Story in games

[AEmer]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012 ... mpaign=rss

So here's a guy who's arguing strongly against set narratives in games.

I'm wondering what your oppinions on his take are. How wrong is he, is he wrong, and do you take anything meaningful with you from an article like that?

[DDL]

"It's like the world's best chef, instead of working in a fine restaurant, decides to start working at McDonald's"

That's totally my "bad quote of the day". I might as well say "narrative in games? It's like a brick suddenly decided to be pasta! OLOL"

Also, apparently skyrim doesn't have a plot? Is this true? Seems...out of keeping with their previous incarnations.

Also, apparently games should be striving to be big successes (like angry birds!), whatever sacrifices need to be made (seriously, angry fucking birds is listed as a desirable thing for games to aim for! ANGRY BIRDS!!11one). None of this 'carries a powerful meaningful message' or 'critically acclaimed' stuff: just make an iphone applet game, or something that lets mouthbreathers shoot each other through the telly. Now imagine applying that same rationale to literature.

"It's like hemmingway decided to just write star trek slash fiction!"

(also, ^^ **shudder**)


So yeah, he is wrong, and is also wrong about the wrong things. Which is quite impressive. I'm not sure if that technically makes him right, actually? Confused.

[Phasmatis]

Two wrongs don't make a right, you shouldn't not know that DDL!

[Jonas]

Oooh David Jaffe! I love to hate that guy

Batman: Arkham City's story is player-created? Is it balls. There's fucking cutscenes in there. Skyrim sure does allow you create your own stories, but in addition to its world simulation, it gives you a whole bunch of mini-stories to create your own overarching story out of. That's cool though, I agree. As deep as a good novel, though? Uhm... depends how you define "deep", I suppose.

This whole argument comes up too damn often. David Jaffe should feel completely free to not put any narrative in his own games, but he can fuck right off with his prescriptive mindset. Should games tell their stories differently than movies or books? Well yeah, obviously, I think we established a long time ago that text and cutscenes should be used sparingly and with great care.

But good stories are immortal, and they hold a very special place in human culture. Stories have been evolving for millennia and have handily adapted to every new medium we've applied them to, be it theater, writing, radio, film, games. Amusingly, perhaps the form of storytelling that most closely resembles what games can do is oral storytelling and participatory theater, where the audience is allowed some measure of control over the direction of the narrative.

It comes down to this: entertainment is fleeting, but stories are forever. Mere entertainment can be powerful, yes, but it relies on spectacle and so its appeal fades more quickly and its ability to effect change in society or in the individual entertainee is questionable. Entertainers are important and admirable and should not be looked down on, but entertainment isn't everything, and if you're good enough to entertain and convey a lasting story that'll stick with people forever, I see no reason why David Jaffe should attempt to stop you.

tl;dr: Games shouldn't be anything. Games should be everything.

[Jaedar]

Well yeah, obviously, I think we established a long time ago that text and cutscenes should be used sparingly and with great care.

Err, what?

I dunno what you meant by we, but I think we can all agree that the games industry is currently rife with cutscenes everywhere. Text dumps abound as well in bioware games(for example) and people seem to applaud them for it.

Imo, cutscenes, text, voiced dialogue, graphics are all valid means of presenting a story in video games. But it matters how you tell it, cutscenes have a tendency to not be interactive for example, which kind of hampers them a lot when it comes to interactive storytelling validity.

[bobby 55]

"It's like hemmingway decided to just write star trek slash fiction!"

(also, ^^ **shudder**)

That'd be a 500 page dissertation on why some Spanish peon wanted to join the Federation.

[gamer0004]

What an idiot. What aggravates me most is that he presents this as an either/or dilemma. It's not. We can have both games with a focus on narrative, games with hardly any storytelling and everything in between.

[DaveW]

Well yeah, obviously, I think we established a long time ago that text and cutscenes should be used sparingly and with great care.

Err, what?

I dunno what you meant by we, but I think we can all agree that the games industry is currently rife with cutscenes everywhere.

That doesn't mean it should be.

I agree with him insofar that trying to crowbar a story into a game where there shouldn't be one is a bad idea - for example, Unreal Tournament 3's singleplayer. Or when cutscenes make up half of the game, like Bulletstorm. Game studios should go easy on the cutscenes, they generally look rubbish because of the limitations of facial animation and the like - plus game writers are generally dreadful and try and write as if they're making some kind of epic film.

[Jaedar]

Well, if you think that the cutscenes and stories are shit because the writers and facial animators are shit you should say that instead of saying they're bad means of delivering a story

And yeah, games don't need a story, but having a good one is obviously a plus.

[Jonas]

Obviously cutscenes and text are brilliant ways of delivering a story, we have hundreds of years of novels and a century of films to prove that, but as you say, it's not exactly where the medium really comes into its own. I think cutscenes can work excellently, and I think text dumps can work excellently, but both have to be used in moderation and care must be taken to make sure it all works well with the actual gameplay, which is the part where the game is actually... a game.

I don't think we disagree on that, right?

[AEmer]

In other words, so long as the means of delivering the story are slaves to the gameplay, things are ok, right?

[Jaedar]

In other words, so long as the means of delivering the story are slaves to the gameplay, things are ok, right?

gameplay uber alles.

I don't think we disagree on that, right?

Nope, I am pretty sure we agree.

[AEmer]

That was actually my main takeaway from the article; I figured he was being hyperbolic, but that the underlying meaning was to structure the game around the game, not around the story, and that adopting the narrative structure from movies, or putting this at the forefront, was going to make games junk.

Which isn't exactly right; it's not what he's saying, and if it's what he means to say, he goes about saying it in such an obnoxious, unreasonable fashion that it seems like he's saying something else entirely.

Oh, and here's an idea my morning mind just cooked up: How about, instead of having an intro cinematic, you get an intro game? It'd be completely skippable, but it'd be an actual interactive thing? Sortof like a choose-your-own-intro.

[Jonas]

Which isn't exactly right; it's not what he's saying, and if it's what he means to say, he goes about saying it in such an obnoxious, unreasonable fashion that it seems like he's saying something else entirely.

David Jaffe, ladies and gentlemen

Oh, and here's an idea my morning mind just cooked up: How about, instead of having an intro cinematic, you get an intro game? It'd be completely skippable, but it'd be an actual interactive thing? Sortof like a choose-your-own-intro.

Sounds potentially cute.

[AEmer]

It's obviously what half life 1 did, and in a sense, half life 2 does it as well...and everybody these days does the cart/train/car ride, and occasionally it goes to your own execution.

It's a cute idea to do it this way, but it's too much like the game itself, and handles other things than an intro usually handles...and usually the limited freedom feels like lip service.

If the point of those things is to make a ludological introduction, then it should be the gameplay of this section that's meaningful and serves as the actual introduction; it should be an actual gamey bookend, not just a pretend one.

Preferably, these sequences would contain characters different from the main character, perhaps taking place in a different location.

There is no reason, for instance, that the conversation between simons and page in Deus Ex couldn't be playable, with a mass-effect type wheel for deciding the general tenendency of the responses.