Wow. JBourrie, you just don't hold back, do ya'? Heh, I appreciate the feedback though, I really do. And I get what your saying, but I do have to disagree, no matter how good gameplay is, if you sit there and play for hours, then your gonna' get really fuckin' bored. However, I do see what everyone is saying about the leveling system...and I'm actually working on a seperate system that doesn't involve you gaining levels and shit like that. I'm working on a system where as you battle, based on what moves you use and what not, the game will increase your stats accordingly to how you play each character.

Now I don't agree that I'm in the wrong business. Someone said that I should go into the movie business if I want to tell stories, and that's bull shit. While a good story with bad gameplay can destroy a game, I have no dillusions about this, a game with good gameplay and a horrible story can also ruin a game. And whoever mentioned Elder Scrolls.....while it is an RPG, it's not the kind of RPG I'm making. They should honestly have sub-categories of RPG's. I have never liked the Elder Scroll games. I know this may offend some of you, but I think they lack a decent story, and they were merely created so that you can run around a massive environment acting like a dick, which you probably do in real life anyway, so what's the point of doing it in a virtual setting?

I think a few of the things that I said were takin' out of context or misunderstood. I am not going to bribe my players with a story. I mean, if that's the only reason they play the game is to find out the rest of the story, then I'm not gonna' argue, I'll take that as a major compliment. But I have yet to come up with a way to make the gameplay that much more interesting. I can add a thing here and there, but I'm just not sure what I'm doing with it. With most RPG's you get bored of it, and you dont' want to play anymore, but you want the story, that has just been my experience and I know a few friends feel the same way.

Also, I am only telling my story. If I feel I need to end it, I will end it. I will not drag a game out because people feel it's too short, that not only drags out gameplay, it ruins the story. And whoever said something about Final Fantasy, while it may not be the holy grail of RPG's, it is damn fuckin' good. I'm just trying to get a story out there, that hasn't been done by RPG's, and not by many other genre's either. I mean, RPG's tend to take place in a fantasy environment, or have a fantasy influence. My game takes place in the far future, but with primitive kinda' means. If you've seen Serenity, that was a big inspiration for the feel of the game. Also, I'm putting in some sports that I've invented. Combinations of different sports that we play now. Like Sky Diving meets Kickboxing is part of our opening scene. It may sound retarded, but I've storyboarded it and it looks awesome.

I'm just trying to not follow what others have done. You may recognize certain influences in the game, but I'm trying to stay away from molds that people have put on RPG's. The turn by turn battle system I want to get rid of. The leveling up process is gone. The whole thing about people being able to take a hit from a sword with no real protection and be ok because it was only 50 points of damage is bull shit, and I will provide a reason if there is one as to why you can get shot and keep fighting. I want the player to feel like they are playing in an environment which is slightly fesible, and they can really get into it.

Also, none of this bull shit characters. With the high pitch voices and that crap. I'm making real characters, that people can relate to, with characteristics, traits, merits, flaws, behaviors....Just characters that the player can relate to and become more attached to. If a character in the game starts to cry, I want the player to well up with tears in their eyes. In a fight, I want the player to feel like the shit as he cracks heads all through the fight. Also, the whole 7 people in your team, but for some reason only 3 people can go with you is bull shit. I have a system which will make it so that you have everyone in your party at once, but the more people you use the more enemies will be in the fight and the harder and longer the fights will be.

So I mean, I'm seriously trying my best to make everything really fun and awesome, but I'm mostly focusing on my story. I find Science Fiction hard to write for, because if you go too far, people find it lame and outlandish, but if you keep it contained and down to earth then people will really get jazzed with it. So yeah.....I think that's all I have to say.....did you enjoy my novel?

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Original post by Trapper Zoid Quote: Original post by stimarcoYou 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. I fully understand - it's surprisingly hard to define exactly what a story is. I was considering adding the line 'Then define "story"' in my very first post in this thread, but I thought that would make the tone too confrontational for the first reply.

This is where I disagree with pretty much the entire planet: People seem to view Play and Story as two separate and distinct concepts. I don't. I consider Story a subset of Play. Story is what you get if you sucked all the interactivity of out Play.

If I were a mathematician, I'd probably phrase it as "Story is Play minus the dimension of interactivity." I.e. if Play is a two-dimensional concept, then Story is a one-dimensional subset 1D.

Admittedly, this still leaves the question: "Define 'Play'".

