bad stories can ruin great gameplay.

good stories can make you enjoy bad gameplay.

I wonder if you've ever played Nier. It completely invalidates your "Game A is fun, Game B is not" analogy. Of course, this may not apply to you, because I get the feeling you don't like any kind of story in your game, you just want fun gameplay. Thankfully, there's still a lot of that around, so go for it. But don't tell us that the importance of a story is over-hyped, because it's not. I only mentioned Nier, but I'm sure there's dozens of games that have mediocre gameplay and fantastic stories.

Games aren't made up of neat little categories like gameplay and story and graphics any more, so to choose one and say "This always matters more" is kind of bananas. This becomes truer every year, which is also why you're seeing more complaining about bad stories every year.

Dude, thread is 19 months old.

do you think baldur's gate I and II would be considered the best RPG or one of the best RPG just based on the gameplay?, the same question with Final fantasy VII, what about fallout series?, planetscape torment?..., anyways everything changes and sometimes those changes are not good, kids nowadays are focused on good graphics and good effects, lot of action...blah blah blah, but a lot of new games are pretty much empty...well it all depends on the genre, but even then still the plot of the game makes you like it or not...i.e. FPS half life series, in the other hand you have Painkiller wich gameplay is pretty fun, but there's nothing more than clear the stage and go to the other...anyway it's all a matter of taste, in my opinion I can say the old games had something new don't and it's the power keep you playing them because you want to know what's going to happen later...

sorry for my bad english

Games are meant to be playable, a good, well written plot is merely a bonus. RPGs should not get a pass on this. I don't care if it is the greatest video game plot ever concocted, if the gameplay blows, then there is just no point.  When plot starts interfering with gameplay, then you have a real clusterfuck (Halo 2 comes to mind here).

 Again, that's beside the point. Their ubiquitousness was never a part of the argument. You claimed the idea was new. I demonstrated it's not. You agree. You could at least concede the point, but instead you stubbornly claim you never made the argument in the first place, when in this case you very clearly did.

If you remove stories from games, you're literally repeating the exact same process over and over again.

" @Dizazter: "Besides soap operas what shows had cohesive long running story archs in the 80s?" 
 
I'll go further back. 60s: The Fugitive. 70s: The Incredible Hulk. 80s: Hill Street Blues. St. Elsewhere. 90s: Twin Peaks, Buffy, Angel, etc. I mean, it's not even a difficult question. The idea is not even remotely recent.

"By my "From start to finish" comment I was saying that games are meant for you to get from the beginning to the end in a reasonable amount of time." 
 
It seems to me that once you go from "they're designed to be consumed as a whole" to "in a reasonable amount of time" you've completely conceded the point, since all I'm pointing out is that unlike movies (which you keep going back to) games are not digested whole, but in parts.

"Keep in mind though, sometimes, like Back to the Future..." 
 
Back to the Future is a movie series, not a television show. :/
 

"But I don't consider most games' quests and mission structure to resemble anything episodic." 
 
They very clearly do to me. You start out in a location with a goal. You meet people along the way. You pursue a goal, have conflicts, get in some fights, and come to some mini-conclusion along the way. Find out a bit of information about the larger plot, and a direction for the next mission. Get some character dialogue and conflict. Sounds exactly like an episode of genre TV to me. And from what I've read about how game designers and writers assemble game missions, they go through pretty much the same process as writers for television shows.

@haggis

"But I do think some games have a bit more of an episodic nature to them than others. But an important difference with TV Shows vs Missions and Quests in a game, is that you often have no clue how long the mission or quest will take, often its length varies radically, from a couple minutes to several hours based on many factors, including your own performance and choices. Very often you will need to take a break mid mission/quest.  Where as a TV show episode has a very specific length (30 or 60 min), and is very much meant to be viewed "in one sitting". 
 
