This afternoon I started to taking a look in this section of the forum. Very interesting to see different kind of game stories and discussion. After I looked around a little bit I realist that a lot of the stories are written for role play, text based and adventure games. So I asked myself the question: "Is story writing only useful for this kind of games?" With this question in my head I went to the Resources and the search tool. My founded answer: ... Exactly, I didn't found a real answer. Should stories be written when there is a story in the game or not? If so, why are there not so much stories for strategy games, or fps games? What do you think about that?

Hmm, I think stories are there in all of those genres that you mentioned. I'd say you have to know your player base -- it'd probably be folly to think that an fps player would be thrilled by you giving them a 2 minute full motion video, while a game like Metal Gear Solid can be accepted with like an hour of full motion video. I chose to bring up fmv's because they're typically used to advance the story.

But as a few examples that I've played, I've always been a big Command and Conquer fan and those are real-time strategy games with good story (both the GDI vs. Nod C&C line and the Americans vs. Russians Red Alert line). Halo and Half-Life are fps games with noteworthy sci-fi stories.

So while I think Halo and Half-Life thrived in part because of great story telling, for a game like Unreal Tournament to decide at this point in their legacy to become story driven would probably be silly.

Quote: Original post by dperfors
"Is story writing only useful for [role play, text based and adventure games]?"

There are no rules. Do whatever you want.

IMO, stories generally improve games that are intended to be only played once or twice, but don't belong in games that are intended to be played many times.

I think stories are good for any genre, but you have to craft your story around the gameplay and not the other way around. Yeah, stories do seem to work better for RPGs and FPS game but if done right they can enhance any game. I would like to see stories used more in sports games(which has been happening as of late), sims, and fighting games, which usually have crappy stories if they have one at all.

Having said that, most games are becoming RPGs or at least have some elements of an RPG. Take Bioshock, which in itself is not an RPG, but it damn sure plays like one. Also GTA has RPG elements (especially San Andreas). So I think that the trend of adding a story to previously un-storied (if that's a word) genres definitely plays off of the RPG elements of the game. I mean, aren't we all really just looking for a role to play?