Here's a better telling of David Jaffe's point on story in games

No. Games should be however the creator envisions them, story, presentation and all. Saying "Make a fucking movie" is a cop-out answer. You might as well say, "Write a fucking book" or "Stage a fucking play." Different people choose to explore different avenues of narrative presentation in games because it's a medium that allows for a great deal of freeform expression. There's no wrong way to tell a game narrative.

@ShiftyMagician

Just throwing it out there - I would have a hard time calling Dear Esther a game at all as there are no real gameplay elements to speak of (you only walk and interact with nothing), so I wouldn't call it a game. However it works as a 3D visual light-novel and I had a great time with it. There should be more 3D visual novels made if there is an audience that wants stories brought to life in a real-time 3D environment instead of having to play a game to get to the story queues.

Narrative in games is important, but that narrative needs to have some interactivity within it, or else there is little point in it not being a movie.

I think you developers just need to start with a clear purpose in mind. If you just want to tell a story, then the interactive part of the experience needs to be as important at evoking what you want to get across as the camera angles, dialogue, etc you use to tell it. You don't make a great movie by ignoring the hallmarks of the medium, and you can't make a great game without doing them same. Throwing cutscenes between standard 3rd person shooting deathmatches just makes a disjointed experience.

I'm sure I'll get some stuff wrong here, going off memory, but there is a bit in a Stephen Fry autobiography where he has to write a musical for the first time. He hands in the first draft and gets told that it was wrong for a musical; he essentially wrote a play instead of a musical. The emotional moments were all conveyed through characters talking, with musical moments thrown in after the fact. A musical should have those defining emotional moments told through the musical sections, otherwise why are you making a musical?

The same can be said for games, if you are making all the interesting interactions non-playable, then why are you making a game? A game should not feel like a film where you play all the moments that were cut for time-sake. Not saying I'm against cut scenes, but it's an interesting topic.

Jaffe probably loves Asura's Wrath.

@AhmadMetallic said:

@Milkman said:

I love it when my games have a strong narrative but gameplay needs to be the first thought in a developers mind.

For the first time in.. 4-5 years? I agree with something you say.
We playgames because of the gameplay, it's pretty fucking simple, people. You wanna wrap it up in an interesting story with memorable characters? Do that. But don't create a cutscene collection and write pages of lore codex and then add generic gameplay to it, THAT is not a game.

I think the best example of integrating gameplay and story is in the little snippets we've seen of Bioshock Infinite. I'm waiting to play that game to fully form my new opinion on game stories, but I will say as much as I like Mass Effect that style is starting to get old and really showing its problems.

@I_smell said:

@Hailinel said:

No. Games should be however the creator envisions them, story, presentation and all. Saying "Make a fucking movie" is a cop-out answer. You might as well say, "Write a fucking book" or "Stage a fucking play." Different people choose to explore different avenues of narrative presentation in games because it's a medium that allows for a great deal of freeform expression. There's no wrong way to tell a game narrative.

If the game part is letting down your game, and the story is holding it up, then I 100% think you should just write a book.
If what you're making is gonna benefit from dropping the part where the guy shoots people from behind a crate for 40 minutes, then just take all that out.

Game narratives don't necessarily work in other mediums. Nier's story is only as effective as it is because it's a game. The Metal Gear Solid series works as it does because they're games. Jaffe is entitled to his opinion, but there's no way that I can agree with it at all.

I feel like there's room for multiple paradigms. Not sure why its a bad thing that a game has simple interaction and doesn't require much skill to complete. Why not? There is no ideal in game design. I feel like Uncharted is more akin to an amusement park ride than a movie, and I've been on the Indiana Jone's Adventure Ride multiple times and loved it. That's one type of experience, and don't know how you can say its invalid, and I certainly don't know how you can say its lazy.

Integrate a story into gameplay rather than rely on cutscenes. I mentioned this another thread, but I'll once again point to BioShock and the upcoming Infinite as examp;es. BioShock was a dead world where u learned the backstory thru recordings, a plot device that i'll admit is probably a little archaic today. But in Infinite, the world is very much alive w/ a war going on between two factions trying to control Columbia. The scenes w/ Elizabeth show Irrational driving the story along thru action, w/o stopping for immersion breaking cutscenes. More of this in gaming, please.

I'd rather play a game with a good story than read a book or see a movie with a good story so fuck David Jaffe.

@Hailinel said:

If a game is being sold on the quality of the cinematics, that's the fault of marketing, not development.

Jesus, really?!

Here's my position: Make games with good gameplay, please.

What exactly are you arguing in favor of? You seem largely to be in favor of excuses.

I find this whole discussion very bizarre, because 9/10 when I play games I end up thinking "this would've been more fun if they had actually put effort into the story". Bad story ruins gameplay for me because it keeps me from caring about what's going on. Even if it's just setting up the right atmosphere, rather than a solid plot - Half Life 2, Amnesia - I can get into it way more than I can with something that saves all the story for the cutscene, and then fucks even that up - RDR, for example (and yes OPINIONS).

You want to make an argument for better and more emergent gameplay and? That's great. You want developers to put even less effort into story telling than they already are? No thank you.