And see, game missions usually are intended (unlike whole games) to be completed in one sitting. Sure, RPGs like Dragon Age might have longer missions, but those missions are also usually broken up into sub-missions which are, in part, episodic. You might need to recover an object first, which has a lot of action entailed in it. Then you might need to deliver said object. More plot ensues. It's more complicated than you would see in a TV show, but it's not all that different. You don't really say why the time length difference matters, you just assert that it does. I'm open to hearing why. TV show lengths are arbitrary. You wouldn't say that a typical 42 minute production is a TV show, but that because another show is 54 minutes (like they often are on pay cable) that it isn't just because the length is different. Episodic is episodic. Games might have four hour episodes or one hour episodes, or a combination. It doesn't change the fact that they are episodes: that is, smaller narrative chunks of a single overarching story. That's what episodic means, not arbitrary time lengths.  "But I dunno, I'm really starting to lose both of our original points in all of this."  Story matters. It's nice that people can skip stories in games if they are available, but the opposite (creating story where there isn't any) isn't possible. That reviewers don't overemphasize story in their reviews. That all games have narrative, and that gameplay for some (though not all) gamers can be trumped by good story. All games these days are linear, despite the illusion of choice and non-linearity. That they reveal this in their inherently episodic structure, which increasingly mirrors TV tropes, including overarching (and overlapping) story arcs. That games are more like genre TV than movies. And as such, good narratives can fuel replaying of games despite mediocre gameplay in much the same way good TV shows and books (despite their long length) can fuel re-watches and re-reads. Scripted narrative is not a barrier for most gamers to replayability, but in fact an asset.  Those are my points, I guess. A lot of them for a single thread, but they all point to the same thing: games are better today than in the past because they are better at telling stories. I'd be open to hearing an argument on how better gameplay is today than in the past, but I'm agnostic on that point. Since stories have been making games better, I think they're important to highlight in reviews when appropriate. "

Its a matter of opinion,even though i can enjoy a game with a bad story or no story at all (Torchlight) a good story/plot is more important than gameplay, simply because the story defines so much of the game plot (obviously),atmosphere,characters
So yeah,story first gameplay second.

" @Dizazter said:

Naturally. I think the question at hand is more: Would you prefer a game with terrible gameplay and a great plot, or a game with great gameplay and terrible plot? "

Depends on the game, really. There have been games with terrible gameplay that I played for story, and games with great gameplay that don't need a story. For example, I played deadly premonition. Terrible gameplay, and terrible story from a traditional sense, but its quirky story and weirdness kept me going. One of my favorite games is Shadowrun, which is MP only.  Now that I think about it, most games with great stories have great gameplay anyway (GTA IV, ME2, Bioshock) so it's never really an issue. I always view having a good story as a plus anyway, so I guess the debate doesn't really affect me. Bottom line, I think you have to look at each game on a case-by-case basis- is the story amazing enough for you to look over other flaws; does a game's gameplay shine without a story/structure to provide context for what you're doing? Depends on how well it's executed really. You can't put a general "GAMEPLAY DOESN'T NEED STORY" and expect it to work for every, or even most, cases. "

Uh ... no. It's actually been around for quite a while. Since the mid-80s at least. It's become more common lately in some ways, but it's not "relatively new" by any reasonable definition of those words.

"I think most expect you to see it start to finish." 
 
Developers really expect me to play Mass Effect 2 in one sitting, for 20 hours, like I'd see a movie? Sorry, that's bull. They expect me to digest it in pieces. Like a television show. A series of small narratives with a beginning and end that are all part of a larger narrative arc.
 

"I wasn't meaning that games are meant to be played out in one sitting, more over, meant to be played out over a few weeks or months."

