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ThisAdamGuy
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25 Jan 2017, 9:29 am

When you play a game, what's more important to you? Being told a good story, or the game itself being fun to play? For me, I'll never fault a game for being fun, but if it doesn't have a good story I'll get bored with it a lot faster than I would otherwise (like Minecraft). Likewise, I've found that I can forgive a lot of bad things in a game if the story is good enough (like Tales of Xillia 2). What about you?


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Skilpadde
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25 Jan 2017, 11:58 am

I certainly like a good story, but if the game isn't fun to play, even the best story can't save the game for me. The game has to be fun to play. I can ignore a plain story for good gameplay.


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ThisAdamGuy
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25 Jan 2017, 12:08 pm

Skilpadde wrote:
I certainly like a good story, but if the game isn't fun to play, even the best story can't save the game for me. The game has to be fun to play. I can ignore a plain story for good gameplay.


I was playing Tales of Xillia 2 a couple weeks ago, and I kept thinking, "Wow, this game mechanic sucks." "That's really annoying." "Did they really just port the world map over directly from the first game?" It was a pretty bad game, looking at it strictly as a game. But I kept playing it, actually enjoying it, because the story was so freaking amazing.


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Misery
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25 Jan 2017, 7:37 pm

I'll just put it this way: Whatever game I'm playing, chances are I dont even know what the story IS. Though, most of the time, I'll just outright avoid games that threaten to have one. If a game says it's "story focused", I dont buy it... simple as that.

I used to tolerate stories in games, until I realized two things: 1. Games WITHOUT story focus were pretty much universally better in terms of gameplay (because no development focus was being wasted on story), and 2. Most stories in games are bloody terrible. Also, I despise cutscenes. A game is not a freaking movie. I despise movies too, for that matter.

I have like ten squillion books in my room... if I want a story, that's where I go. Compared to those, stories in games are pretty much nothing. .....Particularly JRPGs. I used to play those, years ago, but I couldnt take any more facepalms. That they were ALL stupidly easy didnt help. Which is the other thing: Story-focused games offer zero challenge, as a rule. Because God forbid the player not get to see the end of the story due to lack of skill... they might not buy the next 20 sequels if that happens! Oh noes!


As a result of this, I pretty much never buy AAA games these days. Because most of them threaten to do all of these things.



ThisAdamGuy
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25 Jan 2017, 8:02 pm

Yeah, sorry, but I'm gonna have to call BS on just about everything you said there.

1. Tons of games with great gameplay have epic stories, if you feel like they're crap than you must think most books and movies are crap too.

2. Cutscenes are not a big deal. If you don't like them, just skip them.

3. Likewise, having a story has no effect on the gameplay. Except in special cases like Telltale games, which are pretty much playable comic books anyway, the developers have different teams working on the story and the game itself, so the presence of a plot does not effect the development of the game in any way.

4. The only way you can actually think all RPGs are always easy is if a. you're a tactical genius (I'm 99% sure you're not) or b. you spend entire days at a time grinding to overlevel yourself, in which case you can't blame anybody but yourself for it being easy. Are some easy? Yes, but most of them provide a good challenge.

If you don't like stories in games, that's fine. But please, don't make up crappy excuses for it.


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Skilpadde
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26 Jan 2017, 2:58 am

^ I agree that there are good stories in some games.
I don't mind cutscenes on the DS or other system that can charge, but they were a pain on older systems because I had to remove the batteries when the power became low, and I couldn't just save in the middle of them, and I wanted to see them without having to play a huge section of the game over again.


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amykitten
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26 Jan 2017, 7:21 am

I prefer story than gameplay. Purely as I like instructions and the feel that I'm working towards something. Hated minecraft for that reason. Although sims series seems ok as I make my own stories.... so I guess it depends on the game.



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26 Jan 2017, 8:55 am

I've always felt that gameplay is the most important aspect of any video game I choose to play. The story can utterly suck for all I care, as long as the gameplay doesn't.


