I think Jeff's thoughts on video game stories is wack!

What are you talking about!? Did you not see the pinky! That pinky is the vending machine that keeps on giving.

As for Jeff, I kinda take what Jeff says with a grain of salt. After you've listened to him long enough you kinda know what he's preaching. Jeff sometimes likes dumb things and can appreciate it while others can't, it's just Jeff being Jeff.

@towersixteen: To be clear, The Last of Us is an excellent story but it isn't told in an inherently poor fashion (i.e. an action movie) and doesn't play with your expectations of the gameplay. The length is more like the length of a short novel and the pacing is good.

Nah. You should try to step out of the video game box for a bit man and look at it from the. See how terrible and ridiculous it all is. You know, expand your horizon a bit.

Hell yeah.

He's right.

Some games can compete with their stories, but most can't. Video games' strength is that they can tell stories in unique ways due to their interactivity.

Remember when the GB guys even had a Bioshock story live stream? Or when on the forums we pieced together the timeline and came up with theories? We had a good time. And then suddenly everyone went: "What a piece of shit Bioshock is! GOD!"

I don't know man. I liked it when it came out and I still like it.

I don't agree with this. Spec Ops story works because it is a game. You, the character, is going into this place and "saving" these people because you, the player, is playing a video game and that is what you do in video games right? The interactive nature of the medium is what the story relies on.

@grissefar: You're talking to a movie fanatic, who also happened to take quite a few cinema based courses in university, as well as film theory etc... I have a fairly expanded horizon as it is. Don't really need your patronizing.

Jeff´s opinions on a LOT of things are kind of whack.. but I think he always adds an interesting angle to any discussion.

I will say this though. The only game I play this year that succeeded in its storytelling BECAUSE it was a game and not in spite of it was Brothers.

Exactly. Playing the game makes it entirely different. We see movie directors get involved in games and their stories... has that been some easy thing? Because film makers are so much better?

I am with Vinny in the argument and glad he was saying something. Games are not worse and are so different I don't see the point.

Which is a book obviously in the canon as much due to it's cultural significance as it's craft. Of course books are sometimes regarded for thier historical or cultural significance as much as anything else. But if your going to tell me you think games have ever equaled in craft things like All Quiet on the Western Front or The King of Elfland's Daughter or Brave New World or To Kill a Mockingbird or Catch-22 than you've lost your goddamn mind. That's not even touching Shakespeare, because those are plays, and are often as amazing performed well as they are boring read. Even Romeo and Juliet becomes tolerable.

I wouldn't consider Jeff's ability to analyze a narrative as strong as he can gameplay, and I'll leave it at that.

2-3 Hours is more than enough time to get attached to characters in a movie. To be fair there are tons of movies with death scenes that get no reaction out of me because they were not great at character development. But a few movies do show mastery of the craft and can obtain a response. Hell, Pixar did it in 10 minutes with Up.

This is what I was saying. In fact it was the very opposite of Jeff was saying. He said that you cannot compare game stories because if you cut out the game part and just stitch the story together, then it doesn't stand up to movies. But to do that is to remove the thing that makes the medium unique in the first place.

@towersixteen:

I've only read one of those books, and even then, I don't remember too much about it. As for Shakespeare, I'm pretty sure I could make the argument for appreciation of his works being social value. Or something like that.

This is true, but I wouldn't say any of them are particularly strong at it. I actually think it's the biggest critical weakness of the group. Patrick's alright at it from what I've seen.

It comes down to taste. We are talking about stories here.

If they don't get along with your way of thinking, just deal with it. There's no science to this.

I wrote a review (a wall of blah) recently on a movie that was heavily dependent on Ocarina of Time's plot and story. In some sense of the matter, Jeff is correct and also incorrect. I think video games are much better at storytelling than movies, because you play a character that becomes or is part of the story. Movies have great storytelling, but you aren't able to interact and can only admire or hate the character(s). Also, when video games are re-made into movies, then there will be a big change to most everything because there is no interaction with the character. I think that The Legend of Zelda review I wrote is a prime example of the situation.

Social Value is a rather nebulous term. And I don't think you could make that point convincingly. When a well-performed play can make an audience of mixed age groups laugh hard for almost the entire duration despite being in such an archaic form of the language half of them are probably only catching every third word, then I don't think arguing against the value of it's craft as a comedy is really feasible (A comedy of errors, and I was one of the ones who only got every third word. I was still crying, and I wasn't alone.).

