Story, no contest.

Seriously:

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What would you choose? 1) A game with great gameplay but with a bad or no story. 2) A game with a great story but with crappy gameplay.

Assuming the quality of the story is judged in relation to its function in the game (a story that's good for Mortal Kombat may be bad for Final Fantasy), perhaps the answer should be, "Neither, they both suck, go play something with great gameplay and a great story".

Awesome. After you guys got past the whole wording issue and what not, I loved the responses. And yes, I was asking to see where people think I should put most of my time. I'm making a game now, and I've been working on the story for a little over a year now. It's an RPG. And I've been playing with the gameplay a little here and there, but I've always really liked a game with a really good story involved. So, I'm just wondering if my effort in creating an awesome story is worth it, if people are just gonna' want to blow some shit up or something like that. *Shrugs* Any more posts that you guys offer I would read and love to hear from you, thanks again for all your responses, I appreciate it. And sorry if I sounded bitchy at the top of the forum, Classes just started back up today. :P

The question is nonsensical. As well to ask, "Which is better: dying of starvation, or dying of thirst?"

All games tell stories. A novel is not a story. A novel is merely a user interface which presents the reader with a linear stream of information which guides the imagination along a single path. It is the result of this process which conveys the story to the reader.

Since we only ever travel through time in a linear way, the experience of playing a game is ultimately the same as that of reading a story. You can video someone playing a game and the resulting recording will be a linear progression of events. If the game is a good one, it'll have produced much the same reactions as reading a good novel or movie. The same emotional strings are being pulled. The same challenge-reward sequences take place. (Followers of Joseph Campbell's Jungian analyses of myths and legends merely use different terminology for the same basic concepts.)

A game tells stories, but uses a different user interface which allows you to choose one of many possible paths while you play. The granularity -- the number of paths the player is offered -- is defined by the specific user interface the game uses. A point-and-click adventure like "Monkey Island" is far less granular in terms of raw storytelling content than, say, a role-playing game or first-person shooter, while interactive fiction -- the current name for the older text adventures -- are only a little more advanced than the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books of old. (These last are proof that interactivity is not limited to computer and board games.)

With a novel, you start with the first word and follow each word in turn until you reach the end of the story. There is interaction with your imagination, which has to fill in a lot of the details, but a novel will only tell a single core story.

With a game, you start with the main menu and twiddle with buttons, tap joypads or move the mouse, acting and reacting to each event in turn until you end up with a "Game Over" screen. All that messing about with combo moves and mouse clicks is, at heart, just another way to get you to turn the page. It's just that each page might only contain a single word and you're free to jump to any page you like, within the designer's virtual world.

Same music, different DJ.


Fundamentally, every single game is a simulation -- a model -- which is presented to the player through a user interface. That user interface defines how the player chooses how he wants his story to unfold. The model defines the limits of the story. What some designers would refer to as a "story space".

Games provide a finite story space -- a world, or even a whole virtual universe if you like to think big -- within which stories can take place. A novel is like a package holiday with a tour guide who never leaves you alone. It picks a single path for you to follow and tells you a very specific story. A game takes a step back from this and lets you roam at will over the landscape. It provides the player with the tools to tell his own stories.

Those stories can only take place within the bounds of the "story space". This story space is the exact equivalent to the "world-building" phase of a science fiction or fantasy novel. Stories set in the present day in the real world don't often need to do this as much, although good authors will often visit a location if they've never been there before.

You cannot separate "Story" and "Gameplay". The former is produced by the latter. It's an emergent effect, not a cause.

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A good game designer will only allow the game to provide paths for the player that will result in a good story.

Writing branching novels and scripts is one way of doing this, but watch a child playing an abstract puzzle game and you'll soon realise that words alone are not the only storytelling tool available to an expert game designer. You can make someone laugh by telling jokes. But you can also do it by unexpectedly slapping a custard pie in someone's face. Only the former needs a writer.

Player story first.

Sure this isn't a hard and fast rule, a lot of cases start with a story to be told and work from there but when playing the game that's the level you interact on.

When I'm talking about player story I'm talking about what the player is doing, ie I shot that guy in the head, strafed right and hit the other guy in the knee.