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26 Jan 2017, 5:00 pm

I play games to play, I read books for stories. A story in a game is a bonus, but if I only want a story I can get the whole thing without passing levels or puzzles by reading instead.



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26 Jan 2017, 7:28 pm

Both story and gameplay matter to me.


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26 Jan 2017, 8:20 pm

That's a good question, actually. You need good gameplay in order for a game to be fun to play, but a good story can contribute to this by motivating the player. That said, I'd rather play a game with good gameplay and a paper thin story, than a game with a rich story and awful gameplay.


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27 Jan 2017, 2:19 am

ThisAdamGuy wrote:
Yeah, sorry, but I'm gonna have to call BS on just about everything you said there.

1. Tons of games with great gameplay have epic stories, if you feel like they're crap than you must think most books and movies are crap too.

2. Cutscenes are not a big deal. If you don't like them, just skip them.

3. Likewise, having a story has no effect on the gameplay. Except in special cases like Telltale games, which are pretty much playable comic books anyway, the developers have different teams working on the story and the game itself, so the presence of a plot does not effect the development of the game in any way.

4. The only way you can actually think all RPGs are always easy is if a. you're a tactical genius (I'm 99% sure you're not) or b. you spend entire days at a time grinding to overlevel yourself, in which case you can't blame anybody but yourself for it being easy. Are some easy? Yes, but most of them provide a good challenge.

If you don't like stories in games, that's fine. But please, don't make up crappy excuses for it.


Actually, having a story has a HUGE effect on gameplay: Sorry, but I'm going to have to shoot that one down.

Specifically, from the position of someone that's done actual development.

There are a couple of things that happen when you focus a game on story (and no, these arent debatable: I've been there and wrestled with these, so this is an "I've experienced and watched it" sort of thing)

1. More cost. Good writing... or what passes for good writing in games... isnt cheap. Like art, this is BLOODY EXPENSIVE. The more you must spend on story, the less you have to spend on other aspects.

2. It effects the pacing of the game. And pacing is HUGE in any game. Anyone that knows good game design knows that when you design basically anything, you have to keep in mind the pacing and structure things around that. This goes into overall design, level design, even things like boss design. Pacing is IMPORTANT. Story sequences tend to tear it up, often pretty badly. Know those sorts of games where you have to wait like 2 freaking hours to get to the actual GAMEPLAY? Yeah. Those are examples of this problem gone bonkers. Very, VERY few developers get this right. At all. Note: It's NOT just cutscenes that cause this. Even just "wander a town and talk because you have to" parts will do this (badly).

3. Voice acting ALSO costs money. Do I need to repeat the above?

4. Difficulty ALWAYS goes down when a game is focused on story. Always. Why? Because when you advertise a game as being heavily story focused, as a developer and a producer of a product you MUST ensure that the player gets what they paid for. Which, in a game like that, is the story. Ever wonder why so many JRPGs are so braindead easy? Or why so many action games get button-mashy? Or why gaming in general has gotten easier? Remember, "Nintendo Hard" used to be the norm, and it wasnt actually that bloody hard. It just SEEMS freaking hard in comparison to the new norm. And THIS is a big, BIG part of the reason why. If the player buys a game for the story, they will get ANGRY if they do not get to see it. And an angry consumer is soon to become a consumer that isnt buying more products from you. This is also part of why games like roguelikes and shmups tend to simply not even HAVE a story. Because chances are, the player is NOT beating those anytime soon. Possibly for 100s of hours. Inserting a major story into those is often a big no-no, because again, you then get the big anger when people dont have the skill to see the end. So it simply doesnt happen.

