Story in games
Moderators: Master_Kale, TNM Team
Story in games
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?
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?
Re: Story in games
"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.
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.
Re: Story in games
Two wrongs don't make a right, you shouldn't not know that DDL!
Keeper of the pointy stick of injustice™.
Re: Story in games
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.
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.
Jonas Wæver
Chief Poking Manager of TNM
I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
Chief Poking Manager of TNM
I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
Re: Story in games
Err, what?Jonas wrote:Well yeah, obviously, I think we established a long time ago that text and cutscenes should be used sparingly and with great care.
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.
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
odio ergo sum
Re: Story in games
That'd be a 500 page dissertation on why some Spanish peon wanted to join the Federation.DDL wrote:"It's like hemmingway decided to just write star trek slash fiction!"
(also, ^^ **shudder**)
Growing old is inevitable.......Growing up is optional
Re: Story in games
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.
Re: Story in games
That doesn't mean it should be.Jaedar wrote:Err, what?Jonas wrote:Well yeah, obviously, I think we established a long time ago that text and cutscenes should be used sparingly and with great care.
I dunno what you meant by we, but I think we can all agree that the games industry is currently rife with cutscenes everywhere.
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.
Re: Story in games
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.
And yeah, games don't need a story, but having a good one is obviously a plus.
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
odio ergo sum
Re: Story in games
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?
I don't think we disagree on that, right?
Jonas Wæver
Chief Poking Manager of TNM
I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
Chief Poking Manager of TNM
I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
Re: Story in games
In other words, so long as the means of delivering the story are slaves to the gameplay, things are ok, right?
Re: Story in games
gameplay uber alles.AEmer wrote:In other words, so long as the means of delivering the story are slaves to the gameplay, things are ok, right?
Nope, I am pretty sure we agree.Jonas wrote: I don't think we disagree on that, right?
"Delays are temporary; mediocrity is forever."
odio ergo sum
odio ergo sum
Re: Story in games
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.
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.
Re: Story in games
David Jaffe, ladies and gentlemenAEmer wrote: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.
Sounds potentially cute.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 Wæver
Chief Poking Manager of TNM
I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
Chief Poking Manager of TNM
I've made some videogames:
Expeditions: Rome
Expeditions: Viking
Expeditions: Conquistador
Clandestine
Re: Story in games
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.
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.