@ShadowConqueror said:

But I like games like Metal Gear Solid.

In MGS's defense, its gameplay is very rich and deep, it just has shit controls and some long cutscenes. Although I agree with what Jaffe said, there will always be certain games whose story will always come before gameplay for some people, and I think MGS is one of those games.

Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Amnesia, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

These are just a handful of titles that I remember from the last ten years that not only had great stories, interesting characters, and memorable events, but each title also focuses on integrating narrative and gameplay. Mass Effect, for instance, what do you call the dialogue wheel? I am engaging with the fiction on an interactive level. There isn't a dice roll determining the success of my dialogue choices, but that's not the point of it. The point is to have dialogue that engages the player, and makes them feel involved with the story and characters they're speaking to. What about Shattered Memories? That game pulled off something uncanny: it molded itself, levels, and even the story based on the psychological profile that is submitted by the player while the game is in progress. It also determines how the story concludes, personalizing and customizing the game to each individual. Bioshock nailed environmental storytelling, and Amnesia? That game is fucking terrifying, and also explores its narrative through not just the environment, but the gameplay. All of those pale in comparison to Quantic Dream's efforts. They often fall apart in the third act, but I find it foolhardy to suggest that they have not found an effective evolution of storytelling in games. I'd to see more of that, personally.

Point is, developers are already doing what Jaffe is arguing for. They don't come around every three or four months because they're fucking hard to do. Cutscenes that tell the story the developer chose for their game are easier, and they're less time consuming. I find nothing wrong with cinematics in games, just as I find nothing wrong with people who ignore them entirely and focus squarely on shooting AI in the face. It's there if you want it. To be perfectly honest, I'd like to see developers - all developers - think about the story/theme/aesthetic they want to show the player and then build the gameplay to service that. That's how we get shit like LA Noire, which, while not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, did things that were both new and interesting.

@Gargantuan said:

I'd rather play a game with a good story than read a book or see a movie with a good story so fuck David Jaffe.

You idea of a good story must be pretty tasteless then, because for every decent story in a game, there are 10 that are pieces of shit.

@SSully said:

@Gargantuan said:

I'd rather play a game with a good story than read a book or see a movie with a good story so fuck David Jaffe.

You idea of a good story must be pretty tasteless then, because for every decent story in a game, there are 10 that are pieces of shit.

The same could be said of books or movies.

@Oldirtybearon said:

Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Amnesia, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

These are just a handful of titles that I remember from the last ten years that not only had great stories, interesting characters, and memorable events, but each title also focuses on integrating narrative and gameplay. Mass Effect, for instance, what do you call the dialogue wheel? I am engaging with the fiction on an interactive level. There isn't a dice roll determining the success of my dialogue choices, but that's not the point of it. The point is to have dialogue that engages the player, and makes them feel involved with the story and characters they're speaking to. What about Shattered Memories? That game pulled off something uncanny: it molded itself, levels, and even the story based on the psychological profile that is submitted by the player while the game is in progress. It also determines how the story concludes, personalizing and customizing the game to each individual. Bioshock nailed environmental storytelling, and Amnesia? That game is fucking terrifying, and also explores its narrative through not just the environment, but the gameplay. All of those pale in comparison to Quantic Dream's efforts. They often fall apart in the third act, but I find it foolhardy to suggest that they have not found an effective evolution of storytelling in games. I'd to see more of that, personally.

Point is, developers are already doing what Jaffe is arguing for. They don't come around every three or four months because they're fucking hard to do. Cutscenes that tell the story the developer chose for their game are easier, and they're less time consuming. I find nothing wrong with cinematics in games, just as I find nothing wrong with people who ignore them entirely and focus squarely on shooting AI in the face. It's there if you want it. To be perfectly honest, I'd like to see developers - all developers - think about the story/theme/aesthetic they want to show the player and then build the gameplay to service that. That's how we get shit like LA Noire, which, while not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, did things that were both new and interesting.

This is the best post to describe how I feel about this situation.

I feel like all Jaffe did here was state some kind of point that shows just why the industry has started to stagnate. There are arguments on both sides for and against what he's saying...but should there really be? I mean, shouldn't all games be at least trying to merge narrative and gameplay together? Why should one have to be used to forgive the other? I can give at least an example of a game with a shit story, that was amazing, and that was Bayonetta. But it had some interesting gameplay mechanics going for it, though they didn't always work. Vanquish was the same. I loved those games, but they hadn't got a story worth playing for. They were arcade-style titles that did well at what they had, but really, we didn't get any rewards via cutscenes, and I think I wanted to skip most of them.

What Jaffe is saying is...well...silly. Why should one be sacrificed for the sake of the other? Gameplay and narrative can be integrated seamlessly, so why is seemingly against it? Or maybe he's not. Either way, I'm not really a Jaffe fan...the guy is nice and outspoken from what I've heard about him, but he seems to say things that he might need to sit down and think about first, as they don't exactly make complete sense...

Jaffe has a good point. Ignoring his bluntness, if a game is boring I don't care how interesting the story is. I'm not going to be able to finish it.