5. It's subjective, but yeah, I'm going to go on record as saying that most games have very bad storylines, at least to my standards. Or bad writing. Understand: I get this perspective because of the sheer ridiculous number of books I've read, from all sorts of genres and all sorts of authors. You could call it a secondary special interest of mine. And storylines in games just dont compare to books. They dont even come close. And it makes sense: You CANNOT just tell a straight-up normal story in a game. Why? Because you cant WRITE them that way. You have to fit the story around the gameplay. The position of the scenes becomes split up, and the story has to make sense along with what the player is DOING. Having that be disjointed is a problem, and this makes it much harder to write a good story. Game design clashes badly with story during the design phase, and this is exactly why this is such a problem, and it's why so many games use heavily cliche'd storylines. IN ADDITION, the actual writing suffers, because of how broken up it must be, and how that interacts with the writing structure. I cant go further into this without getting deeper into the nature of writing and what goes into it, but.... you get the point. In effect, writing a good story... normally a major challenge to start with... becomes dramatically more complicated when it must be structured around a very interactive product. Writers of books simply dont have to deal with ANY of that. At all.

6. Yes, I think all RPGs are easy. PARTICULARLY JRPGs. In most of those, you dont exactly have to try very hard. You dont exactly have to think very hard. Alot of games, you can get through while just hitting "attack" over and over in many battles. Hell, that's one reason why random encounters are so loathed: Because they're bloody mindless. There's no thought to them. I've *never* seen a JRPG where this isnt the case. Never. Now, I will note one thing: My idea of difficulty is more than a little warped. Something like the entire Souls series is easy to me. I'm used to bullet-hell games (and I mean the NASTY ones, not Touhou. Look up a game called Mushihime-sama Futari, played on Ultra mode, if you want to see what I mean) and hardcore roguelikes (which are, at their core, built on RPG-elements/mechanics, yet they go WAY further with all of it, and you really DO have to be a tactical master to handle those, and yes, I can provide examples. Lots of them), and things like Dwarf Fortress. (and yes, I absolutely can easily prove this: I"ve frequently taken videos of me doing exactly these sorts of games I'm talking about, and winning at them). Even still though, you dont have to be a tactical master to plow your way through most RPGs. My idea of difficulty may be bent out of shape, but I can still recognize "game that is easy for most people to beat" when I see it. One other note: Usually when I say this about this genre, I mean modern games. The REALLY old RPGs? Those were different. You want to see an RPG I actually thought was decently challenging, go play the original Final Fantasy. And I dont mean the remakes. The actual original on the NES. No guides, no walkthroughs. That'll provide something that at least makes me think (yet even then, it's not THAT hard). But these days? Nah.


I dont say things like what I said earlier just to say them. I think people get that impression of me, but... no. I only go on about stuff like this if I have reason as to why and how I actually know about it. PLAYING games isnt my only special interest: Designing them is another one. And I've both done design myself, and also worked with a few developers in the process (one of which is pretty much constant now, after I proved myself fit for the role). And I dont mean small design roles like "here, design some rooms for this area we're making". No, I mean designing entire mechanics (I also tend to handle all aspects of difficulty balancing) and having enough authority to veto choices by others in the team. Frankly I'm still not entirely sure of the sequence of events that led to that position, or why anyone would want someone as absentminded as me for ANY role like that, but... hey, I just roll with it. It's worked out well and the guys in charge have been pleased with it. It's given me a blazing hatred for glitches and balance issues though. Well, more of a hatred than I normally would otherwise have. Something I've learned is that development is FRUSTRATING. Anyone considering working in the industry might wanna think twice on it.



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01 Feb 2017, 9:17 pm

It's silly to compare books to games as they are completely different mediums.

Games are much closer to movies, and many actual video game writers are screenwriters who transfer their scripts over to gameplay and have a consultant role in the matter.

Modern game stories are not rubbish, perhaps about 10 years ago they were laughably at B-movie quality at best, but the average modern game story is at the very least on par with many movie scripts, it's just that gameplay has been added to the equation.

I can see plenty of modern action games with scripts just as complex as action movies.

Unfortunately though, most video games do still transfer poorly when made into movies.

Writing games is such a difficult thing to do in the first place, for all the reasons you listed.

It's so difficult to direct a player through the story.

Most gamers do not like stories that are too linear and scripted because it feels restrictive, like they're using an interactive movie rather than an actual game.

This doesn't mean linear, non-open world games can't work, it's just difficult.

With regards to point #4, the balance can be achieved.

Think open world games with a lot of side missions and side content.

