Video Games Are Better Without Stories
theatlantic.com
Video Games Are Better Without Stories
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#2I don't think the title "Video Games Are Better Without Stories" is true.
The premise of the article seems to be slightly different than the title: that traditional mediums can tell stories better than video games. Which seems true, or at least.. has been true so far.
Personally I think video games can tell stories differently (not better or worse) than movies/books. They can do a much better job of putting you in the story and actually feeling something. The author uses the example of Bioshock, but really that's a poor choice for his thesis. Bioshock wasn't using the gaming medium to tell a story, they were using a story to add to a video game. Which was great, it worked very well to add to the action and became critically acclaimed (which seems to me to prove the title of the article wrong). But the story was just tacked on to the game, the game wasn't there to tell that story.
There are a few good "games" that are really just a story in a game setting. Here's a couple that I've seen:
Firewatch - http://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/ - Uses a mystery setting to tell a story. It seems like video games (at least first person ones) are constrained in a lot of ways to use mystery settings to tell stories. I've played this one and can attest it is pretty good and you actually feel involved.
Emily is Away - http://steamcommunity.com/app/417860 - This one is an interactive instant messaging story, so very nostalgic for our crowd. However, it's not as interactive as it necessarily seems. Which is why I consider it a story in a game setting. I haven't actually played this one yet, but I've had it in my "wish list" on steam for a while until I'm in the right mood for it. However, it's free to play so you can try this one yourself without anything but a time committment.
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#3[deleted]
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#4I'd love to know what games the author has played in the last decade.
Gone Home was nearly universally hated outside of media outlets, and is hardly a game in the first place; so it's interesting he brings it up as a shining example.
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#5I feel like the author had a point they were trying to make in this article, but it ended up being a complete mess that just comes across as stupid.
This idea that games are just cheaply emulating hollywood is just wrong. Games can and do tell stories that just don't work in film or books, and those stories are valuable. Games can use interactivity to make a story more personal and give the player investment and ownership.
The article essentially ends by saying that games should focus on mechanics over story. The same argument has been made before and is just a bad argument. Subtle uses of interactivity can be effective just as subtle uses of the visuals in a film can be effective.
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#6Video games are interactive stories where the editor is you: so there is some potential for a great story, it won't be something film-like, more like a animated life diary of virtual character.
People usually don't play games "for the story", they see it as atmospheric bonus for the game mechanics: something like background music they wouldn't want to focus their time on, or be forced to run down the storyline the 124th time just to get the gameplay rewards.
The problem is inherent in video games being a competitive, goal-oriented environment where repetitive, constructed stories and art are just immersion decorations for the gameworlds.
Obtrusive stories forcing the player to "rewatch the film again" detract from the flow of gameplay and actually make the players treat the story as sort of wasted effort(interruption in gameplay, e.g. cutscenes, dialogues, infodumps) that makes the game less fun/cohesive/natural.
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#7For the most part, early games dumped you directly from the title screen into the gameplay. They had a few paragraphs in the manual explaining that some bad guy's kidnapped the princess, and it's time for the chosen hero to beat up the bad guy's army, rescue the princess and save the world. Most of the people didn't read it.
This made the games that attempted to tell a more detailed story stand out from the crowd and develop as a distinctive genre.
Nowadays games feel as if they have to give you ten minutes of cutscenes for every twenty minutes of gameplay. Games are a great artistic medium for telling stories. The problem is that games that aren't in story-heavy genres feel a need to pretend that they are. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a great example of a modern game with a minimalist approach to its use of tutorial and cutscene elements.
So today, games that take a minimalist approach to storytelling are the ones that stand out from the crowd.
It's hard to build a game that's fun but focuses solely on narrative. Heavy Rain did a great job at this, but a lot of games fail.
JRPG's are the genre that gets as far as possible toward a storytelling focus without totally sacrificing gameplay. For a recent example, Persona 5 is a flawlessly executed example of a game that tightly integrates story and gameplay (although a full appreciation of the game's literary depth is impossible without some knowledge of Japanese culture and tropes).
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#8I'd love to know what games the author has played in the last decade. Gone Home was nearly universally hated outside of media outlets, and is hardly a game in the first place; so it's interesting he brings it up as a shining example.
Yes, it's pretty dishonest. The only serious modern game in the mix appears to be Bioshock, and it seems that the author didn't quite understand what Levine & Co were trying to convey about autonomy and agency with that work.
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#9I'd love to know what games the author has played in the last decade. Gone Home was nearly universally hated outside of media outlets, and is hardly a game in the first place; so it's interesting he brings it up as a shining example.
Gone Home was far from universally hated. Certainly, there's a vocal crowd of people who hated it, but it has a 7/10 on Steam and a 4.5/5 rating on Itch.
Re: Video Games Are Better Without Stories
#10I'd love to know what games the author has played in the last decade. Gone Home was nearly universally hated outside of media outlets, and is hardly a game in the first place; so it's interesting he brings it up as a shining example.
Yes, it's pretty dishonest. The only serious modern game in the mix appears to be Bioshock, and it seems that the author didn't quite understand what Levine & Co were trying to convey about autonomy and agency with that work.
Why isn't Gone Home a serious game? It's a commercial success that was well-reviewed by critics and fans. It's even made by some of the same people as Bioshock.