Trying to start a little discussion here. What do you think about the possibity of a pure story game. As in no fighting or puzzle solving (not in the tradition sense). Just interacting with NPCs and experiencing a complex story play out. Possible? Comments? PHRICTION

Possible, but hard to attract most gamers who just want to perform open liver surgery on everything that moves. Also it would be very hard to get good replayability. You would need several different storyline possibilities. There was a game in Japan where you raised a robot and how you raised her would decide your victory, I think it was called Project J or something like that. Not to sure though.

There''s plenty of games with no fighting, but they usually have puzzle solving instead because the player needs to feel satisfied that they''ve done something.

What do you mean when you say no puzzle solving in the traditional sense?

Talking to people and finding out things is puzzle solving in a sense. Also fighting could be considered puzzle solving, just a very direct way to solve them!

How would such a game be different from a hypertext story?

This idea has actually crossed my mind before. Personally, I''d love to see a "game" like this(if you can even call it a game - more like a video/audio novel or a 35 hour movie, two great labels in my book). The videogame medium is a fantastic medium for telling stories, and a setup like this would fully utilize such a presentation. However, I cannot begin to imagine how good or bad a game like this would do financially.

I mean, a game like this would essentially have no gameplay. It''d just have people walking around talking to each other within a story. This would probably anger the hell out of most gamers. Key word: probably. It''s really hard to tell what audiences are going to like next.

If a bigtime game company put a game like this together with stunning visuals and great marketing strategies, it could very well erect a rather loyal fanbase among those who might otherwise be uninterested in such a game.

Who knows. If you''re thinking about giving it a try, go for it. I''d definitely buy a copy.

I think it would have the potential to be very fun. It''d have to have NPC''s with high quality reactions. After all, that''s what I''d be able to deal with. It''d also have to have a lot of options for me to do. And the options would have to do something with an effect. Otherwise, I''d feel corralled.
It seems like a rough thing to try to map out, simply because, intentional or not, I''d be trying to mess up the story left and right.

So, how much of it would be the writer''s story, and how much would be the player''s?

Hundley wrote " I mean, a game like this would essentially have no gameplay. It''d just have people walking around talking to each other within a story. This would probably anger the hell out of most gamers.."

That is not a bad description of the average detective story. The crime is committed and the detective wanders around talking to people until a solution is reached. I don''t know f this counts as "puzzle solving" but if Phriction meant not solving the sort of puzzles you get in RPGs then a detective story would be good.

quote: Original post by Hundley
I mean, a game like this would essentially have no gameplay. It''d just have people walking around talking to each other within a story.

Wouldn''t the game play be the player walking around talking to people? The only way I could see this having NO gameplay would be if the game was simply "click here to continue." Or did I miss something important?

I remember reading that in Japan they did something like this. On the SNES and such, they had non-interactive stories. Apparently they sold pretty well, but no one thought they''d do well in the US or Europe, so we never saw them.

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Omnipotent_Q
"Poor people are crazy. I''m eccentric."

I think something like this would be like ''choose your own adventure'' red books that I used to play when I was a child. They had lines like ''go to page NNN if you want to take this way'' or ''go topage NNN if you want to attack the beast''.

More or less detailed, the story would be a tree of situations and options. This, or you have a really incredible AI which can talk and actuate as different people, all of them having history, objects, works and a real simulated ''human world'' (everything this is impossible I think).

But some tricks can be done, something like interactive fiction games with conversations with something like chatter bots could be REALLY nice. Really nice if well done.