These are often necessary to get 100%, but otherwise casual gamers can simply play through the story and often the only benefits they get from doing the side content are perhaps a cool weapon or costume or three, or extra lore.

There's plenty for the Completionists, and a reasonable amount of story, not too much or too little, but just right, for the story players.

Video game stories are something that must be kept at and mastered, we now have the technology to create wonderful stories, unlike the retro gaming days where story was secondary to gameplay as a complicated story would just chew up data and thus dampen gameplay too much.

Do you know many good examples of games with little story that are used to their full potential?

You say that story affects the pacing, budget, gameplay, etc. which is all true, but personally it seems to me most games that don't care about story are small games from indie developers that don't give a good idea of just how amazing a plotless game can be.

I know you're an indie developer yourself but I don't mean that as an insult. I'm saying even without story, the budget of indie developers is low so they simply don't have the money to create a plotless game and use it to its full potential, to me this means good graphics, unique and interesting gameplay, good controls, high replay value, etc.

It likely is because most AAA companies simply don't make games with little to no story.

Otherwise most games with little story are low budget, extremely simplistic games I tend to find very boring, meaningless and repetitive after sometime, the kind of games made by indie companies with such low budgets they probably couldn't afford to add a story even if they wanted to. That's not meant as an insult either, it could possibly be a fact that some indie developers can't afford to add a story or voice acting so they instead make a gameplay based game, or a minimalist plot (which is fine by me).

I guess No Man's Sky is a good example of a plotless bigger budget indie game and what kind of gameplay can be achieved when story doesn't matter, but many gamers and reviewers reported feeling very alone and existential when playing the game, that there was no purpose or meaning, and that the actual gameplay was too monotonous.

Funny that people rarely feel this playing Minecraft or Terraria or the Sims though!

It works decently well for these games, though even the Sims has story modes or other methods to encourage continued play.

This doesn't mean every game must have story or plot, but it certainly should not be done away with altogether.

You probably are in the minority if you don't care about plot at all, because even the hardcore COD players who quickly finish the story on hardest difficulty in just 2hrs and then spend all their time playing online for the next 6 months until the next release at least gave the plot a chance and probably found it at least a mildly entertaining way to kill some time and payed a few passing seconds here and there to what they were actually doing and why.

Even many classic retro games have some semblance of plot as an excuse to justify why you need to do X, Y and Z, even if it just means the 'plot' is a brief popup of text on the screen at the beginning and end of each mission telling you what to do.

I remember playing a classic retro game, can't remember it's name, but even it had a single cutscene at the very beginning of the game before you got into your ship and were off.

Books are so wonderful because written literature has existed for thousands of years.

Movies weren't as well-written in their infancy.

Yes, most modern games are too easy, unfortunately. I still understand the majority of what you're saying and somewhat agree with most of it.



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02 Feb 2017, 8:23 pm

Hm, an interesting post, Outrider. I'll give a few responses of my own:

Quote:
It's silly to compare books to games as they are completely different mediums.


The reason why I do this is because I honestly just dont see the point of playing an otherwise mediocre game "for the story". I play games... to PLAY the games. If I wanted to watch a movie... which is what alot of AAA games are trying to be nowadays... I would simply go watch a movie. When I want a story, I go to books. There's just no reason for me to do otherwise.

Though to explain a bit further and perhaps this'll make a bit more sense as to where my viewpoint partly comes from, I actually dont like movies much either. I get bored with them so fast. So many seem to be just flashy explosions and whatever, and just... bleh. I kinda look at those the same way: I'll just read a book instead.


Quote:
Do you know many good examples of games with little story that are used to their full potential?


Actually yes, I do. Games that DONT have story are the main sorts of things I play... there are entire genres that are focused around this type of thing. For example, the shmup genre... not only does nobody play those for the stories, many shmups literally dont even have one. Or the ones that DO have them, have absolute bare-bones stuff at best. For example, the R-Type series... a classic in the best sense and one that lasted a very long time... it's story can be summed up as this: "Blast off and strike the evil Bydo Empire!! !". That's it, that's the entire story. There's nothing else. The game simply didnt NEED one. Not just the oldest games, but the much later games as well in that series. The gameplay was very clearly king there, and it kept people coming back for more.