One thing I am reasonably certain of is that there are good anthropological and archeological cues which suggest that playing is as important to many species -- including our own -- as breathing. My sources are, again, varied, but I should perhaps mention Joseph Campbell's original "Masks of God" books again. These provide some very strong supporting evidence to back up my hypothesis. (I should point out that the archeological discussions in these books are the most relevant to my hypothesis, so reading only the first book -- "Primitive Mythology" -- should be enough to give you an idea of the roles of storytelling, myths and play in our past.)

Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence" also adds support from the neurobiological side, while there has long been support for play's role in the human learning processes in the education sector too. Many of my relatives are teachers and I've worked in the sector myself for a few years, so I have personally witnessed the role of play -- usually in the form of role-play games, but also in other, more subtle forms -- to reinforce learning. (The games industry is far from the only industry I've worked in.)

Play is, I suspect, an emergent effect of how our memories work, so its definition is, I think, likely to be very simple. It's undeniable that Play, with a capital 'P', plays a huge role in our formative years. We learn almost everything about the basics of living through play and experimentation. Raph Koster's "Theory of Fun" book -- and I no longer make any apologies for my glowing review -- is essentially a restatement of educational knowledge: that if it's fun, it means we're learning something. We might be learning about tank rushes in an old RTS, or (for our very, very young readers), we might be learning that cake is much tastier than dirt from the garden. For us to have evolved in the way we have, learning has to be pleasurable. It has to be fun at a basic level.

(It's precisely because our education systems explicitly try and suck all the fun out of learning in the mistaken Puritanical / Victorian belief that something pleasurable cannot possibly be good for you that has caused so many problems.)


I contend that interactivity is the only difference between "game" and "story". ("Game" is synonymous with "Play" in this context.)


You can have minimal interactivity and end up with something that is undeniably a game we "play", but it would be a game that is mostly story and the gameplay is relegated to the level of replacing the traditional UI of a book. Instead of turning a page, we have to jump through some hoop -- twitch the joystick left to see Dirk The Daring jump to his death; twitch it right and you get a bit more story played at you. (I.e. "Story as Reward." A design technique I despise, but which is all too common in most computer-based RPGs. And quite a few other genres too.)

Eliminate the interactivity entirely and you get a movie.

Add more interactivity and you get more play. You open up more choices to the player.

Active Play against Passive Story.

Even so, Stories are never wholly passive. You cannot enjoy a story if you are unwilling to project yourself into it and commit to it. Every listener, moviegoer or reader places some of himself into his entertainment, no matter what medium it comes in. You have to suspend disbelief -- a real cliché if ever there was one -- but not only that: your imagination will invariably fill in all the missing details the medium cannot provide. When you watch a movie, your brain is filling in the missing parts of the sets; it's extremely rare for a moviegoer to be aware that he's watching an illusion, not a documentary. There is a camera crew behind that camera.

Even in documentaries, we might see some explorer climb, agonisingly slowly, to the top of a mountain peak, but oddly, we never ask ourselves how the camera crew were already at the summit filming his arrival.

*

Interactivity at all costs is not an inherently Good Thing. How much interactivity you want isn't the same as how much interactivity you need. I have always had a game design precept which I refer to as "bangs per click". (This is where my company name, "banbangclick" came from.) I believe that if an interaction adds nothing of value to the gamer's experience, it can be safely removed.

This is perhaps best illustrated by the fad for artificial behaviour in games. There is, in my opinion, absolutely no point in writing a vastly complicated AI module if you can get exactly the same effect (from the players' perspective) using simple scripting. (And, of course, it cuts down on costs!)

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I tend to get a bit riled up by the "every game experience is a story" theory, mainly from my interest in automated interactive stories in games. Many of the approaches I see to that problem assume that if you provide a player a simulation of an interactive world to play around in, then whatever experience they encounter will be a "story". Frankly I think that's a simplistic view about what makes a story.

I disagree. Just because something tells a story, it doesn't follow that it necessarily tells a good story. (Where "good" means "enjoyable" or "fun".) I think this is where so many of these automated "storymaker" concepts fall down. You really do have to learn what makes a good story first.

My view is that the game designer's role is to ensure the player is given all the tools necessary to create lots of good stories. The hard part isn't the adding of new elements. It's working out which ones to remove, so that the player doesn't have to wade through loads of dull, plodding, boring bits of story to get to the nuggets of fun.

Thus characterisation, pacing, immersion and the like are all extremely important, but not necessarily in the traditional sense.

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I suppose I am a structuralist in that I think stories are constructed out of their own set of rules which define their structure - although I don't think these are limited to one particular set and certainly don't have to follow the Hollywood Campbellian monomyth three act plot. I also don't think good stories have to make sense (as you said, there are plenty of examples to the contrary), but they do have there own rhythym and structure that defines them as stories rather than collections of events.

Again, I think you're talking about story quality here.