As a medium video games offer interactivity. They can't compete visually with a movie. They can't compete with the depth or pacing structure of a novel.

Video games that ignore the interactivity, the gameplay, how that can mesh and support the story and atmosphere, are never going to rise above the level of a decent comic book or a mediocre summer blockbuster. Good fun, but not great.

Tacking on great cutscenes and pre-recorded character animation scenes with fixed camera paths on a FPS shell isn't going to ever being anything but a vidjagame ass video game. Same with an animated graphic novel like Walking Dead.

The category, "best story" for video games kind of doesn't make sense. The best of video games don't even need a conventional story to achieve greatness.

this is new? I think Jeff's been consistant since Gamespot days.

But regardless there are some very obnoxious elements proclaiming this is art and this isn't, even though I'd be happier with the story to double dragon or Final Fight. And beside right now we are still in this era where game devs set up arenas and set pieces and hire comic book writer to work on audio logs or small text journal to flesh out small bits.

@hailinel said:

I strongly disagree with Jeff about this, but I don't think it's a matter of ability. I don't feel like a talented critics analysis of a story is necessarily a better perspective then that of a laymen, it's just a different perspective, only treated with more value because it's more applicable to like minded folk who are more likely to engage in such analyses.

Unless you simply meant you wouldn't trust his analysis to be of use to you personally. That's fair.

Because the game was popular at the time and it's cool to hate the popular thing. And because people value their own opinion waaaaaaaay too much. Just because (generic) you didn't like the combat that means the combat was bad. It just means you didnt like the combat.

But I clearly need yours, oh big cinema god.

Video game stories suck. And until people stop striving to mimic other media with video games they will never get better.

@hunter5024: I'd argue that someone that has more of an educated background in narratives, literary or cinematic, is more adept at judging narratives in games than a layman like Jeff. That doesn't negate Jeff's opinion, but it's an opinion that's difficult to take seriously.

I think you're confusing showing something sad with getting attached to a character. It doesn't take hours to show something sad. It can take a few minutes to show a baby crying in the arms of some nameless woman that got half her body blown away in a war because she was protecting her kid and people can cry about it, but it doesn't mean you got attached to the character.

Why shouldn't Infinite get a pass? People raved over the first Bioshock and the combat was sooooo much worse than Infinite's. I didn't think Infinite's combat was the best but it was more than good enough to keep me wanting to continue the story. The only part that I felt was a real drag was the graveyard level.

Why shouldn't Infinite get a pass? People raved over the first Bioshock and the combat was absolute garbage. I didn't think Infinite's combat was great but it was more than good enough to keep me wanting to continue the story. The only part that I felt was a real drag was the graveyard level.

While I don't think it's quite as much of a gap as your saying, I would agree that a much more variable acceptable length is one of the most significant strengths that games have over films. Interactivity is the other one, but it's a double-edged sword because it makes it impossible to set pacing perfectly and much harder to maintain tone.

I think games are a better potential medium for character-driven stories than film, because time and interactivity are such boons. I think it's inherently worse for most plot-driven stories, especially action ones, because pacing is so key. Which is why it's such a goddamn shame that the medium leans toward what it's worse at.

I've watched plenty of movies where I genuinely cared for the characters therein. I'm pretty sure this is a highly subjective matter unique for each person, but yah you can have the same result in about 2 hours if the story is engaging enough.

No I would not cry if I saw that at the beginning of a movie. But if it was after we got to see this persons life for two hours, see their struggles and whatnot, I might cry. But even then it still has to be done well. A movie can make the audience care about the characters in just the length of it. Some can do it in a shorter amount of time, like Up.

So you think a critics opinion is worth more than a layman's? That's where I'm disagreeing with you.

I feel like him saying that you shouldn't think too much about Bioshock Infinite's story because it can make it fall apart, not only do I find incorrect for more than one reason, it came off as if all he was in it for was the gameplay and isn't all that passionate about it otherwise, which is the total opposite of why I'm interested in it really. The gameplay alone isn't what brings up interesting conversations about the game, so I found it weird, but... So be it. It doesn't really bother me all that much, I just find it weird. I also agree, I think the "it's good for video games" is pretty dumb.

@hunter5024: I think an educated critic has a stronger base from which to form an opinion than a layman. I'm not saying a layman's opinion is worthless, only not worth as much.