As it is, in my Steam collection alone, I have some 350+ games. While there are exceptions to EVERY rule (Undertale for example, I do like that, though it's the characters that caught my attention more than the overall story), the vast majority of my collection is made of games like R-Type. I dont mean just shmups... it could be anything. For example, one favorite of mine is a game called 20XX. Think Megaman X plus a roguelike. The way I often describe the game to people is "It's everything that Mighty No. 9 SHOULD have been and WANTED to be". The game isnt just good... it's freaking BRILLIANT. Quality shines at every single part of it, from the finely tuned controls, to the balance, to the wealth of options provided by the player, to the replay value, and even the game's graphics, overall artstyle, sound, and things like that are completely perfect for a game that's meant to be a tribute to one of the most renowned game series out there.

Mighty No. 9, actually, was a perfect example of the sort of thing I've been getting at here. It had SO much potential: It was going to be built off of a tried-and-true formula, from the foundational concepts of a series that had been around for a VERY long time. But they tried to absolutely STUFF it with story elements. And it suffered HORRIBLY. The hyper-disjointed nature of the game screams of something that's trying to funnel the player through a storyline, yet with gameplay that absolutely does not work with it. At certain sections of the game, it's very clear that the devs were struggling with this concept, and it can be seen within the level design itself. And it didnt NEED any of that. Hell, the old Megaman series HAD a story... but it also knew exactly what kind of game it was, and the devs at the time knew not to go too far with that. The game's simple story of Dr. Light VS Dr. Wily may be so much simpler than many nowadays, but it was MEMORABLE. It was just right for what kind of game it was. It wasnt developers sticking in loads of story elements just so that they could say that they did so, which unfortunately is how things like Mighty No. 9 come to be. Now granted, that game had WAY more problems than JUST the bits I'm talking about here. But you get my point.

Quote:
I'm saying even without story, the budget of indie developers is low so they simply don't have the money to create a plotless game and use it to its full potential, to me this means good graphics, unique and interesting gameplay, good controls, high replay value, etc.


Actually, that's not true either. The very game I was just talking about, 20XX, is a prime example. Go have a look at it on Steam; the game is freaking gorgeous, and STUFFED with content, and some of the best platforming gameplay I've ever seen. And it's made by TWO guys. Just two. This is a game that completely and utterly has outdone No. 9, a game that had a budget of MILLIONS and a very large development team. And 20XX is made by TWO guys! Budget is an important element, this is true. But at the same time, it doesnt actually determine what kind of gameplay you get in the end. What's important is how you USE the budget and time that you have. In this case, with 20XX, the time and resources that those two guys have were used correctly. Their development process hasnt been a hideous jumbled mess; they're VERY professional developers that frankly impress me quite alot. And again, small indie devs.

Now there's also the idea of graphics. That's often another big misconception: That smaller games can ONLY have weak, crappy graphics because how could they have better than that? Look up a game called Everspace. This is another game made by a small indie studio... but it's in full 3D, and it's freaking gorgeous. Not only that, the gameplay is absolutely fantastic, and like 20XX, it's got endless replay value. Again, it's what they DO with the resources they have, not how MUCH they have, that is a key factor. Whereas Mighty No. 9 completely blew it with this, by trying to overextend into areas that the game never needed to go into.

And that happens with alot of games that end up trying to stuff story into places where it simply isnt that necessary. If someone wants to make a real story-focused game, you *have* to structure the game around it properly. And that's a huge issue, because many... including a very large number of AAA devs... simply cannot do so. Which is part of the problem to me: If someone wants to tell a story, hey, whatever. Fine. But it's almost always done in exactly the wrong way.