What someone will find fun is subjective and depends on that someone's tastes and background, but there are common elements that can be found in all successful stories.

This is why I find people who dismiss the Campbellian monomyth are often missing the point. Campbell never, ever intended his analyses to be used in this way. He was merely describing the common elements that appear in all (or at least the vast majority) of the entire world's myths and legends. There is nothing prescriptive about his analyses. They provide a metric at best, but they are not, and should never be, a "formula". Chris Vogler has arguably done more harm than good in his attempts to 'dumb down' Campbell's original writings on the subject.

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For example, if a little girl asked you to tell her a story, you wouldn't regale her with a chronological description of your last poker night. Rather, you might start off with something that begins with "Once upon a time" and ends with "and they all lived happily ever after" - that's the sort of structure a child might expect. Storytelling back before people were literate had to run like this so the storytellers could remember them - they remembered the basics of the plot but they also instictively knew all the rituals and patterns that go into stories to make them interesting. That's why you often get threes of things in fairy-tales; it's a good way to bulk out a story with two occurances of an event that doesn't progress the story followed by a third different variant that does.

I would advise not confusing modern Western fairy tale structures -- all the most famous ones we know of today are actually heavily 'sanitised'. They were basically rewritten as morality tales during the 17th and 18th centuries -- with their originals. "Rumpelstiltskin", for example, was _far_ more explicit in its original form. It was a coming-of-age story which starred an anthropomorphic penis as its titular character.

As for the similar structures, it's also worth bearing in mind that many of the tales we know today come from a few relatively recent collections. Mostly by the Brothers Grimm, but Dr. Bowdler also rewrote quite a few. (His name is the origin of the term "Bowdlerised".)

The reason the stories follow such similar formulae is because they were rewritten by the same small number of authors using the writing conventions of their day.

Historically, stories were told -- sometimes even sung -- orally by storytellers who would freely modify them in reaction to audience feedback. Thus many older stories have an almost sing-song, rhythmic quality to them.

This is why I don't hold with the notion interaction in stories is something new. (Even today, the best musicians and singers inevitably react to their audiences while performing. Actors do likewise today, but were even more 'interactive' during Shakespeare's time.) There was far less distinction between prose, poetry and song in the past, but far more emphasis on performance over production.

The tradition of the Celtic Harper, which was still going strong until the Victorians clamped down on it, is a good example of the oral tradition, but again, Campbell's research throws up myriad examples of these performers. The shamans of many older cultures often took on this role.

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So I don't consider every game to contain a story - it would be like considering any collection of sound to be music. Without the right sort of structure, to me it just doesn't fall into the definition.

Music really is ordered sound. It is surprisingly mathematical in nature, although I've tried to avoid going into the theory side too heavily; I'm not mathematically inclined. (I've been playing music and composing since long before I even knew what a computer was.)


But you're right, this is a massive digression. I'll stop typing now as my fingers are hurting.

I think gameplay is the most important aspect. Take for example, Grand Theft Auto. The story is pretty cool and whatnot, but basically just amounts to the usual power struggles / betrayal plot twists that we see in every gangster movie. The gameplay, however, is incredibly fun. Many times we as players simply run around aimlessly because the world they've created is so fun to interact with. Those games have a ton of replay value because they are simply fun to play.

Or, how about WoW? Not much story there, and yet it's doing moderately well for itself. Was super mario fun because of the story of the princess' capture, or because it was fun to run/jump/stomp through the various levels?

Tetris?

Well, I think it is impossible to give a single answer to this question, because there are two major types of games.
I do not mean genres or something like that, it is far more basic. It is about fun arising in a game.

A game can be fun by making the brain of the player do work. This work is generated by creating stuff to think about or by creating fast flashing images so the player has to react fast. FAST.
In both ways, the player will have to work with the game, either to get a good strategy in order to win or to optimize his reflexes in order to win.

And NOW, gameplay or story comes in.

In the first case, you rather need a good background story and a little less optimization in a good interface to the game, because the game just is not that fast that it needs a perfect interface. The player usually just wants to know the next steps of the story and solve the puzzles you give him. Good examples for this are point&click-adventures or turn based strategy games.

On the other hand, in a fast paced game, a good interface to the game is critical. Imagine space invaders on the pc with the control keys spread all over the keyboard and no way to change it. Story is not needed for this type of game, because the player rather wants to win and get some fast paced action than some really intruiging plot. Examples for this are most arcadegames and most egoshooters.


However, brilliant games will be good in both areas. Look at Max Payne, it is pretty fast paced, has a well done interface and a good story behind it, so I'd consider it a great game just like most ScumVM-adventures.
Good games are games like the series around Commander Keen, as they have a very nice interface to work with, but they do not have much story behind it or RPGs with enough story to be really interesting, like Gothic or Neverwinter Night.