 Uh... okay, then you agree with me. What's your point again? You can't have it both ways. Either developers expect you to enjoy a game episodically or not. The length of the missions doesn't really matter. What matters is that they are designed to be digested in small chunks, not a whole as you originally claimed. Which you admit here, and yet still don't want to concede the point. That's fine, but it makes no sense to me. Yes, it's hard to go back to a video game after six months. It's hard to do that with television shows as well. Let's change your "six months" to a week. Could you pick up your place in a game after being away from it a week? Like, say, the difference in time between episodes of a TV show? Sure you could. You could easily play most games an hour per week and not feel disconnected from their stories. I do this all the time. A lot of gamers do. Very few of us have 20 hours at a time to play a game. But we'll play a few hours on the weekend. Most games--even those with complex stories--are designed to be compatible with this sort of play. You can watch an entire season of a TV show in one sitting if you want, but you don't have to. That's why they are structured the way they are.

 
There is no essential difference between Telltale's episodic games and various missions in larger games save for the fact that Telltale is selling them to you separately. Otherwise, the design principles are the same. You could easily package, say, Mass Effect 2's dossier missions as "episodes" and sell them separately. You are confusing packaging with substantive differences that don't really exist. For example, Alan Wake's mission structure was very deliberately divided into "episodes" like a TV series. But it was packaging. If you took out the "previously on Alan Wake" sections before each mission and the closing music after the mission, it would look like every other game on the market. 

"The season long (and series long) story archs are secondary, in my opinion."
 
Of some shows, sure, but I was comparing video games to genre shows with primary, season-long story arcs. Not to just TV shows in general. Did you forget that? It seems like you did. " 

Branching structures are still linear, though. You might make a choice, but it's not your own story, just variations of stories that someone else has already laid out.
 
"I think those also aren't an equivalent. Primarily because TV shows are broken down into stand alone episodes that are individually consumed. Where as a 40+ hour game is designed to be consumed as a whole."
 
Which is why I specifically mentioned genre shows that have season-long arcs. Sure, they have stand-alone episodes, but they're actually the exception, not the rule. Most of the shows I'm talking about make little sense if you skip episodes. You miss crucial plot points. Like in games. So I still think my specific example applies. You seem to prefer the example of a 40 hour movie because they don't exist, but my example actually does exist. Also, I think it's wrong to say that games are designed to be comsumed as a whole. Mission structures in the longest 40+ hour games almost always have side-missions not directly related to the main story. They're specifically designed to be stand-alone, so that if you choose not to participate in them, you're not missing anything crucial. Long games have a mission structure in order to provide that short-term experience with a beginning and an end. Games are not designed to be played in a forty-hour marathon, but in chunks of various sizes. Games would look different than they do if they were designed to be consumed as a whole. The mission structure of games is very much influenced by the episodic model of television. You can bite off hour-long chunks if you like. There are few game missions nowadays that last as long as a feature film.
 

" @DystopiaX said:

" Is gameplay more important than story? Yes, but given 2 games with good/decent/functioning gameplay, but one has an awesome story, I'm more likely going to pick that one.  "

Naturally. I think the question at hand is more: Would you prefer a game with terrible gameplay and a great plot, or a game with great gameplay and terrible plot? "

" Is gameplay more important than story? Yes, but given 2 games with good/decent/functioning gameplay, but one has an awesome story, I'm more likely going to pick that one.  "

Is gameplay more important than story? Yes, but given 2 games with good/decent/functioning gameplay, but one has an awesome story, I'm more likely going to pick that one. 

"Opinions, opinions. "

I'll take the dual-weapon perk over the history of the character who is going to use it any day, brother.

" @haggis said:

 But every game needs a sort-of narrative and/or goal to drive it. "

By whose standards, the player's or the developer's?  I'll put it this way: I beat Dragon Age and Knights of the Old Republic to the ground. Whenever it was an option, I always skipped the cutscenes and chose the dialogue that got me out of the conversation the quickest. I don't really care why my companions are with me or what they want, as long as they can shoot fireballs and swing lightsabers. Am I depriving myself of the full experience? Maybe, but those are the kind of games that let me play the way I want, and I want to actually play the game. I don't go to my PS3 for stories. I have hundreds of books and movies for that. It pisses me off when a game doesn't let me skip a cutscene. At least RE 4 & 5 sort of gives you something to do whenever you have to watch a scene.  I read your entire post and I do see what you are saying. I'm not debating that. I just wonder how much story in a game is enough.  EDIT: And if we are getting to the point where gamers will take a better story over shitty gameplay, then you can expect even more sequels of the same thing and more franchises hitting the stale bin. "

" @Dizazter:  "But I think the key difference is the highly scripted narrative vs the open narrative. I feel the gaming world has the unique ability to craft open narratives..."
 