@Gargantuan said:

Games don't need good gameplay to be great games! Planescape: Torment is one of my favourite games and it has mediocre combat but the writing and world is excellent.

Is there a reason it couldn't just be one of your favorite books then? (I haven't played the game, maybe there is.) The argument is basically this:

"If you could just as easily do it in a movie, in a book, or any other medium then why should you make it a videogame? Videogames have the added layer of interactivity, something a movie or any non-choose-your-own-adventure book doesn't. If you're not going to use that interactivity, but instead fill the game with things where you're unable to interact or in any way affect the experience, such as cutscenes, then you are misusing the potential of the videogame medium."

Personally, I think we're far, far from achieving this potential, and the thing that is holding us back has less to do with a developers' ambition and more to do with the limits of our current technology and the harsh reality that making something truly interactive, by planning for every possible choice/outcome and implementing it, is pretty much impossible at this point. This is why we have this "limited interaction". For various reasons we are required to meet the games halfway, suspend our disbelief and play along with the game's estabilshed ruleset. I think that if someone like Bioware could give you absolute freedom to say precisely what you wanted to the characters in their games, and have them react accordingly, they'd do it. However, the place where we're currently at requires compromise.

I digress, the real critisism in the argument seem to be against those developers who, for whatever reason, is moving away from the thing that makes videogames unique in favor of making glorified movies.

No More Heroes, is an example of a game that could have worked about as well as a (awesome) movie or a series.

Dark Souls, is an example of a game that wouldn't work as well as a movie because the majority of the experience lies in the gameplay.

In No More Heroes I can't make a single choice that affects the outcome of the story. In Dark Souls I can kill almost any character and it will affect my experience, however killing them is one of the few ways I can interact with them at all. So even games that does have interactivity still have it in pretty limited fashion, because of reasons, so I don't really think it's much of a problem that some games indulge being slightly interactive movies at this stage. Most of all I don't think that by doing this that we are somehow spoiling the potential that videogames have in the long run, we're just postponing it a bit.

I dunno, Twisted Metal has that "Play challenge, Get cutscene" stuff. And the single player is pretty frustrating, especially the racing. Whether or not the cutscenes in Twisted Metal are worth the difficulty is subjective...but I don't see much point in the story. I personally really like cutscenes, so I think I disagree.

This is still an incredibly difficult topic, and it is one where we can evaluate the use of gameplay and storytelling separately. I could write my proper response here, but I'd end up writing my own blog pretty quickly. Let me just suggest Metal Gear Solid 3, BioShock, The Legend of Zelda, and Missile Command as talking points.

@RockmanBionics said:

@Gargantuan said:

Games don't need good gameplay to be great games! Planescape: Torment is one of my favourite games and it has mediocre combat but the writing and world is excellent.

Is there a reason it couldn't just be one of your favorite books then? (I haven't played the game, maybe there is.) The argument is basically this:

"If you could just as easily do it in a movie, in a book, or any other medium then why should you make it a videogame? Videogames have the added layer of interactivity, something a movie or any non-choose-your-own-adventure book doesn't. If you're not going to use that interactivity, but instead fill the game with things where you're unable to interact or in any way affect the experience, such as cutscenes, then you are misusing the potential of the videogame medium."

Personally, I think we're far, far from achieving this potential, and the thing that is holding us back has less to do with a developers' ambition and more to do with the limits of our current technology and the harsh reality that making something truly interactive, by planning for every possible choice/outcome and implementing it, is pretty much impossible at this point. This is why we have this "limited interaction". For various reasons we are required to meet the games halfway, suspend our disbelief and play along with the game's estabilshed ruleset. I think that if someone like Bioware could give you absolute freedom to say precisely what you wanted to the characters in their games, and have them react accordingly, they'd do it. However, the place where we're currently at requires compromise.

I digress, the real critisism in the argument seem to be against those developers who, for whatever reason, is moving away from the thing that makes videogames unique in favor of making glorified movies.

No More Heroes, is an example of a game that could have worked about as well as a (awesome) movie or a series.

Dark Souls, is an example of a game that wouldn't work as well as a movie because the majority of the experience lies in the gameplay.

In No More Heroes I can't make a single choice that affects the outcome of the story. In Dark Souls I can kill almost any character and it will affect my experience, however killing them is one of the few ways I can interact with them at all. So even games that does have interactivity still have it in pretty limited fashion, because of reasons, so I don't really think it's much of a problem that some games indulge being slightly interactive movies at this stage. Most of all I don't think that by doing this that we are somehow spoiling the potential that videogames have in the long run, we're just postponing it a bit.

I disagree with your assessment on No More Heroes. The story of No More Heroes works in part because it's a video game; something that the story even acknowledges at points. One of my favorite moments in No More Heroes is the point at which you're asked to take down an assassin named Letz Shake.

The whole mission is a build up with the end result defying the expectations that both the game and video games in general had laid out. The punch of the boss fight built on that tension is subverted in ways that other mediums couldn't explore in the same way.

@Hailinel said:

@SSully said:

@Gargantuan said:

I'd rather play a game with a good story than read a book or see a movie with a good story so fuck David Jaffe.

You idea of a good story must be pretty tasteless then, because for every decent story in a game, there are 10 that are pieces of shit.

