch. where I just lap up US Drama series by the bucket load.

 

[Bold One]

He's a game designer and writer. It's like you discussing film theory versus Villeneuve talking about film. It's not a matter of dueling pseudo intellectuals, but of "pseudo-intellectual" and experienced person in the industry

Villeneuve is a fucking genius film-maker, please let's not mention him in the same utterance as Neil Druckmann...

 

[Bronetta]

INSIDE is a game with no story whatsoever.

Shit just happens as you go and its up to you to figure it out. As much as I love that game, having even just a little bit of story would have put my mind at ease as its so frustrating to be intrigued by this world Playdead created but there is no information as to what it is or what's going on.

 

[DMONKUMA]

Not when you get stuff like Nier Automata.

 

[tengiants]

Really a dumb idea. If you consider what a story actually is (plot, setting, characters, conflict, resolution) I think games always contain some kind of story, just the player needs an imagination to really get interested sometimes.

I think over emphasis on plot removes player agency and that's why a lot of people play games though.

 

[Pie and Beans]

Preferred Mario Galaxy 1 to Galaxy 2 almost entirely because 1 bothered to have a mythos and loose story.

Retiremoto.

 

[More_Badass]

Villeneuve is a fucking genius film-maker, please let's not mention him in the same utterance as Neil Druckmann...

Doesn't change the fact that they're both experienced and informed individuals within their fields, and the guy who wrote this article isn't

Not that you have to be in a field to critique said field, but when you start making broad statements on the nature of a medium and its innerworkings, having hands-on experience and knowledge matters

INSIDE is a game with no story whatsoever.

Shit just happens as you go and its up to you to figure it out. As much as I love that game, having even just a little bit of story would have put my mind at ease as its so frustrating to be intrigued by this world Playdead created but there is no information as to what it is or what's going on.

If you think Inside doesn't have a story or narrative, you should play it again