So, if I should boil this down to an advice...
Look at your game and think how fast it should go and how complex it will be.
If it is rather slow and complex, go and think about some good background.
If it will be fast and shallow, just screw story and think about some good interface.

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Original post by KymTheAssassin Wow. JBourrie, you just don't hold back, do ya'?

I did hold back. I could have been much harsher :)

Sometimes a person just needs to be told that they are going in the wrong direction. I think you're going in the wrong direction. Here are the things that I think are mistakes. Very common mistakes that many professional game designers make, but still mistakes.

1) Treating gameplay and story as if they are two different entities
2) Looking for what part of the game is "more important" (the answer: all of it)
3) Limiting the gameplay based on genre conventions
4) Thinking that quantity ("more stuff") will have any effect on improving a tired game
5) Mistaking grinding for difficulty
6) Knowing what you don't want without knowing what you do want. (paragraphs 5 & 6 of your most recent post)

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With most RPG's you get bored of it, and you dont' want to play anymore, but you want the story, that has just been my experience and I know a few friends feel the same way.

That is because most "RPGs" are poorly designed. Many of them are an absolute wreck, where a shoddy story is the only thing holding it together. Others, like the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series, manage to make a fun experience out of that mess. But few games show a real understanding of what makes a game great, even the Final Fantasy series has more misses than hits. All of the content and story in the world can't make up for a quality game experience.

My recommendation:

Stop considering them to be two separate entities. Develop the story and game side-by-side and never make a decision without seeing how it will affect both story and gameplay (and art and sound and controls and game length and difficulty and...) Design is more than a bunch of ideas, it is taking those ideas and making a structure that is better than the sum of its parts. You can take all of the materials used to build the Eiffel Tower and put them in a pile, but you would still just have a pile of old metal.

While the original question is somewhat vague and the words are hard to define, I think I understand what you are trying to ask here.

I think story (as in "1000 years ago, that god created a magical weapon and hid it there, and yesterday the evil guy stole it and you have to take it back") is at least as important as gameplay in an RPG. The best game I've ever played had very (VERY) basic gameplay, which would probably be exceptionally boring, if it wasn't for the wonderful story.

Just about every RPG out there today focus on combat, and leveling characters based on combat, and the story is just an excuse to kill even more. If you create an RPG which doesn't focus (as much) on combat, I'd probably play it over and over again..

stimarco: An interesting discussion on the nature of stories with respect to games that I'd like to continue, but we've side-tracked this thread enough. I'll start a new topic so this one doesn't get swamped. New thread on a discussion of the nature of stories with respect to games.

To answer the question, I would say that both are important, the weighting depending to a large extent on the creator's intent and the genre of the game. To RPGs, I would say that gameplay is a little more important, but not by very much, I don't think.

It is true, I'll admit, that good enough gameplay can make up for a poor story - a good example from the first-person shooters would be Gunman Chronicles, for me at least.

On the other hand, I find that I more often than not quite quickly get bored of games like Tetris, and while Mario can be fun for a while, I think that once I start getting stuck I tend to start to lose interest. This could perhaps be because the gameplay has, for me at least, stalled, and there is little or no story to pull me onwards.

Similarly, if the story is strong enough, I feel that it can make up, to some degree at least, for less-than-stellar gameplay. Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy in the United States, if I recall correctly) might be an example of this. While the story wasn't perfect (it went a bit over the top for my taste towards the end, I think), it was interesting enough and told well enough that it forgave what for me was rather tedious gameplay. My main complaint with Fahrenheit would probably be that focussing on those flashing lights made it harder to see what was happening in the scene itself at times.

Of course, a game that told an interesting story but had truly horrible gameplay would probably not be worth playing - in that case a novel or movie might well be better! (Although I don't think that I'd go with JBourrie's suggestion of being in the wrong business - just keep working on it, if it's what you love. ;))

Of course, a lot depends on individual taste and on the game being made. A story would probably be largely superfluous to Tetris, but Secret Files: Tunguska would be much less without it, I would say. Again, for an RPG I would say that a decent story is a very good idea, but that a fun game and a fun system is probably a little more important.

I would agree with JBourrie on the idea of a slower levelling system, I think - I honestly dislike XP-farming in order to gain that next level and thus improve my character a little bit more, especially when levelling up has realtively little effect. Better, I think, might be to level often and provide a deep, rich levelling tree, and have levelling more often tied to quest completion than hitting monsters over the head, or at least provide plenty of XP along the way - but you say that you're not planning on using the standard levelling system, so this may not apply to you. :)

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Originally posted by KymTheAssassin I'm also trying to throw in some in-game cinematics, like what they did in F.E.A.R. When you would just be walking around and that little girl would just walk across the screen or something.