The same could be said of books or movies.

Yeah you can say that for everything, but books, movies and music all have had hundreds of years to mature and develop a high density of high quality material. Games are just started to scratch the surface in terms of story telling. You would be a fool if you honestly believe that games are capable of going toe to toe with movies or books in terms of story telling. There are a handful of great stories in games, but nothing compared to movies or books.

@SSully said:

@Hailinel said:

@SSully said:

@Gargantuan said:

I'd rather play a game with a good story than read a book or see a movie with a good story so fuck David Jaffe.

You idea of a good story must be pretty tasteless then, because for every decent story in a game, there are 10 that are pieces of shit.

The same could be said of books or movies.

Yeah you can say that for everything, but books, movies and music all have had hundreds of years to mature and develop a high density of high quality material. Games are just started to scratch the surface in terms of story telling. You would be a fool if you honestly believe that games are capable of going toe to toe with movies or books in terms of story telling. There are a handful of great stories in games, but nothing compared to movies or books.

I can honestly say that, in the thirty-plus years I've been on this Earth, some of the stories I've experienced in games rank right up there with the best books I've read and movies I've seen. I would also count some movies I've watched as being among the biggest wastes I've ever sat through, and there are books I've read that were just boring if not painful to read.

Since no one has read my post before or even bother to respond to any of them, let me repost this again.

David Jaffe is basically what James Patterson is to books nowadays. A sellout and incapable of creating quality from himself and thus relies on others.

What many people don't realize is that limiting the WAY a story is told because it isn't from video games (ala cutscenes.) or books. (text driven parts ala Nier.) There is literally no wrong way to tell a story. There is only bad stories that create crap storytelling. Sure, some storytelling methods are better than some others. But there literally is no wrong way to do things as long as you have a really solid story to it.

Basically, what I am saying is, Jaffe does not know what he is doing, he is a sellout. Video games can tell great stories however the fuck they please. Limiting that capability is limiting art itself.

Cutscenes are not bad, Gameplay driven stories are not bad. Every single way a story can be told is not a bad way unless the story is crap. That is just a fact of life that seems to escape most nerds here.

Gameplay is more important these days????? HAH! I am not laughing at anyone but I AM laughing at that idea anymore. Gameplay has been the exact same thing since the very start of each genre. Like FPS games... how much have they changed over the years? Not much. 3rd person shooters, haven't changed at all. In fact, most of these games are just polished enough to make them not look dated when in reality, all gameplay ideas have already been done before. The only way for video games to become better is BECAUSE of story.

Rescuing a baby from a burning building, driving away from people who are out to kill you, delivering a baby in a backseat of some car/truck, being the president of the united states and pressing the red button to begin a game. All those are moments which can be done in games very, very effectively in cutscene AND gameplay driven.

There is no way to tell a story in a bad way, there are only horrid stories that ruin everything.

Gameplay is not even close to important as it once was anymore. All ideas have been done, it just matter if someone can polish old ideas enough to make them SEEM to be new.

Story is where video games will evolve into, no matter the amount of hatred retro gamers give these games, they have been and always will be known as the more important video games.

Story=Gameplay, Gameplay=Story. It is as simple as that in this day and age. If you do not accept this, then live with your outdated retro games with no story and leave us true gamers alone with our evolving medium that will soon outclass most other medias. (even though it pretty much has at this point.)

Thank god for Jaffe.

A good game doesn't even need a story. A good game with a bad story is still a good game, fun to play. example: metal gear solid 4 (bad story), or team fortress 2 (no story)

I think maybe there is a 3rd aspect to games tho - atmosphere. The setting, the ambient sounds, details like how other NPCs interact, the lighting. Things that are not gameplay or story. Exploring cool environments is a pretty fun thing and it's something you can't do with books, TV shows, or movies. It's interaction but not necessarily making use of any game mechanic besides movement and it can exist wholly on it's own in the absence of a story. Exploration just for the sake of experiencing the game world & atmosphere.

But anyway he's right. Neglecting gameplay and filling your game with non-interactive elements and cut scenes is DUMB. They might as well just sell me a second version of the game played thru and recorded to DVD. Because I'm not going to buy the game. I'll just watch it on youtube.

@tourgen said:

Thank god for Jaffe.

A good game doesn't even need a story. A good game with a bad story is still a good game, fun to play. example: metal gear solid 4 (bad story), or team fortress 2 (no story)

I think maybe there is a 3rd aspect to games tho - atmosphere. The setting, the ambient sounds, details like how other NPCs interact, the lighting. Things that are not gameplay or story. Exploring cool environments is a pretty fun thing and it's something you can't do with books, TV shows, or movies. It's interaction but not necessarily making use of any game mechanic besides movement and it can exist wholly on it's own in the absence of a story. Exploration just for the sake of experiencing the game world & atmosphere.

But anyway he's right. Neglecting gameplay and filling your game with non-interactive elements and cut scenes is DUMB. They might as well just sell me a second version of the game played thru and recorded to DVD. Because I'm not going to buy the game. I'll just watch it on youtube.

