Truths about video game stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Truths about video game stories

#81

Post by DeathArrow » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:01 AM UTC

It's wrong to compare literature with games and think about the story.

In literature you have to do two things: tell a story and do it in a pleasant way. If you fail at telling the story, you fail at it.

Games have much more to them than just telling a story. You have mechanics, you have visuals. It is interactive and it has outcomes.

To not fail a game you have to give player satisfaction.

It would be nice to think of all of the things that might appeal to players, the story being just one thing among lots of others.

If story would be the only important thing then people would play lots of text based games but they do not.

The bad thing is that most of the times players get what designers think is a good game, not what they actually think it is a good game.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#82

Post by dakial1 » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:02 AM UTC

As I get older (40 y/o) I'm noticing that my video game taste is migrating from dont-think-just-shoot FPS towards well written RPGs (but still with some action, and not turn based rpg). Might be interesting to know i f this happens with everyone...

Re: Truths about video game stories

#83

Post by nottorp » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:03 AM UTC

baq wrote: post #77

npinsker wrote: post #41

I guess 'The Lord of the Rings' is a bad story then? After all it is exactly the kind of story this person is complaining about...

It was a good story at the time; it created a genre and is indirectly responsible for many, many great works. If it was created today, it’d be a generic high fantasy work.

LoTR's execution of the story is high quality though. There were fantasy stories before and after it, but most aren't remembered..

Re: Truths about video game stories

#84

Post by nottorp » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:05 AM UTC

haunter wrote: post #28

jsiepkes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is quite an incredibly toxic and negative piece The author might have a negative take on things and you might not like the article but to brand the article as "incredibly toxic" is a bit of a hyperbole.

Well to me it's toxic when it opens with the achievements (being successful in the business for 27 years) then shits on the whole industry and their own customers (treat your own players as idiots) in a holier than thou attitude. Just very bitter.

So... everyone that disagrees with you is "toxic"?

Re: Truths about video game stories

#85

Post by powersnail » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #67

powersnail wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not everyone else is bad? It's not like he's the only one writing stories for games that make a profit. I mean it's fine to like your own achievement. Nothing wrong with that. But he's certainly not successful enough to be so cocky as to detract everyone else's work (and again, he did so without much evidence or elaboration).

Yes he is successful enough to definitely have right to voice opinion on industry state or criticise it. We are talking about notoriously difficult market to succeed in.It would be absurd to expect him to be only one who ever earned profit in order to comment on quality of stories - both his own and other peoples. And frankly, playing a game once is enough to give you right to criticism that game story. Playing a cou…

Self-deprecating is the opposite of the article. The article “self”-deprecated others in the industry on their behalves.

Of course he has the right to comment on whatever he likes to. I’m not suggesting that anyone should take away his freedom of speech.

I was merely criticizing the quality of his criticism.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#86

Post by ChrisKnott » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:18 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #59

eterm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely this. In half-life you were exposed to a world and left to figure out what was going on from that. You were rarely directly told to do anything. For the first hour or two you were implored to, "Get to the surface" because it was your and your fellow scientists hope of being rescued. When you run into the marines you aren't told they're bad, they just start trying to kill you and you figure out that you're…

> When you run into the marines you aren't told they're bad, they just start trying to kill you and you figure out that you're not getting a rescue. That is not exactly subtle nor needs much figuring. Them trying to kill you is game telling you they are bad in very straightforward way.

Yes but even this was revolutionary at the time - to reveal that information through gameplay rather than cutscene or text.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#87

Post by shmde » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

Here are some single player narrative/story driven games which are worth your time and money and also has decent to good storyline. The author seems way too salty over some games I think.

- The Last of Us 1 & 2 ( Must play )

- RDR 1&2. ( 2 is must play )

- GTA IV - Mafia 2

- A Plague Tale: Innocence ( must play )

- Metro series.

- Inside

- Witcher 3

- A Way out ( needs 2 player )

- Night in the woods

- Breath of the Wild ( if you own a switch )

- Undertale

- The whole Walking Dead series by TellTale. ( Similar theme of Last of Us )

- Life is strange. ( People say it has a clichéd story but I loved it )

- Detroit become human.

- Yakuza Series

- Sleeping dogs ( A man who never eats pork buns is never a whole man! )

- GoW (2018) ( PlayStation exclusive )

- Uncharted series especially Uncharted 4. ( PS exclusive but its coming to PC soon )

- Horizon Zero Dawn

- Nier Automata

- Subnautica

- Firewatch

- Alan Wake.

- Fallout (especially New Vegas)

- Dishonored series

- Pathologic 2.

- Disco Elysium.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#88

Post by ketzu » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:20 AM UTC

vjancik wrote: post #34

This author seems to have never played a game with an actual good story. You can tell from his comparison of game stories to movies. How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour narrative? This article grossly overgeneralizes stories in games and ignores the unique storytelling device that is a "game". A good book doesn't necessarily make for a good movie and a good movie doesn't necessarily make for a g…

I didn't get the same impression as you about the author. Especially later points sound like they played games with good writing and most points are just "many games" points.

Personally, I have seen and played games with 100 hours of playtime - none had a story/narrative of 100 hours (edit: most of it was "filler" aka gameplay without much narrative/story).

I also agree with many parts of the article regarding bad stories overall, despite playing some games with good stories - or stories I felt were good when I had little exposure to video game stories.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#89

Post by ElonMuskrat » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

It's great the author has found success and carved out a niche. However it's quiet a stretch for them to speak as an authority, to assert truisms about video games. Several other commentators have great counter examples. From memory games like The Last of Us, Brothers, Life is Strange and Disco Elysium.

Re: Truths about video game stories

#90

Post by roenxi » Sun, Oct 31, 2021, 10:29 AM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #70

wodenokoto wrote: post #40

I think the author is right that games generally have poor, or poorly executed stories, and even great stories need to be squeezed into the game play box (e.g. his "ends with bang"-trope.) But I also feel like the author misunderstands how the medium can elevate a story: "Old mans Journey" was critized for having too simple puzzles, but it is not a puzzle game. It's a story, where a few simple puzzles gives you time…

Yes. It's like saying stories in opera are worse than in novels because dialogues in opera aren't realistic and the story is too short :) You have to play to the strengths of the medium. The less defined the story is the more freedom players have. It's a design tradeoff that makes stories in games different, and they should be judged based on these different media constraints.

Stories in opera are worse than in novels. Good opera is usually paired with woefully poor story. The whole point of the story is to provide basic context to the songs.

Consider Turandot. The story is bad to the point of being objectionable, and whatever is left verges on gibber. And yet, without it, a song like Ho una casa nell'Honan is lessened because there has to be at least some reason to care about why this guy has a house in what sounds like a badly corrupted pronunciation of Yunnan.