You'll have to define what you mean by "open narrative," because it seems to me that narratives are, by definition, closed. If they're open, they have a tendency to meander and never come to a conclusion, in which case I have to question whether it is a narrative at all.
  
"I think to focus on the script is to encourage the disposable nature of highly scripted games, and their lack of replayability."
 
In my opinion, poor gameplay is more often the cause of lack of replayability than the story is. And I'm still not convinced that there is this incredible focus on the script as you claim in game reviews. People talk about narrative because it's an integral part of modern games. But I've never seen it overemphasized. As for replayability, you say,
 
"And I understood what you said before about replaying games is like rewatching a favorite movie. I rewatch movies all the time. But I think there's some important differences. For one, movies are 2 hours long. Many of these campaigns for 40+ hours long. How many 40+ hour movies would I rewatch? Probably zero." 
 
Actually, I think I compared it to reading genre books. Which aren't two hours long. But let's look at television shows, rather than movies, since I think it's a more reasonable comparison. I'm a genre fan. So I'll admit that I've watched every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (all seven seasons) at least four times over the years. Yes, I know, I'm a terrible geek. At 40 minutes an episode, 22 episodes times six (and a half) seasons, that's nearly 100 hours. A single season is less than that, obviously, about fourteen or fifteen hours. Shorter than many games, but not by a whole lot. I can list at least a dozen shows I would rewatch a season of. And that's all narrative. So I don't think it's unreasonable to replay a 20-hour game (like Mass Effect 2), a few times if I liked the story well enough. Which I did, since I've played it through four times. Even though I think the story was just alright.  So, if you can't imagine a single television show you liked enough to rewatch an entire season of, then perhaps I can understand your point. Otherwise, I'm still unconvinced."All I've ever said, is that I don't think "storyline" is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!  Why do kids these days assume that if you say something isn't the most important thing, they assume that you are saying it is the least important thing"  You heavily implied that story wasn't important. Since you didn't clarify that you meant "heavily scripted" games, then it wasn't exactly a huge leap for people to make. "

it depends on the context entirely, and that goes for both video games and film. nobody goes to watch the a-team for the story, and the same applies to gears of war/call of duty etc. however, i will always, always take a provoking, thoughtful story, told in a way unique to video games, over pitch perfect gameplay. if you're asking me whether i want creativity or functionality, i'd take creativity.
 
edit: having said that, i could number the amount of games that i've played with unique, interesting stories told in methods unique to video games on one hand. maybe just my fingers.

The only reason that storytelling is so much less important to video games is that there is more things you can add outside of traditional storytelling. I mean, look at books: all successful books tell a story that tries to be interesting, because aside from how the book itself is written, the medium doesn't offer many other ways to entice the reader. Movies add more to the experience, which is why dumb action movies with a lot of explosions can be so successful. Transformers might have a hokey story, but the scope of it's graphics and fight sequences appeal to a lot of people. 
 
Video games offer interactivity, which in turn offers the feeling of achievement when people beat the game or discover a secret. This allows games to tap into our brains in ways the other forms of media cannot. In this way, each new medium offers something new, making the actual story less important to the overall experience. On the other hand, having a good story further reinforces the feeling of achievement we get when we beat a game. If we know what's at stake, it'll mean more to us than if we're just shooting at enemies because it's fun. 
 
That's why I've spent over a hundred hours playing Dragon Age and Persona 3 and still haven't finished God of War. To me, saving the world from monsters (though cliché) trumps having a hissy fit every goddamn time. It doesn't even matter how good the combat in God of War is. It just doesn't draw me in at all. 

