@just_nonplussed said:

@Gamer_152 said:

 It's a bit pedantic to be trying to say that the experience/how you experience/what you experience/what you're experiencing is not the story. Then what is? The experience is the total 'thing'. I think you are grasping at straws here. Perhaps by story you mean events in the script. Well, for example, Mario has events in the script. In the game the player is pushed forward and can jump on the shell and then has an option to throw it somewhere; maybe into a goomba or maybe down a hole. There's your script and your event, and the total nature of that game-play is the experience (Or narrative).  I'm done talking about this. :-)

Well if you're really not going to talk about this any longer then okay. I'll just leave you by saying that I don't think the idea that experiences and stories are not the same thing is by any means clutching at straws.

@Gamer_152 said:

 It's a bit pedantic to be trying to say that the experience/how you experience/what you experience/what you're experiencing is not the story. Then what is? The experience is the total 'thing'. I think you are grasping at straws here. Perhaps by story you mean events in the script. Well, for example, Mario has events in the script. In the game the player is pushed forward and can jump on the shell and then has an option to throw it somewhere; maybe into a goomba or maybe down a hole. There's your script and your event, and the total nature of that game-play is the experience (Or narrative).  I'm done talking about this. :-)

@just_nonplussed: So, the way I see it, there are two different things you're putting forward here; the rejection of deconstructing a game into different components to analyse it and the use of your own language to describe video games, as opposed to the one that's already in place. As far as the former goes, I believe you can talk about a game without breaking it down into its individual parts but you just can't have any sort of in-depth discussion about it.  As you no doubt know it's not just developers who insist on splitting a game up into its component parts to talk about it, it's the pretty much anyone who wants to talk about video games in a meaningful way, from critics, to academics, to many games enthusiasts. No, not everyone here needs to be concerned with how the industry is to make better games (although I believe this is something you yourself were asking people to be concerned with in an earlier post), but it's undeniable that the graphics, gameplay, sound, and all other elements of a game have a different effect on the people playing them. I absolutely agree that games should be good at bringing elements together in a way that lets them all compliment each other, but that in no way provides a basis for rejecting the idea of recognising the different components themselves. This concept of looking at the different components of something in order to analyse it wasn't born out of games development, it's what people do when they analyse anything from cars to paintings to movies, it's something that's existed for the majority of human civilisation, maybe longer.  Without it we can only say if a game is good, we can't say why it's good.  As for the language of game analysis I can see no valid reason to reject it. Like any language it's there for two reasons; firstly, because over all the time that this thing has existed, this is collectively the best way that people have found of describing it, and secondly, because it provides people with a common ground on which they can discuss this thing. You can't just change the meaning of any word to be what you want it to be because in the eyes of anyone else what you've written looks meaningless and nonsensical. It doesn't matter what you've written because it's in a language nobody can read and in this specific case in a language which is built on rejecting some of the fundamentals of the usual vocabulary used to discuss video games. In fact it's the combination of that and what I discussed in my first point which makes the whole Starbucks analogy so confusing.  If you asked me about what affected my visit to Starbucks I'd tell you it was about how nice the person who served me was, the warmth of the coffee, the taste of the coffee, how good the conversation with my friend was and so on. Likewise you've done a little of the same kind of deconstruction here, you talk about how well the coffee is made and the loudness of the music, but the rest of the example is about the "narrative" of Starbucks. I don't honestly see why the narrative of Starbucks matters here because as it kind of has one, it's not like a video game, the narrative of Starbucks doesn't directly lead to any kind of tangible positivity and narrative isn't what the people behind Starbucks or even in Starbucks are aiming to craft in the first place. Of course this whole thing is made more confusing by the fact that when you say "narrative" I think it's possible that you might be using your own entire definition of "narrative" where the word means "experience" or something like that, but I just don't know. 

I have a feeling you don't know what storytelling means.

Animal Crossing tells an awesome story.

@just_nonplussed: That doesn't make any sense though, if we're attempting to analyse games then we need to be able to compare them and we need to break them down into the elements that make them up. I say the following not to be insulting but because I think it's the truth; if you cannot separate the various aspects that make up a video game and genuinely can't see the divides between the different jobs on the development team you either have a lack of analytical ability, a lack of knowledge about the medium, or both. If you can't or won't deconstruct something then you're not analysing it well. Games are generally good when their various parts work together well, but that doesn't mean we can use the words "story" or "gameplay" as descriptors for any experience the game conveys, those are words that already mean things and refer to specific parts of the game as a whole. If you're not willing to properly categorise story, gameplay, writing, etc. then there can be no logical discussion of what makes a game good/bad.

@just_nonplussed said:

Immersion is storytelling; it's a result of good storytelling.

Not really, while there is certainly some overlap, they aren't really the same thing. Good immersion can help create great storytelling, but it can't really replace it. Take Mirror's Edge, the immersion in the running and jumping and the whole design of the world is fantastic. The way the game handles its cutscenes on the other side to tell the actual plot is completely awful and the plot itself is also not so great to begin and ends in a rather wide open cliff hanger ending.

@just_nonplussed: There's a big difference between telling a story and giving the player the tools to create a story, but even then the "story" created in games like Noby Noby Boy and Animal Crossing is almost an incidental bi-product of the gameplay and visuals. Even then deep stories just don't emerge from these games; placing furniture in a house in Animal Crossing just doesn't begin to compare narrative-wise to learning the story of the political rise and fall of Andrew Ryan's objectivist utopia. Once again, just because a game evoked certain emotions in you doesn't mean that it did so through story.
 