A game without a story is a Pong clone at best. It has nothing of worth and will continue to have nothing of worth and would be forgotten in time. A game with a story to be remembered will always remain in peoples hearts and minds. Why is FF4/6/7/9/10 so nostalgic to people then? Why are developers making games with stories then if people like you are the ones who don't buy them?

Because, they simply are most important in the long run then ANY gameplay only video game. Gamers that can't accept this are living in the past with the NES and should just stay there while current developers continue to do good things with the medium in whatever the hell way they want. Because any story is better then a gameplay only game. Otherwise what is the point of playing a video game then?

For the scores? Please, who even does that anymore? For having fun? Story based video games are far more interesting and fun then any gameplay only one. Because the game doesn't tell a story in a video gamey way? So you want to limit the very potential of art then?

Gameplay only games that sell well are more damaging to the medium than any COD game ever will.

@Jay444111 said:

A game without a story is a Pong clone at best. It has nothing of worth and will continue to have nothing of worth and would be forgotten in time. A game with a story to be remembered will always remain in peoples hearts and minds.

Yup, nobody remembers Pong...

@dabe said:

@Jay444111 said:

A game without a story is a Pong clone at best. It has nothing of worth and will continue to have nothing of worth and would be forgotten in time. A game with a story to be remembered will always remain in peoples hearts and minds.

Yup, nobody remembers Pong...

Yet who remembers it as fondly as a video game where a person cried over a characters death, a monologe, or birth? Who has cried by a game like pong? No one in the history of existence, Pong has had no influence other then to put down video games with amazing stories because of people like tourgen or Ebert. Video games have evolved far beyond what those pieces of garbage are now. They are only going to be known for creating the building steps to creating a art filled medium filled with amazing stories as it has been doing for quite a while now.

how i feel: everyone takes games way too fucking seriously.

@Hailinel said:

@SSully said:

@Hailinel said:

@SSully said:

@Gargantuan said:

I'd rather play a game with a good story than read a book or see a movie with a good story so fuck David Jaffe.

You idea of a good story must be pretty tasteless then, because for every decent story in a game, there are 10 that are pieces of shit.

The same could be said of books or movies.

Yeah you can say that for everything, but books, movies and music all have had hundreds of years to mature and develop a high density of high quality material. Games are just started to scratch the surface in terms of story telling. You would be a fool if you honestly believe that games are capable of going toe to toe with movies or books in terms of story telling. There are a handful of great stories in games, but nothing compared to movies or books.

I can honestly say that, in the thirty-plus years I've been on this Earth, some of the stories I've experienced in games rank right up there with the best books I've read and movies I've seen. I would also count some movies I've watched as being among the biggest wastes I've ever sat through, and there are books I've read that were just boring if not painful to read.

I can say the same. There are games that have given me an experience that no movie or book could give. But that could also be said for both movies and books, especially when it comes to story. Also you are going to have pieces of garbage in both movies, books and games. I have seen my fair share of piece of shit movies, and read terrible games, and have sadly bought horrible games.

With that said I still stand by my original point of saying that games have not come close to the level of story telling as books or movies. Games have done plenty of unique stories, and done so in ways very different from books or movies, but it is going to be a little bit longer until games are respected in that area.

@SSully said:

@Hailinel said:

@SSully said:

@Hailinel said:

@SSully said:

@Gargantuan said:

I'd rather play a game with a good story than read a book or see a movie with a good story so fuck David Jaffe.

You idea of a good story must be pretty tasteless then, because for every decent story in a game, there are 10 that are pieces of shit.

The same could be said of books or movies.

Yeah you can say that for everything, but books, movies and music all have had hundreds of years to mature and develop a high density of high quality material. Games are just started to scratch the surface in terms of story telling. You would be a fool if you honestly believe that games are capable of going toe to toe with movies or books in terms of story telling. There are a handful of great stories in games, but nothing compared to movies or books.

I can honestly say that, in the thirty-plus years I've been on this Earth, some of the stories I've experienced in games rank right up there with the best books I've read and movies I've seen. I would also count some movies I've watched as being among the biggest wastes I've ever sat through, and there are books I've read that were just boring if not painful to read.

I can say the same. There are games that have given me an experience that no movie or book could give. But that could also be said for both movies and books, especially when it comes to story. Also you are going to have pieces of garbage in both movies, books and games. I have seen my fair share of piece of shit movies, and read terrible games, and have sadly bought horrible games.

With that said I still stand by my original point of saying that games have not come close to the level of story telling as books or movies. Games have done plenty of unique stories, and done so in ways very different from books or movies, but it is going to be a little bit longer until games are respected in that area.

I prefer to look for reasons that games should start deserving that respect rather than wait for some mythical watershed moment that will inevitably lead to a supposed day that the respect is earned in full force.

@Jay444111 said:

@dabe said:

@Jay444111 said:

A game without a story is a Pong clone at best. It has nothing of worth and will continue to have nothing of worth and would be forgotten in time. A game with a story to be remembered will always remain in peoples hearts and minds.

Yup, nobody remembers Pong...