I enjoy the term 'player story' over 'gameplay'. I like the idea that the player is creating a new story every time they play. Using this terminology it is possible to explore new ways to let the player create their own story, or ways to influence the players story with the game designers concepts and the overall game story.

Invariably, whenever somebody asks this question, they're simply misunderstanding the conflict.

First of all: There is no conflict.

Gameplay _IS_ the story.

All gameplay extends from the concepts described in the game's premise, or the context of the story that's being told to the player.

In Wing Commander, what you did in your gameplay was dependant upon a story that was being told. From the general sense (You're fighting anthropomorphic felines in Star Wars-like space dog fights), to the specific sense (protect this fuel tanker from Kilwrathi hostiles).

There are lots of games that make lofty claims at the story but do so at the expense of how it actually relates to the actual game engine. In those cases, you have people doing little more than writing a novel and publishing it in video game format --- maybe because it would suck as a novel. There are many who make their games into movies that require the player to repeatedlu push the PLAY button in order for them to keep going --- I'M LOOKING AT _YOU_, SQUARESOFT! -- but they don't make games at all.

Even still, there are many who design a gameplay concept and let the story just kind of remain implicit. Examples are found in the DooM of yore (by id software), and Crimsonland. Although in those cases, the story isn't as thickly developed, isn't as presumptuous, and isn't as overtly thrust into the player's face, it's still there. Just a little more simple.

If I had to choose between playing Final Fantasy 10 and Crimsonland, I'd choose Crimsonland hands down -- but this is largely because the bits of GAMEPLAY in FFX that make an appearence between forced cinematics is _CRAP_ in the first place.

The story I managed to tell myself in the unceasing onslaught of giant spiders is infinitely more interesting than the contrived drama attempts and Japanese cliches y'find in just about any Squaresoft game.

Suppose there is a game where whenever you clear a level, you get $100 in real life, and the level itself only consists of clicking moving circles. People play this game because of the reward.

The reward is the motivation to interact. Gameplay and story are only two types of the rewards. Monetary reward is a third type (gambling is a game). Social interaction is a fourth type (competitions are games). The importance of the reward type is not the preference of the designer, but the targeted players.

I pick gameplay between gameplay and story, because gameplay it can be expanded easier to other types of reward.

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Original post by Way Walker Seriously: Quote: What would you choose? 1) A game with great gameplay but with a bad or no story. 2) A game with a great story but with crappy gameplay. Assuming the quality of the story is judged in relation to its function in the game (a story that's good for Mortal Kombat may be bad for Final Fantasy), perhaps the answer should be, "Neither, they both suck, go play something with great gameplay and a great story".

Poker is a game. It has no story at all. It doesn't suck.

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Original post by Wai Poker is a game. It has no story at all. It doesn't suck.

Oh yes it does. It's just not one written in words.

Try watching other players playing it and talk to them about the game after they've finished a session.

Remember: stories are what you get when entities interact. A good story is merely a description of interesting interactions. What one person finds interesting is subjective and that is why some people like poker while others prefer football.

Joseph Campbell explained this in great detail in his books on mythology. I refer not to his "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" and other derived works, but his original "Masks Of God" series examining and exploring the various myths and legends of the world. This series formed the basis for his later Jungian analyses. (Granted they're very dry and make for heavy reading, but they really are worth the effort.)

All games tell stories while they are being played. Games merely provide a "tell your own story" toolset for players. There is a wide spectrum of genres, many of which are defined primarily by how flexible and granular their storymaking toolset is.

CRPGs, for example, are closer to the less-granular "Choose Your Own Adventure" end.

Simulations are essentially completely open and the more accurate ones often make little or no effort to ensure that the stories the player can make from its elements are interesting. (For straightforward simulations, the reward usually comes from mastery of the interface and model(s) being simulated rather than any form of explicit story structure. The learning process is the fun bit.)

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Original post by stimarco Oh yes it does. It's just not one written in words. Try watching other players playing it and talk to them about the game after they've finished a session. Remember: stories are what you get when entities interact. A good story is merely a description of interesting interactions. What one person finds interesting is subjective and that is why some people like poker while others prefer football.

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Simulations are essentially completely open and the more accurate ones often make little or no effort to ensure that the stories the player can make from its elements are interesting. (For straightforward simulations, the reward usually comes from mastery of the interface and model(s) being simulated rather than any form of explicit story structure. The learning process is the fun bit.)