I developed a theory that could explain this phenomenon: you need to use your brain to understand the story told by Bioshock Infinite but people are usually dumb so they say it's crap and claim that games with simpler and more predictable stories like The Last of Us are the best they've ever played. It's very simple really.

@tatsuyarr:

You very literally said, "People don't like BioShock Infinite because they're dumb." That's not a good argument.

Hopefully we'll get to a point where gameplay and narrative are typically so interdependent that the idea of seperating one from the other and experiencing it in isolation is plainly ridiculous. Gameplay and narrative should ideally feel like two parts of the same whole, but more often than not they still feel like two seperate products which just happen to come in the same package. A game can't easily become more than the sum of its parts if those parts are seperated by clearly defined boundaries and never allowed to resonate with each other.

This is why I roll my eyes when developers come out and suggest letting you skip 'the gameplay sections' or whatever in future: to me that says that they are missing the point and fundamentally not appreciating the potential of gaming. If they're thinking in terms of a rigid 'gameplay section > narrative section > gameplay section...' structure then they are handicapping their game before they've even begun.

Gaming inherently cannot compete when it comes great storytelling, simply because storytelling requires passivity from the audience while all of the advantages of gaming rest with its interactivity. It's not that they aren't trying hard enough or just haven't figured it out yet, it's that the interactive nature of gaming puts it at too much of a disadvantage.

Where games do have the edge however -over all passive media- is not in story telling but in story facilitating. We need to stop criticising them for the former and start praising them more for the latter. If we all go read the same book we will all experience the same one story. It might be a great story but it will still be the same story. If we all go play the same game we might come out of it with a thousand great stories - the difference is that we won't be 'told' those stories, we'll be writing them ourselves. That's what can happen when games are designed to the inherent strengths of gaming rather than to the weaknesses. There are genuinely great stories to be found in gaming, but they're coming out of the likes of EVE and Crusader Kings and DayZ, not in the cutscenes of some action flick wannabe.

I came away from that talk thinking that having a category for "story" is super dumb and that bioshock infinite isn't very good

Maybe I just don't watch the right movies, but I find that the lack of interactivity and personal stake in them seriously hampers my ability to get very attached to the characters. Exceptions exist to be sure, but I find games are better at forming character connections. And that's excluding the crappy ones on both sides of the fence. I value characters more than overall plot in most cases, but that's just me.

@hailinel said:

Really? The majority of game critics think Dynasty Warriors is terrible (with a couple of exceptions). You're not a reviewer, but you think it's awesome. Is your opinion worth less than theirs is in this scenario? I certainly don't think so.

Well I look at it this way, most of the games with a good story this year, could not have worked better in a movie or a book.

Take Gone Home for example. How the story unfolded depended entirely on which path the player choose. Which room to start in and what details to look at. You piece together the story yourself, because you are a part of the story.

Bioshock Infinite is another good example. Even though the game has a very linear narrative and a have one conclusive, definitive ending with no room for interpretation, one of the main punchlines could only work in a game. We all played the same game, but we all did something different at some point. Multiple universes, maaaan. It's a bit on the nose, but I enjoyed that.

Honestly, some of the games this year has me very excited for more good stories in this medium in the future.

your views on game stories are limited so long as all you play are million dollar blockbuster first person shooters.

I would entirely disagree. Sure, a lot of the old tropes of the series are still there but this was the shot in the arm this franchise needed after two middling games. I wrote off the last two games entirely. I can't put this one down.

@hunter5024: Game critics don't have any special studies or education. The average game critic is just some guy that's played a lot of games. There's no history of formal critical analysis in games. The barrier to entry is low because game critics hace done little to actually raise it. Hell, I worked as a game critic on a volunteer basis this past year. What's the difference between me and Jeff in that regard? That he's written more reviews and works full-time?

Jeff works hard as a game critic, but game criticism has a long way to go to reach the respectability of film or literary criticism.

He said educated critic, which is not necessarily the same as professional critic. You don't have to work for a website to approach things from a more educated standpoint with a more critical mindset.

@hailinel: So you think a couple years of schooling is more valuable than a decade of experience?

@hunter5024: @hailinel:

You two seem to be speaking past each other.

@video_game_king: It only seems that way because the subject changed slightly. If all goes according to plan then my point will circle back around. At least I think.