" I like blowing things up. It's quite a story, if you think about it. The journey your projectile/bullet/grenade travels to put an abrubt end to anything stupid enough to stand in it's way is quite emotional to me. "

When I was younger game play might have outweighed story, but now that I am older I literally can not play a game with a bad story.

I like blowing things up. It's quite a story, if you think about it. The journey your projectile/bullet/grenade travels to put an abrubt end to anything stupid enough to stand in it's way is quite emotional to me.

 But every game needs a sort-of narrative and/or goal to drive it. "

" @Dizazter said:

And millions and millions of people play MMOs, without much of a real script other than in the encapsulated quests..."

How many people would play MMOs if they didn't have at least some scripted quests? I doubt the numbers would be very high. Given the amount of interest in WoW expansions, for instance, tells me that a very large part of the game is playing quests created and scripted by other people.
 
Certainly not everyone wants a game with a full script and story. But that's also not what I've been saying. A story could be as simple as a few lines at the beginning explaining where you are and what is going on, or it could be emergent in the world itself. Just by creating a world, you're creating a story. It doesn't mean a script. It just means giving the player context for understanding what they are doing. Games like Tetris might not need this sort of thing. But most games do. And it's legitimate to emphasize in a review how well that world-building is done, and how well any scripted elements fit into it. Gamers will continue to disagree about how important such elements are, but there's no doubt that they are important. And for some gamers, story can in some cases overcome mediocre gameplay. Games need not be primarily about telling a story. But every game needs a sort-of narrative and/or goal to drive it. "

And millions and millions of people play MMOs, without much of a real script other than in the encapsulated quests..."

Just Cause 2 comes to mind.
 
And that's a pretty damn good game

No video games out there (with the exceptions of some sports title perhaps),be it  X-Com: UFO Defense and StarCraft and Advance Wars and Homeworld,   are even as strategically complex as Backgammon, (let alone chess or go or contract bridge), that's why designers are trying to make this simplicity up with insignificant garbage such as cinematic presentation or dialogue trees, to make video games looking 'respectable'. You can make a lunatic in an asylum looking 'respectable' by putting an Armani suit on him, that's what the game industry is trying to accomplish, mere cosmetics. 

I think what I love about story in games most of all is how it's probably the only medium where you can completely invent this grand epic story for yourself; look at something like WoW, Fallout or Minecraft, you're completely inventing your story and if you do it right you can make it quite compelling. This ability is something very much lacking in say film and writing, and something I really hope more videogame storytellers keep in mind. With Mass Effect 2, I think BioWare certainly did a good job making your personal experience and the linear story of the game intertwine really well, and the fact that it probably manages the balance ALOT better than most games is exactly why it's one of my favourite games of last year.

 
Can't a game have a story great enough that it is worth slogging through terrible gameplay for? 
 

" @Dizazter:  I, too, agree with a lot of what you say, but this... 
 
 ...still strikes me as wrong. Even in MMOs, you're not creating your own story, really. You're going on quests that are pre-designed. They might be non-linear in that you can choose which quests to undertake, and your character type, etc., but the broad strokes of it are always the same. It's non-linear in that you can play quests in an A-B-C order, or a C-A-B order if you want, but once you actually start quest C, it's all still fairly linear. In the end, your choice of order rarely matters. Thus, non-linearity is still an illusion.
 
If your saying that the story changes because player one was a rogue and used a bow and arrow and another player in the same situation was a paladin and used a sword ... well, just about every game qualifies. There is very little difference between a game like Mass Effect 2 and Fallout: New Vegas when it comes to linearity other than degree. In the end, your choices matter about the same. Fallout may seem less linear, but in the end, they're both extremely constrained. One just pulls off the illusion better. Not that there's anything wrong with it being an illusion, I just think emphasizing non-linearity given the games currently released is misguided. They're all linear. Some just hide it better than others.