Yet who remembers it as fondly as a video game where a person cried over a characters death, a monologe, or birth? Who has cried by a game like pong? No one in the history of existence, Pong has had no influence other then to put down video games with amazing stories because of people like tourgen or Ebert. Video games have evolved far beyond what those pieces of garbage are now. They are only going to be known for creating the building steps to creating a art filled medium filled with amazing stories as it has been doing for quite a while now.

I think if pong was the first game you ever played it would have an impact on you. And anyone who has an interest in the history of video games will remember pong. I don't think Pong will ever be forgotten.

@Hailinel: I think games are already making headway towards that respect. This generation alone has shown that games are capable of offering stories that people give a shit about. Mass Effect, Uncharted, and Portal are all mainstream games that provide characters and stories that their fans adore. I don't think we are waiting for some watershed moment that will get everyones respect, we are just waiting for more games to offer great stories to the masses that will show everyone that games can do story to.

@Red said:

Narrative in games is important, but that narrative needs to have some interactivity within it, or else there is little point in it not being a movie.

You're totally right I don't mind game that want to tell a story first , I mean even the most engaging fun gameplay can become tiresome after 20+ plus hours, that's why RPGs need to tell a good story , that's not so much the problem with shooters or short action games, but I do enjoy more games whre the narrative is interactive like Mass Effect I think people is blowing that comment out of proportions marketing is just there to make people curious about the game and most of the times dosn't even represent the game I don't know why people make such a big deal about it it's advertisement that's how it works for all of the entertaiment industry and only a few games rely solely on their story , I certantly don't want to play games just to get to the ending and make numbers grow bigger I want a good story just as much as I want fun gameplay.

@I_smell said:

@TheGorilla said:

I think the best example of integrating gameplay and story is in the little snippets we've seen of Bioshock Infinite. I'm waiting to play that game to fully form my new opinion on game stories, but I will say as much as I like Mass Effect that style is starting to get old and really showing its problems.

Yeah I really like Bioshock, because even though they come up with great stories for it, the main thing holding it up is always "We've built this amazing city, and you get to explore it." I think exploring places, and finding things and figuring things out is something games can be REALLY good at.

Games are also a kind of improv. Ken Levine has talked about how with Bioshock the big new thing they did was telling stories in the environment and with Infinite they are doing that but adding another layer of storytelling through the seemingly improvisational interactions between the characters.

@Jay444111 said:

@dabe said:

@Jay444111 said:

A game without a story is a Pong clone at best. It has nothing of worth and will continue to have nothing of worth and would be forgotten in time. A game with a story to be remembered will always remain in peoples hearts and minds.

Yup, nobody remembers Pong...

Yet who remembers it as fondly as a video game where a person cried over a characters death, a monologe, or birth? Who has cried by a game like pong? No one in the history of existence, Pong has had no influence other then to put down video games with amazing stories because of people like tourgen or Ebert. Video games have evolved far beyond what those pieces of garbage are now. They are only going to be known for creating the building steps to creating a art filled medium filled with amazing stories as it has been doing for quite a while now.

You can't state for certain no one has shed a tear while playing or as a direct result of Pong. So that is pointless rhetoric.

To suggest a simple game like Pong with clearly defined goals, mechanics & competition is a piece of garbage is quite amusing.

The medium is filled with art, yes, but to suggest it mainly comes through straight-story is reaching a bit I'd say (you like FFXIII so I guess our tastes differ -- immensely -- in that regard).

Quite frankly, I think you've heard/read or absorbed a lot of information but can't really apply said information in a constructive, critical manner, instead resorting to trollish comments and obnoxious ignorance. Thus any decent point you make (games can tell a story through cutscenes or not) falls upon deaf ears.

@SSully said:

@Hailinel: I think games are already making headway towards that respect. This generation alone has shown that games are capable of offering stories that people give a shit about. Mass Effect, Uncharted, and Portal are all mainstream games that provide characters and stories that their fans adore. I don't think we are waiting for some watershed moment that will get everyones respect, we are just waiting for more games to offer great stories to the masses that will show everyone that games can do story to.

I think that's fair enough. I just wish more people were willing to discuss the possibilities and successes of stories in games rather than be dismissive of the idea.

@Landon said:

@Jay444111 said:

@dabe said:

@Jay444111 said:

A game without a story is a Pong clone at best. It has nothing of worth and will continue to have nothing of worth and would be forgotten in time. A game with a story to be remembered will always remain in peoples hearts and minds.

Yup, nobody remembers Pong...

Yet who remembers it as fondly as a video game where a person cried over a characters death, a monologe, or birth? Who has cried by a game like pong? No one in the history of existence, Pong has had no influence other then to put down video games with amazing stories because of people like tourgen or Ebert. Video games have evolved far beyond what those pieces of garbage are now. They are only going to be known for creating the building steps to creating a art filled medium filled with amazing stories as it has been doing for quite a while now.

I think if pong was the first game you ever played it would have an impact on you. And anyone who has an interest in the history of video games will remember pong. I don't think Pong will never be forgotten.

It will only be important in terms of a stepping stone for greater video games of the modern era. However it will never be known as art nor has it ever moved anyone in any emotion, it is just a toy that is a building step to an art form, like cave paintings to modern artwork.

