171–180 of 337 posts
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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"?
Also the title ("truths") implies there is no room for negotiation
I remember all the press praising the original Half Life for its story. I was really surprised - it was the same story as all first person shooters going back to Doom: Bad guys spawn across an inter-dimensional portal and start wreaking havoc. Protagonist has to kill them all, crossing the portal in the process to go destroy the alien leader. There were some cool extra details - the G Man, the marines entering as a t…
That's why I mostly play point&click adventure/rpg games and text adventures, because that genre can't really survive without a good story. I'm rarely disappointed and the games cost a fraction of what you would pay for a AAA title. Not that I don't like AAA, but every time I watch a gameplay video I get bored fairly quickly because I don't feel drawn to the game, it seems "same old, same old". Perhaps it's just me.…
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> (…) his comparison of game stories to movies. > How can you compare a 2 hour narrative with a 10-100 hour narrative? Not only the length makes video game stories different. Another huge difference is that in video games you actually get to be the character(s). You don’t just passively experience the story like in a movie or a book, you’re an active part of it. Even better: you can have the player make meaningful ch…
You don't get to be the character, you get to control it within very narrow constraints...
In SSX, they broke that wall by referring to the characters as riders we identify with, explicitly challenging the idea of them being characters we pretend to become.
Other titles do that, but that was the first one I noticed the distinction made in an overt way.
People are all over the place on this too.
Video games are in a similar position, in which they are evaluated on 'story', which is how one evaluates movies.
once we realize video games are not movies in terms of what effect they are supposed to produce, we will to be able to evaluate them on their own terms
For example, maybe what kind of beauty we should seek to maximize in a video game isnt the story, but the act of agency in the player as shaped by the game's rules or constraints. With that idea, it is the player's performance that is most beautiful, not the story.
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Thanks for posting this comment, I searched for sources on this topic after reading it and was very surprised to see corroboration. Here’s a quote and few links for those interested: In the US in 2019, a high % of adults reported reading a book recently https://www.markinblog.com/book-sales-statistics/ …who is reading in the US? In October of 2019, over 80% of adults, age 18 to 29, have read at least one book in the…
Books sales are sales of anything with an ISBN. This includes adult colouring books, which I’ve heard is responsible for possibly all the sales increases in the past few years.
When photography was invented, people judged it by how well it could compare to a painting, before discovering what made the medium unique. Video games are in a similar position, in which they are evaluated on 'story', which is how one evaluates movies. once we realize video games are not movies in terms of what effect they are supposed to produce, we will to be able to evaluate them on their own terms For example, m…
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…
Larger numbers are better? Let's take as an example the criticaly acclaimed Ghost of Tsushima. If you ask me, it could have been half as long and exactly as good if not better. There was too much identical padding to reach your 100 hour "narrative".
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I find it really weird to judge a story on what it boils down to instead of on how it's delivered. Imagine you have two versions of a game. The first delivers its story by long cutscenes and a omniscient narrator. The second delivers its story with the environement and dialogues with the characters, with the playing having to piece everything together. Even if the "story" is the same, the second game has a better sto…
What the story is, and how it's told, are both important aspects to varying degrees to different people. This is the case with novels, too. For example, I love a good mindbending plot, and barely care how it's told. I can tolerate / enjoy hard scifi or fantasy with detailed magic systems, even if the writing is considered not great. To me, the Ciuxin Liu Three Body Problem series is one of the greatest of all time be…
I think of narrative as a combination of several elements: character, plot, world-building, execution (word choice, visual choices and performance for film or games), concepts and ideas. I tend to be drawn to strong characters first, but not always. Some examples off the top of my head:
Clerks: strong characters, mediocre almost everything else
Reservoir Dogs: strong characters, strong execution, minimal plot and world-building
Portal: strong characters, plot, world building, concepts, and execution
Brazil (the Terry Gilliam movie): strong world-building and execution, weak characters and plot
Lolita (the book): strong execution and characters
Harry Potter: strong characters, world-building, and concepts, goofy plot and execution
Primer: mind-bending concepts, good execution, weak characters and plot
Don’t know why, but I could go on and on thinking about it.
Edit: this list would imply I have pretty narrow tastes but really I like a little bit of everything; these are just some notable examples that came to mind as being particularly strong or weak in certain areas.