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Original post by pinacolada
Ugh I am so sick of people complaining about how games don''t have good plot.

1) There are games out there with good stories (one of my favorites is The Longest Journey, but I''m sure the OP has never played this).

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Ok, I kinda take offense to this ''cause I was the one who started the post saying that todays game plots are shit. I have played The Longest Journey, and it is one of the few games out there with a good plot, but that dosnt excuse the fact that 9/30 games coming out are the same rehased plots that have been done to death since the 1980''s. The storyline has taken a backseat in game design these days, and people have every right to be pissed off by this.

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Yes, the ratio of games with good stories to games in general is probably like 1 to 10 or 1 to 20. But in comparison, look at all the crap that Hollywood puts out. I think if you took the ratio of movies with good stories, compared to every movie that has been put out, you would still only end up with a ratio of like 1 to 5.

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Wait, ''cause there are shitty movies, that makes it ok to make shitty game plots? I dont think this comparison hold much ground, as 99% of movies that come out are TRYING to make a good story to suck in audiences; its just that sometimes they tottaly miss the mark. Granted there are games that DO try there hearts out to make a good plot, and sometimes these miss the mark aswell.

Now, the opposite end of that scale is horrer/gore films. To them the story is just a thing that gets in the way, but needs to be done to link one lot of blood and guts to the next lot of blood and guts. THIS is what games have become. The developers are putting in tottaly halfassed plots just to tie one explosion to the next demon bashing.

The biggest difference between movies and games is that a movie maker can say ''should we make a movie set in Rome or the high seas?'', and the plot ideas he has are only limited by what the 3d animation team can pull out (not that there isnt much they cant do!). Where as a game developer says ''screw the high seas! That would be sooo hard to program, like waves and stuff!''. So it gets scrapped and another RTS set in Rome is made. Yay.

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For point 2) I''m just going to quote Carmack: "A story in a game is like a story in a porn; it''s expected to be there, but it''s not important." If I want a quality story, I''ll watch a movie, if I want good gameplay, I''ll play a game.

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Your kidding right? You are now saying that you dont even play games for thier plots, yet you said earlier that you played The Longest Journey for, im assuming, THE PLOT!!!!

I am sure that Carmac did not mean that for every game made, otherwise RPG''s would not exist. According to your theory, they shouldnt even HAVE plots, they should just be a click fest to build your character up like in diablo. No wait, that cant work, since Diablo had an underlying plot about the demon attacks! You need to make it so that no explanation at all has to be made, no plot whatsoever. The player just has to go into the level and click over and over with no defnied purpose. Like Tetris. Yay!

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Maybe we should be complaining that Hollywood movies all have horrible gameplay!

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Oh for fucks sake.

I tell you what, the proportion of good games versus lousy ones, whatever standards of excellence you hold, should not be this important. I had an Apple //c, and if two good games a year were released, I was happy. Nowadays you can pretty much count on at least two or three really excellent games coming out every year. The fact that a thousand lousy ones come out now, whereas about a hundred games total came out annually back in the day, shouldn''t detract from those few good ones that you''re looking for. As gamers, we''ve got it better now than we ever have before, so we shouldn''t complain. Besides, we''ve still got all those old classic games that we can play. The industry doesn''t owe us quality, quantity, or an explanation.

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Original post by boolean

Your kidding right? You are now saying that you dont even play games for thier plots, yet you said earlier that you played The Longest Journey for, im assuming, THE PLOT!!!!

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More likely for the puzzles?
In almost every (every?) game the plot is there to tie in with the gameplay / justify / reward playing.

Who buys games for the plot?
99.9/100 of people buy games for the gameplay / sim-play / puzzle solving.

With the exception of maybe some RPGs, but people still buy these for the combat engine too.

I''d like to see a poll to verify your claim that 99.9% of people don''t buy games for plot. Just hard to believe I''m one of the .1% who does. A game''s plot is very important when I''m considering a game. Something that''ll make me go "oh pleeeeaaasse" when i read about it just isn''t gonna cut it. That''s not to say I won''t buy a game for good gameplay; take for example racing games or party games: they don''t need a plot.

So my hand goes up for buying a game for its plot.

*Cosmic*

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Original post by Cosmic One
I''d like to see a poll to verify your claim that 99.9% of people don''t buy games for plot. Just hard to believe I''m one of the .1% who does.

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Well the stat is made up, so it would be interesting to see some polls done on different sites. To me it is just one of several factors.

k3tch

Plot has to be had if games are to progress as a storytelling medium and as an art. Rambo had a plot that is better than most games and that is sad. It would seem to me that the game industry would have, on par, a more diverse and learned community than film and televsion, yet games rehash about 3 different plots: revenge, revenge and little guy that saves the world with magical -sword, -gun, -helmet whatever.

I would play a game without violence if it had a great tale or tragedy. By this I do not mean Hamlet goes to Animal Crossing or Sim Play, I would like to see for example a game about the Depression and dust bowlers, like a Grapes of Wrath meets Morrowind. Until something like this comes along and proves to work, we are stuck with the crap we have.