One example of it done RIGHT is a game called SUPERHOT. Which apparently must always be in all-caps. This is one of my favorite games of the last couple years, and it's done so well that it ended up actually getting a retail release; which is something that normally NEVER EVER HAPPENS with games like this. The game is known for having extremely innovative and outright fun gameplay, but it also is one of the few that tells a story PROPERLY for the medium. There's no lengthy cutscenes, no endless walls of text, and the writers dont try to unnecessarily draw out scenes that dont need to be (which is an outright rampant trend amongst AAA games in particular). The story elements are fully interactive; it is told through your interaction with the world in certain sections of the game, and even through the game's very interface (this is hard to explain in text; you'd have to play it yourself to see what it means). The sections of the game that do this are quick and precise. They do as much as they need to, and never overstep their boundaries, and meld well with the gameplay as they were actually designed AROUND it instead of AGAINST it. Like Undertale, it becomes one of those super-rare exceptions for me in that I actually did follow the storyline. The game wasnt fighting me every step of the way with it, after all.


Quote:
Otherwise most games with little story are low budget, extremely simplistic games



This one, honestly, is a misconception. It sounds like you simply havent been exposed to much in the way of good games within the indie scene.

One reason actually why I tend to avoid AAA games is, actually, for similar reasons to what you listed here. They're extremely simple, very easy, very BORING, and just... dull. They dont mentally engage me, they dont challenge me, and they dont make me think.

I switched to indie games because they ARE doing those things. An example of this is a game called AI War. This is by the very developer that I've been contracted to, and it's a game that directly led to my first experience with development, because it's how I found these guys to begin with. AI War is one of the hardest and most complicated games I've ever seen... period. It's a real-time-strategy game where the focus is on facing a powerful, smart AI in an asymmetric war. Unlike many RTS games like Starcraft, AI War has no focus on PvP. This is because it has no PvP whatsoever. In games like Starcraft, PvP is an absolute necessity because there just isnt much value to be gotten out of skirmishing with the AI; it's just too freaking stupid. It becomes easy and boring very fast, even for players that arent very good at the game. AI War... lacks this problem. The AI itself is a bloody masterpiece (and making GOOD AI is something this developer is specifically known for). This is an intelligent opponent that will constantly surprise you at every turn. And it's doing this in a MASSIVELY complicated game, making it that much more impressive. The game is stuffed with possibilities and an absolutely amazing amount of depth; I consider it, honestly, one of the deepest games there is. Very few games make me have to really think as hard as this one does. I'm not going to go into a full explanation of how the game works: It'd take WAY too long. It's easier to look it up yourself to see what I mean.

And many fans of the game dont just have dozens of hours in it, they dont just have hundreds, they have THOUSANDS. That's the staying power that this game has, that's the depth that it has. And the kicker? It was made originally by ONE guy. Just one. That developer has now become a full team, after the success of AI War (and that game has received no less than six expansions), but the original really was made by just ONE person. And as far as I'm concerned, it's a freaking masterpiece.


Of course, misconceptions like what you said are an issue in the industry right now. To find games like this, you have to know in advance where to LOOK, and the industry makes it super hard to do that. I can do it because I've gotten used to it over the past decade. But to many, they look at non-AAA games, and they see things like FNAF, or even Angry Birds clones. Games that dont even pretend to have depth. Shallow experiences that leave much to be desired. Yet, THOSE are the games that everyone hears about, and they overshadow everything else. And it really is a shame, because there's SO VERY MANY fantastic indie titles out there that give exactly the sorts of things you say you want here.

Quote:
Funny that people rarely feel this playing Minecraft or Terraria or the Sims though!


Ah, these are more good examples.

The problem with something like No Man's Sky, which you also mentioned, wasnt that it had no plot. It's the gameplay that caused it's issues. Which is to say, it doesnt have much. NMS is a game about wandering and viewing things... that's it's core.

Looking at stuff like Minecraft, Terraria, the Sims though, you see very different stories.

Minecraft is a game that is whatever you make of it. Some people play it via it's core gameplay concepts, where it's about survival, building, digging, crafting, all of those things. Others play it as a PVP experience, with teams playing against each other using complicated rules. Still others will download mods for the game, turning it into what THEY want it to be. Hell, you can GIVE the game a story if you want! There are a great many examples of stories created WITHIN the framework of the game.