I agree with Jaffe's speech in that I believe that the most effective order to make the best game is to first, have a game being played without any story or context. Is it compelling? Is it fun to play around with the systems themselves? Can one person or a group of people find something of value out of what they are doing without any narrative carrots on sticks? If yes, and if a developer can then use that game play to tell an effective story, then they have the best game. Perfectly good games, and maybe even great games, can be made otherwise (see examples made in this thread) but to reach the top of the medium a great story must be told using a fantastic game.

I don't know, I think using a cutscene as a reward is fine, as long as the gameplay isn't actively painful for me.

@Brendan said:

I agree with Jaffe's speech in that I believe that the most effective order to make the best game is to first, have a game being played without any story or context. Is it compelling? Is it fun to play around with the systems themselves? Can one person or a group of people find something of value out of what they are doing without any narrative carrots on sticks? If yes, and if a developer can then use that game play to tell an effective story, then they have the best game. Perfectly good games, and maybe even great games, can be made otherwise (see examples made in this thread) but to reach the top of the medium a great story must be told using a fantastic game.

Jeff's idea of what makes a game is antiquated. I'm being generous there.

You need to keep in mind that Jeff doesn't like TV shows (even the stellar ones like Breaking Bad), he finds them boring. He also doesn't like movies, because he finds them boring. He doesn't read books, either. He's not what you would call, someone who gives a shit about fiction. That is totally valid and fine, but he and people who think like him are being left behind because their concepts of what constitutes a video game is not changing as the standards of the medium change. There was a time when television was three channels and that was it. If everyone in that business adhered to that antiquated mindset, we would never have gotten cable, HBO, or any of the amazing serialized television shows that are being produced every year. Same for film. If someone sat down and said "A movie can only be silent and you have to read cue cards for dialogue!" I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.

Games are evolving into a storytelling medium. This is nothing to be afraid of. Film started as a rudimentary plaything to kill time for the masses. Books started as pure information and factual documentation (well, considered for the time). They evolved into narrative driven mediums, and now games are evolving as well.

As I stated earlier in the thread, I believe the right balance is to find out what story/theme you want to showcase, and then build the gameplay from there. That requires a bit of imagination, however, so I don't expect it to happen very often. It is nice when it does, though.

I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT SOME THINGS RELATING TO NO MORE HEROES BUT I DON'T WANT TO PUT UP A SPOILER TAG SO CONSIDER THIS YOUR WARNING IF YOU ARE READING THIS AND CARE.

@Hailinel: It was a while ago that I played it so I decided to look up that mission on Youtube before replying. I didn't see any blood trails in the video, I saw the body though, after looking again. Maybe it was something taken out of the European version?

Anyhow, I disagree with what (I think) you were saying. Setting up an expectation by having something occur again and again in the same way (in this case you are always exiting your apartment the same way when leaving for a mission) and then subverting them is something I'm sure movies (and books) have done in the past. To build tension upon this is also not unique, I will concede however that by having the player be the one to move forward in the tunnel it gives them input to control the tension, or the pace, if you will, of the scene. And that is something movies cannot do.

But creating atmosphere or deconstructing the tropes of a medium is not new to media as a whole, even if it gets a different flavor in each one. The two things that separate videogames from the other mediums is the possibility of choice and player input affecting the experience (one might also make an argument for immersion though I'm not convinced of this personally). If your game has neither of that, then it could probably be done to similar effect in other mediums.

In short I didn't really think that No More Heroes thing through thoroughly enough and shouldn't have used it as an example, but that doesn't mean that I don't think I'm mostly right.

This is a side note, but if the game really wanted to defy my expectations it should have started the bossfight with the guy in the tunnel after a few minutes of chasing him, and done so without cutscenes, without you taking a call from Sylvia and maybe without putting a save point outside the boss room just like every other time, suddenly he just jumps forward instead of running away and slices up one of the henchmen, BOSS FIGHT START! Instead all those things I mentioned before happens and then you have a cutscene, and in that cutscene you can't interact with anything. You cannot win you cannot fail, but hey, no bossfight! Surprise!

That's a bit unfair to the game, because it did play with your expectations as you said, it just didn't go far enough in my opinion. I could still see the simple programming where the npc is scripted to move forward a bit everytime you reach a certain point, I didn't expect that behaviour to change in anyway while I was chasing it, I think. Were I any younger I might have started second-guessing myself and wondering if I did anything wrong, now I knew enough to just play along. I guess that's also on me.

For the record I don't think that there's anything wrong with mixing a movie and a videogame, but....um, but nothing. Someday a videogame ass videogame will be created that will put all other mediums to shame. Until then I'm happy playing these stories where choice is far from always emphasized, sometimes compromised, but still something we, even with our limited ability to achieve it, strive for.

Eh, I guess I don't really like games enough to care.