I would agree with the quote from Carmack. Shakesperean plots and back-stories are unimportant in games. And they will not be until technology improves.

Games are the awkward and insecure cousin to film. They wonder why they dont get the respect of film, especially since there seem to be many similarities between them.

The core issue is interactivity. Games are interactive, and film is not. So how do you make an interactive ''story''? Today, the only way seems to be like those "Choose your own Adventure" books. You know, where they say "if you want to propose to the princess, turn to page 111" etc. Substitute controller buttons and you have the current state of interactive story games.

The best games are the torrid adrenelin action of quake etc, or the cerebral ''crossword puzzle'' games (like RTS). Story can embellish these games, but its not the reason why they are played.

An quality interactive story will only be possible when the human-computer interface goes beyond a hand controller and menu selections. It will only be possible when I can speak to the computer. Also required is for NPC''s to respond to me in a way that gives the impression that it understood me. And this AI needs to be as solid as collision detection...if it fails once, the illusion is lost and we are back to atari.

Another important issue is the stupidity of the player. Lets say we have all the technology I mentioned above, we have created the coolest background story, the largest and most elaborate virtual set, and the most virtuous, and most evil, and most sexy NPC''s, and plop, here I am in the middle of it. Am I going to say Bogart-esque lines? Am I going to be as funny as Basil Fawlty? No, I will probably look for the biggest gun, and say "show me your tits". Make the game online, and this problem is squared. The whole thing would turn into a bitch fest, like this message board.

It is my beleif that it is impossible to create something like an interactive movie, technologically, and conceptually. The 21st century Shakespeare is not going to be a video game developer. So is the fate of interactive entertainment locked into blowing away aliens with BFG''s? No, the medium has too much potential for that.

My thoughts are more along the lines of an interactive documentry. How about a simulation of the morning of 911. Or a an african warlord with a child army. Or a date with Brad Pitt (that would take some serious AI to deal with the fairer sex haha). You could say these things have a ''story'', but its not an Acadamy Award kind of thing. Its a story about you being you, and what you would do. Think reality TV meets a real and well known environment.

I hope you ''Dudes'' didn;t fry too many brain cells reading this many words.

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Original post by boolean

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Original post by pinacolada
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Ok, I kinda take offense to this ''cause I was the one who started the post saying that todays game plots are shit. I have played The Longest Journey, and it is one of the few games out there with a good plot, but that dosnt excuse the fact that 9/30 games coming out are the same rehased plots that have been done to death since the 1980''s. The storyline has taken a backseat in game design these days, and people have every right to be pissed off by this.

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Wait, ''cause there are shitty movies, that makes it ok to make shitty game plots? I dont think this comparison hold much ground, as 99% of movies that come out are TRYING to make a good story to suck in audiences; its just that sometimes they tottaly miss the mark. Granted there are games that DO try there hearts out to make a good plot, and sometimes these miss the mark aswell.

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Your kidding right? You are now saying that you dont even play games for thier plots, yet you said earlier that you played The Longest Journey for, im assuming, THE PLOT!!!!

I am sure that Carmac did not mean that for every game made, otherwise RPG''s would not exist. According to your theory, they shouldnt even HAVE plots, they should just be a click fest to build your character up like in diablo. No wait, that cant work, since Diablo had an underlying plot about the demon attacks! You need to make it so that no explanation at all has to be made, no plot whatsoever. The player just has to go into the level and click over and over with no defnied purpose. Like Tetris. Yay!

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Okay, you keep trying to group all video games together into one category. Stop trying to make claims that "all games are such-and-such", because there are different kinds of games being made, targeted at different kinds of consumers.

My first point was that there do exist some games that are plot-intensive, like The Longest Journey or Myst- games that people would buy to enjoy the plot. You seem to agree with me on this point, cause you said "Granted there are games that DO try there hearts out to make a good plot, and sometimes these miss the mark aswell." So we agree there.

My second point with Carmarks quote is that the *bulk* of games (note that "bulk" does not equal "all") are not plot-intensive, they are gameplay-intensive, and in these games, the plot takes a back-seat to gameplay. Like in Ninja Gaiden.

I don''t see why my last comment "Maybe we should be complaining that Hollywood movies all have horrible gameplay" was so off-base. Why should we expect games to have good gameplay AND good plot? That''s a lot of work for the developers. More specifically, why should we compare the plot of games to the plot of movies, when games have to worry about both gameplay & plot, and movies only have to focus on one of those? It''s unfair.

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For point 2) I''m just going to quote Carmack: "A story in a game is like a story in a porn; it''s expected to be there, but it''s not important." If I want a quality story, I''ll watch a movie, if I want good gameplay, I''ll play a game.

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I''m not to sure that Carmack yeally qualifies to comment on plot for games. I mean Doom / Quake don''t even try in this area. Sure the man can contribute to making a good game but his forte is not in story driven games. The games he works on are more goal driven than anything so of course he is going to say that.

More than anything atmosphere is the main driving force behind a good game and if the plot can enhance this you will spend the time to dodge projectiles risking life and limb, to pick up the next big gun so that you can bring down the villan or spend hours trying to find the jade monkey to complete your quest.