The Sims, even moreso. But not just the Sims: A game called Dwarf Fortress is one of the best examples I could possibly give here. Dwarf Fortress... possibly the single most complicated game I've ever seen, with a learning curve that's more of a learning-cliff-covered-in-spikes.... has no pre-written story, much like The Sims. instead, the game CREATES one. When a new world is generated, the game spends about 10 billionty years generating, procedurally, an entire HISTORY to go along with that world. 500 or so years of history, complete with... everything. It has an entire mode that allows you to simply look at that stuff. You can look at, say, a war, and single out an individual battle. You can look at that battle and look at an individual character. You can look at that character and see what they accomplished in their life. And these things actually shape the state that the world is in when the player begins. But moreso than that, Dwarf Fortress is about the story CREATED by the gameplay that the player engages in. If you were to look around, fans of the game have written entire stories that arent fan-stories, but are instead simple descriptions of their most recent run through of the game. These can often read almost like a book, with characters, events, all generated dynamically by the game and the player's actions. It's freaking fascinating. Say you have an incident that involves, a war with Goblins, attacking the fort. And during that war, the lead Goblin manages to kill an important dwarf; some sort of leader that everyone looks up to. You as the player may have tried to stop this via your decisions and strategies, but it happened anyway. If, much later in the game, you have some engravers go and decorate a dining chamber with engravings, the engravings may potentially be depictions of that exact event, showing the dramatic moment where the goblin ran the dwarf through with a sword, because the dwarf's complicated AI registered this as a dramatic and emotional event that impacted the fortress. That's the sheer depth of what this game can do... and NONE of that is pre-written! The Sims is often beloved because it provides this sort of experience as well. Again, these are games that structured their "storytelling" aspect ENTIRELY around the gameplay. Dwarf Fortress itself, from a pure gameplay standpoint, is an extremely deep and extremely challenging game, and the story elements so unique to it were created along with the gameplay in mind. It's another example that story CAN be told differently from the often-broken ways that many AAA devs (and plenty of indie devs) think of as the ONLY way.



Anyway, I'll stop rambling here. I apologize for ranting so much, but as I said, game design is a special interest of mine, and well... if you're here on this forum, you know just how much alot of us tend to ramble when talking about our interests! If you dont read it all, that's fine. I enjoyed typing it out, it gets me thinking about these things.



Drake
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03 Feb 2017, 8:15 am

For me, gameplay trumps all. I could play a game with awesome gameplay that was poor in every other respect (except the game's length, but if it was cheap enough or free that still wouldn't matter.) I couldn't play a game with poor gameplay that was awesome in every other respect.

The story first player I believe is simply what I am but with the story at the forefront. The fact it's also a game is a positive to them, but the story has to be there otherwise it's as much of a dealbreaker as gameplay is to me, and with me a good story really enriches a game, but it's not essential at all.

A game with a good story but uninteresting gameplay I treat the same way I would a book or movie. I watch it, via someone else's let's play.



Andrejake
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03 Feb 2017, 1:25 pm

For me it depends.
Even though I do have a higher preference for gameplay over story (most of my fav games are chosen because of gameplay aspects), I do not rule out any game just because it is focused on one or another. I analyze most cases and think: If it tells a story in an good/fun way and it is the kind of story that I like, I play it. If it barely have a story but the gameplay is good, I also play it.
But since I see gameplay as a more important aspect it's easier to play a game with good gameplay but bad story than the opposite.

For example, I can play games like Super Mario, Guitar Hero, Splatoon, Thumper, The Legend of Zelda, Doom, Mortal Kombat, and Diablo 3, without caring at all about what is going on in the story. The gameplay is good for me to the point that the story is there basically just to set a background for things to happen.
On the other hand I can also have a good time playing things like The Last of Us or Life is Strange even though their gameplay is not very pleasent for me. I simply like good stories and it doesn't matter the shape that they come.

A good balance of things is rare, but sometimes it happens and it is very good to find games that I can enjoy both aspects at least in a similar level.