Despite the recent release of Asura's Wrath (which I have no interest in), the height of the video game that was a cutscene driven story surrounded by pedestrian gameplay isn't right now. It was back in the late 90s, when the PSX and CD-Roms made it possible to put movies in games. We're talking about final fantasies VII+ (and their derivatives), Myst (and especially its derivatives), those CD-i games, Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine games - (though in that case it isn't so much cutscenes as it is people reading lines) - and if we relax the restriction that the gameplay can't be all that good, we can bring in all of the Blizzard series. The game portion of those games is more or less unrelated to what drives the story. But what happened is that people saw that the story made these games good, but that it was easy to make an even better game by improving the gameplay . Your entire argument is founded on a pervasive cynicism that anything successful will be mimicked and never advanced, but we've been through over a decade of evidence to the contrary.

Basically, a truly great game can stand on its own if you isolate its elements. It has to have a great story, AND great gameplay.

It all depends on the person I think. Some people value other aspects of a game more than others so making a statement like that is a bit much. I mean I play games mostly for the gameplay in them and thats how I get my fun out of them. Stories in games rarely interest me but if it plays great then it will get my 60 bucks. I completely understand people that go to games for the story though and I think it completely depends on the individual. Ideally all aspects of the game should be good but sometimes if one thing is done well enough it can carry a game.

The problem that everyone is missing here is that the term "video game" is used to reference more than just one medium. The term is used to describe "games" that are more like choose your own adventure stories, toys, and board games than they are like each other. The problem of categorizing and defining genres of video games that Ryan often refers to is also related to the problem of overloading the "video game" term. This is why some "games" are more like stories and some "games" are just games but they can still be good. It's because they're not actually part of the same medium. The two implications of this are firstly, if we're going to meaningfully talk about "video games" we have to first divide them into their actual media and secondly, is there something about the power that computer interaction brings that creates a new medium that wasn't expressed in previous forms, namely choose your own adventure, toys, board games, etc.

@Hailinel said:

No. Games should be however the creator envisions them, story, presentation and all. Saying "Make a fucking movie" is a cop-out answer. You might as well say, "Write a fucking book" or "Stage a fucking play." Different people choose to explore different avenues of narrative presentation in games because it's a medium that allows for a great deal of freeform expression. There's no wrong way to tell a game narrative.

The very definition of "game" is "a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck". It never says anything about essence. Yes, it doesn't mean that there is only one way to design a game, just like there is no wrong way to eat a Reese's. At the same time, to sit here and honestly say that story and forced narrative has not caused massive degradation in the quality of overall GAMEPLAY in video games is just naive.

I've personally agreed with the statements that Jaffe made LONG before he made them. I've been calling most modern games "interactive entertainment" for a LOOOOONG time. That's what 90% of the games that come out now are. We're finally starting to see a true return to games in the independent and downloadable space. The limitations of that development space is forcing those companies to focus hard on their gameplay to make the games intuitive, interesting, and focused in their gameplay department to even compete. In the meantime, they are still able to dish out a narrative that works well (whether it uses a heavy or soft focus on it). Look at Bastion, Super Meat Boy, Braid, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, Where The Heart Is, To The Moon, the upcoming Journey, and soooooooooo many more. These are all games that offer some form of narrative - weak or strong focus - while also being more satisfying than a slew of the current modern games showing up at retail.

Unfortunately, this presents another problem, something that we're also seeing in the movie and music industry: independent and small versus conglomerate and big. It's caused this idea that those who look for something smaller and more personal with a tighter focus rather than the next million dollar crazy-as-hell shooter that looks to capitalize on its multiplayer are nothing more than hipsters trying to buck the man. Unfortunately, very few of the interactive entertainment coming out of "the man" is actually a game.

Do you want further proof that these "storytellers" should try going into movies or books or plays or whatever instead? Look no further than your message boards, your forums, your blogs, your Twitter, your Facebook, etc. What is one of the key things that people talk about today? Story. People rarely talk about gameplay anymore. Sure, they will talk about systems that they have to make a shooter a little less derivative than the current leaders of the industry, or they'll explain how their dialogue wheel is totally different than Mass Effect's when it absolutely isn't. They talk about moral choices and character. They rarely talk about actual overall gameplay. Portal and P.B. Winterbottom are two of the last games I remember where I thought "man, these guys INNOVATED gameplay ideas that we had never seen done before in this manner".

I could also get into how an undeclared war overseas for the last ten years has influenced the industry and the games it develops, leading us to this very point where the only thing honestly differentiating most shooters happens to be the (typically) lackluster story found in them. Hell, most developers today have forgotten what the purpose of the first-person perspective was in the first place! At the same time, I will say that Call of Duty has actually done better for the entirety of the industry than many realize because the majority of people playing it are doing so on the multiplayer side - the GAME side.

So I'm sorry if you feel that simply saying "no" and then spouting some three sentence rhetoric with little justification other than "people should treat something however the hell they want, so deal with it" is actually a valid argument. I get it: the Supreme Court said that games are able to be protected under the same artistic expression rules as movies and music, and now that makes people feel that "video games are justified as art". Meanwhile, you have so many people in the gaming industry who are actually making these games saying that games are not art, such as Hideo Kojima, a man who has strongly used cutscenes and narrative as opposed to solid gameplay across the board.

Meanwhile, I feel that it's easy to point out exactly why Jaffe is write in his statements...ELABORATELY...and wish that game developers would focus on the part of games that ACTUALLY matter: the part where they are a fucking game.