I, like most people, also believe that you have to have good content and/or script to tell a good story, it doesn't matter how I'm being placed into the narrative if the narrative is absolute crap. The game could have fantastic level design, strategically placed audio diaries, seamless transition between story and gameplay, but if the story is bland, generic and boring there's very little point in it from a narrative perspective. Even then immersion is not storytelling, I'm sorry but this one isn't even debatable. Can immersion in video games be the product of good storytelling? Sure, but that doesn't mean they're one and the same. As I've said before immersion far more often than not comes from good gameplay as opposed to good narrative. Pokemon may have been an epic journey but that doesn't mean it had an epic story.
 
@mrangryface: I don't think actually think the problem here is anything to do with how high-concept or complex his arguments are. If you look at the comments people have broken his argument down into simple points which they've found legitimate flaws with. This isn't a case of misunderstanding, it's a case of people believing he's wrong.

Immersion is storytelling; it's a result of good storytelling.

@just_nonplussed: You're trying to communicate an idea in a way that no one seems to understand. If immersion is going to be the focus of your discussion- start with that. Dont get all artsyfartsy with everyone then act confused when no one likes your choices. If you want this discussion to go somewhere you'll have to meet your audience halfway here.

I have a feeling you don't know what storytelling means.

My favorite storytelling in games, or any other media, is found in Alan Wake. The way the player finds manuscript pages that either gives a hint about what is about to happen or gives insight into what the other characters in the game are thinking/doing, is a brilliant way of telling a story.

@just_nonplussed: You're trying to communicate an idea in a way that no one seems to understand. If immersion is going to be the focus of your discussion- start with that. Dont get all artsyfartsy with everyone then act confused when no one likes your choices. If you want this discussion to go somewhere you'll have to meet your audience halfway here.

@Ragdrazi said:

@mrangryface: Absolutely. This guy's list is utterly horrible.

The list is fine, but it looks to be about player immersion, not storytelling in games like the subject claims.

@JayDee said:

@xaLieNxGrEyx: why would it be a joke?

 
Animal Crossing has no story, niether does Noby Noby boy.  Mirror's Edge and Metroid are nothing special. Bioshock is the only game on the list with a decent story. And all his descriptions are just descriping why he feels the games story "keeps them in it's world" whiich means he kept playing. This isn't storytelling it's immersion and and drving the player to keep playing.  
 
It's like saying Pokemon had great story telling because I wanted to catch them all. It just doesn't make sense.

Storytelling in games often struggle under the burden of being "games" rather staying true to a narrative vision.   

@mrangryface: Absolutely. This guy's list is utterly horrible.

@JayDee said:

@xaLieNxGrEyx: why would it be a joke?

 
Animal Crossing has no story, niether does Noby Noby boy.  Mirror's Edge and Metroid are nothing special. Bioshock is the only game on the list with a decent story. And all his descriptions are just descriping why he feels the games story "keeps them in it's world" whiich means he kept playing. This isn't storytelling it's immersion and and drving the player to keep playing.  
 
It's like saying Pokemon had great story telling because I wanted to catch them all. It just doesn't make sense.

Nier is the best

Thems fightin words- but im too tired and I have work tomorrow. I think we can agree that both games trump Other M

Balder's Gate's better.

Planescape Torment

This is a joke right

But yeah, I think the key to getting over the hurdle of the game/story contention is of course having interesting ideas, but also realizing that life itself is a kind of game that has rules and limitations and play, and life is full of drama and interesting things. So the fact that there is still this misconception that you can't have a good story + interactions & playing is silly. A few developers and designers seem to realize this, but most are not opening their minds to this potential or can't due to publishers or the market.

Storytelling in games often struggle under the burden of being "games" rather staying true to a narrative vision.  
 
One of the most obvious recent examples is Uncharted 2 where an otherwise fantastic narrative is forced to overextend action sequences, and turns into a massacre of thousands of badguys dying at the feet of what was supposed to be a "john everyman" on his hero's journey.  
 
Another common problem is the gun. Once the game pitch starts with a gun, all interaction with the world tends to flow from "the gun", and only deviating in rare circumstances. I recall Patrick marvelling at Prey 2 where he was given the "choices" of paying a guy off for information, or pulling a gun and shooting his bodyguard to get him to talk. The player's only means of making things happen in that world is with his gun? There's nothing new or interesting about that. There's nothing wrong with giving players a gun, but once it gets into the game, it tends to monopolize design effort and attention, and really starts to hem in the possible ways they could have the player change the world around them. 
 
 I liked LA Noire, let's have some first-person political strategy games! Campaign your way into the white house from a first-person perspective. Coordinate political strategy with aides, decide who to trust with key positions and political pacts, and analyze the public and balance their desires against your personal moral compass in taking up positions on your platform. Want to change the country for the better? Then you'll need to learn how to compromise. How much good can you accomplish in your political career? How many good causes do you have to sacrifice to get enough support for more important good causes? Maybe you don't care about "good" and want to see how far you can abuse your growing power. Maybe you need to abuse the power a little to get the funding you need to get the political power for social reform. Truly grey moral decisions emerging from the player, with less need for the developer to present cut and dried "this or that" scenarios when the player can decide what their own "big picture" is going to look like. The "game" here flows through strategy and polling for the results of your decisions, plenty of mechanics there to fill out the necessary game length.
 
We've been seeing a lot of shooter creep in gaming, and hopefully we'll see the far slope of this climb soon. 

 
Just thought I would write a little bit about some video games that I think have effective ways of immersing me as a player into the story. It's not a huge essay or anything, but I felt a need to mention these games.
 

Mirror's Edge

Metroid: Other M

Bioshock

Noby Noby Boy

Animal Crossing