I would very much agree with this sort of in-game cinematic - those events were, I thought, very effective in F.E.A.R. - after all, something seen from a distance, or which you don't seem to be able to affect, can be used to incite fear. That which we cannot fully see (either physically or in terms of mental model) may be filled in by the mind, and, done properly, can be scary, and, I find at least, those things that are hardest to affect can sometimes be the scariest, at the least at first.

I also think that cinematics can be used to good effect - they can also be over-used, I would say, but I wouldn't say to avoid them entirely.

I also think that, if a good system is in place, that lots of varied "stuff" can be good - for instance, good variation of opponents can be good (and no, I don't mean different classes of orc, differentiated by armour or skin tone :P), as can a good variety of weapons from which to choose - two weak points, I thought, of The Bard's Tale (the recent version), although it didn't do too badly.

I would also suggest, from my own tastes, at least, variation of gameplay - for instance, I personally don't think that I've often enjoyed simply killing creatures over and over and over again (Dungeon Siege II, I'm thinking of you!) Instead, perhaps vary the killing with some areas that involve puzzle solving instead, or investigation (such as of a murder). Additionally, perhaps sprinkle variation around your levels, for instance placing a puzzle lock between two parts of a dungeon, or have the player talk his way past three NPCs to get the key to the next section. In short, break up the killing a bit.

Ultimately, however, I would say to create the game that you love, if you can afford it. Other people may not love it, but, unless it's to put bread on the table, or for some other important cause, might it not be more important that you love it?

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Originally posted by KymTheAssassin I think that's all I have to say.....did you enjoy my novel?

If you mean your little post, then yes, thank you. :P

*smiles* And now, for those who have come through my rather long post unscathed, I thank you for reading, and hope that you enjoyed it; for those who resent its length, I apologise, but offer the consolation that it is all but over. ;)

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Original post by KymTheAssassin And I get what your saying, but I do have to disagree, no matter how good gameplay is, if you sit there and play for hours, then your gonna' get really fuckin' bored.

Why do we have to sit there and play for hours? If it's going to be boring then don't just try to distract us from it or leave us grinding to get to the ending -- that's what all the games that are already out there do -- instead remove the problem by making the game shorter or actually giving us something interesting to do.

Surely no one can seriously think that a a story in a game is more important than the gameplay. I thought games like pong and space invaders were invented in the fist place because programmers realized they could interact and manipulate with things in the computer. Games are all for and about the player interactions/gameplay.

Both Half Life 2 and Alien Vs Predator 2 are shades of their predeccesors because everyone seems to be obsessed with adding mediocre storylines to all the games now. Half life 2 has clever and intricate set pieces/scenes, which you can only interact with in the most rudimentary manner (changing your positon and thus view) and they do there best to tell you this [sarcasm]fantastic[/sarcasm] story. The first game just set about making a challenging and enjoyable journey. You had Scientists and Security Guards which you realized were incidental but it was fun to recruit them for a while or listen to their banter. I dont know if its the fact that your funneled along the sequel so intricately, its so heavily designed that theirs little room for deviation from what they expect you to do.

Alien Vs Predator 2 has little replay value as all Alien encounters are scripted and predictable so that they can funnel you down this [sarcasm]brillant[/sarcasm] story they've told. Whereas the first is still scary because the Aliens positions are random and you can never be sure where you will encounter them.

Everyone quotes and says Final Fantasy VII was a great game because of the story but I do not believe that to be so. It was a good game because of the way they made the gameplay and had it intersect into the story. Most games and RPGs you get set into a routine and you find it familiar, you know what to expect, but with Final Fantasy VII they broke all the rules. You have cutscenes where you are able to move. You can change the story in subtle and even drastic ways. Wether to dress up as an ugly, average or atractive woman. Who to date. Wether a town gets destroyed by a train or not. You could never be certain of when or what you would be required to do CPR, March in time, Chocobo Racing, BATTLE GIANT FRIKKIN ROBOTS. The story is good, the way it twist and turns but its all about the gameplay. It is probably the length it is because of all the gameplay elements they added and tried to fit within it.

FPS games should not concentrate on stories in my opionion they should have a premise a goal of what the character is trying to do and then have things happen to that character, and wether or not that results in a story should be left up to the player to decide.

It seems to me games are going backwards at the moment developers are obsessed with telling stories exactly how they want them to be and forget to give the player any choices or freedom.