I'm a bit confused as to what you are considering a story. I agree with the second statement I quoted but less so with your first.

I think it's not accurate to describe a story as merely "a description of interesting interactions". A listing of moves in a top level chess match, an audio log of a police chase, or a listing of famous events in the 14th century are descriptions of interesting interactions but I wouldn't by default label those as stories. A story however needs structure and pacing to make it evolve from a mere chronicle. It's more about the encoding than the content.

By my [unexplained] definitions, gameplay. Every day of the week and double on weekends.

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Quote: Original post by stimarco Oh yes it does. It's just not one written in words. Try watching other players playing it and talk to them about the game after they've finished a session. Remember: stories are what you get when entities interact. A good story is merely a description of interesting interactions. What one person finds interesting is subjective and that is why some people like poker while others prefer football. Quote: Simulations are essentially completely open and the more accurate ones often make little or no effort to ensure that the stories the player can make from its elements are interesting. (For straightforward simulations, the reward usually comes from mastery of the interface and model(s) being simulated rather than any form of explicit story structure. The learning process is the fun bit.) I'm a bit confused as to what you are considering a story. I agree with the second statement I quoted but less so with your first. I think it's not accurate to describe a story as merely "a description of interesting interactions". A listing of moves in a top level chess match, an audio log of a police chase, or a listing of famous events in the 14th century are descriptions of interesting interactions but I wouldn't by default label those as stories. A story however needs structure and pacing to make it evolve from a mere chronicle. It's more about the encoding than the content.

You have a point in that my reasoning isn't all that clear. (It's late and I rarely proofread my posts when I'm tired; it just makes things worse.)

My rationale is derived from a lot of research and 20+ years' experience in the industry rather than lifted out of a book I can point to, so it's... well... tricky to explain in a few short lines.

Basically, I consider a story to be defined not by its form, but by its effects on the reader. (Or "player". I tend to use the two words interchangeably in this context.)

I also have good reason to believe that the traditional, structuralist view of how stories work -- plot, characterisation, world-building, etc. -- is far from ideal.

What people call "Plot" tends to fall out of the interactions between characters and their environments, and there is much empirical evidence to suggest that most readers really don't care all that much about tight plots and the like.

I've heard this same viewpoint from a number of published authors, so it's not just Hollywood movies. A lot of "airport blockbuster" novels -- Clive Cussler's ouvré for example, or even Dan Brown -- have shockingly thin plots and are little more than set-pieces joined together with bits of sticky tape and string.

A story doesn't need to make sense for it to be a great story. Spike Milligan was famed for his absurdist and surrealist comedy. Similarly, the Pythons showed that a joke doesn't even need to have a beginning, middle and end. We can use implication and semiotic short-cuts to imply punchlines.

Legends are often full of contradictions and blatant impossibilities. Mortal females apparently found gods in the form of bulls seriously attractive. Religions have been founded on equally flimsy foundations. It's not what you say, but how you say it. Nowhere is this more true than in storytelling.

A story isn't about the plot. It's about the characters. That's all people have ever been interested in. It's why soaps like Coronation Street are among the longest-running TV programmes on Earth. No matter how often the writers recycle the same old "X falls in love with Y who is having an affair with Z who happens to be married to X"-type stories, viewers still persist in watching these soap operas in their millions. Why? Because they don't give a stuff about the why. They're only really interested in the what, how and who with.

Similarly, many popular crime series -- "Columbo", for example -- even go so far as to give away the "whodunnit" part right at the beginning. The story comes from the detective's interactions with the suspects and watching how he teases out the truth. Even though the audience already knows the answers, it's the journey -- not the end itself -- which creates the tension. Unlike traditional Agatha Christie mysteries, the enjoyment comes not from solving the logic puzzle yourself, but from watching how the characters discover the pieces and fit them together.

Fuck plot. Nobody cares about plot. Hollywood has been getting away with projecting overblown theme park rides onto our silver screens for decades and nobody's noticed. There's a damned good reason why "a rollercoaster ride of a movie" is such a cliché: it's both figuratively and literally true.

I could write much more on this subject, but I've got to go to bed.

Regards,