" @Dizazter: I'm adding a third example to your list, from my perspective, because I noticed that you don't seem to have any idea that other people might like a game because of its story.
 
I never said that my opinion was like everyone else's.  Please tell me where I implied that.  I was telling you that people have opinions apart from yours, with me being the example, seeing as I am a member of "everyone else" in this situation.  Apart from shooters and fighters, I value a good story much more than gameplay.  That doesn't mean that I'm wrong in thinking that it's better than a game that has better gameplay. 
 
The point that I'm trying to get across here is that your "Game A, Game B" example made it sound like you were proving your point with fact, while in reality, that's just your view on things.  So please, shut up and sit down. "

That's a pretty loaded fucking example there. 
 
Can't a game have such a horrendous story that it actually detracts from the game? 
 
Can't a game have a story great enough that it is worth slogging through terrible gameplay for? 
 

I GUESS NOT.

The problem with stories in video games is they are in video games. I don't care if you want to be subtle and tell me Mario is doing all this to save a princess but I'm the one controlling him so give me the fucking controller so I can get right to it. Resident Evil has a story. You know what? I don't care and I have beaten every single one of them to death.
 
I've seen great games receive a deduction in score because they had lame stories. Bullshit. If a game needs a good story to be good, then why is it even a game?
 
Oh, and fuck MGS too. Overhyped, story shoved down my throat can of shit.

i see it to be the case that with games that are very similar, such as most Modern-day FPSs nowadays, the graphics wont make much difference for me. The story is what keeps me engrossed, what keeps me playing.I never have been an rpg sorta guy, but in the few i have played, i would say the story is the only thing that kept me coming back. Graphics are important to some people though, and i am fairly blind,

Well, that's your opinion, sure.
But a good story is the most important thing for me, in a game. Most games with awesome gameplay are cool while you're playing, but they fade from my memory pretty damn quick. A good story however, lives on :)

You're acting as if Mr.Story is going to come into your house at the middle of the night and rob your Gameplay, stealing from you gameplay that would have been good but was ruined because some guy decided to put a story in there instead. 
 
That's not really how it works..

You guys know that Story isn't the same as Writing, right? That setting, atmosphere, even sound design, characters and enemies are all a part of "Story"?  Just checking.
 
 
Oh, and all the people saying a game can never have a story as great as a movie or book because there are more great stories in those mediums, i'm very glad you aren't game designers. This medium, especially this medium as we know it today, is INCEDIBLY young, and we've barely hit the tip of what we can do with storytelling in games.

" Game C has terrible gameplay, but an absolutely amazing story. Game C is still more enjoyable than Game A.Your views on what makes a game good are not equal to everyone else's. "

I think it depends on what you mean by story. Even the old Atari 2600 games had a story of sorts: Pitfall, for instance. You're a guy trekking through the jungle to collect treasure. On some level, that's a story. Minecraft is one of those things that should just be what it is. But a little narrative to explain the creepers, for instance, wouldn't be a bad thing. And adding a few goals to give the thing some direction would make it more accessible to people.
 
In any case, you've done more in your example than simply add a story: you've changed the entire concept of Minecraft, not just added a story. But if you simply added some backstory, it would be better. It would give you context. What you've suggested is that adding a story necessarily changes the way the game must be structured. I don't think that's the case. You could easily add a story and some goals (which could be ignored, if you like) and the thing would be better. Different games demand different levels of storytelling. Minecraft doesn't demand a long, sweeping epic story. But it could certainly benefit from some broad-brush contextual narrative a la the early video game era.
 
As for non-linearity in games, I think it's all basically an illusion. You're still playing within the developer's rules, within the limits they impose. And while there's room for attempts at more fluid story-telling, there is a lot of demand for games with more coherent stories. I just don't find game reviewers focusing on stories in that type of game. I see them focusing on the quality of story when there actually is one, such as in Bioshock, Fallout: New Vegas, that sort of thing. No reviewers I know of are complaining about the lack of story in games where it isn't appropriate. "