Everything anyone has ever said about the role of Story in Games is wrong. That goes for me too. Read this, and then you''ll see what I mean: A Role-Playing Game is not a game. There are two forces at work here. Game and Story. They ARE NOT OPPOSITE. These two forces both exist in pure forms; tetris and Fiction. Somewhere along the line, somebody mixed the two. We put a story around a game, or a game in a story, however you want to view it. What we found is that the game got better because it had a CONTEXT, and the story got better because it had a CHANCE OF FAILURE. I reiterate: They are not opposite. No gameplay ever gets worse because there is more story around it if the story is any good. No story ever gets worse if the gameplay is any good. This idea is a crock of shit; Geoff Howland drawing abstract connections between concepts because he feels it should work that way. Let''s try an example. An RPG is not a game. It is a game and a story; a story with games embedded in it; a game with a story around it. As much as I dislike Square, we will use Final Fantasy VII as an example because most people are familiar with it. Take all of the combat and statistics out of FFVII. What''s left is something like a movie or a book. What you took out is the game. You complete the game by defeating the final boss. This causes the conclusion of the story. Game and Story are still not the same thing. They are still not opposites. They are symbiotic (if you don''t know what that means, go read a Spiderman comic...) Now, you can certainly have varying degrees of game/story ratio! For example. Tetris: Game 100% Story 0% Tetris is a Game. Quake III: Game: 99% Story: 1% No Story doesn''t make it a bad game. Game and story aren''t related like that. Without a story, it does lose the CONTEXT, which made it somewhat more interesting to play alone or for long periods of time. Ninja Gaiden: Game: 82% Story: 18% Took a simple side-scroller and added cinemas between levels. This made the game more interesting by adding a CONTEXT. Or, you could say that it made the STORY more interesting since you added risk of Failure. I know that''s not really what they were thinking, but a game COULD be written that way. Final Fantasy VII: Button Smashing: 20% Story: 80% Here''s where the shift really happens. RPGs are usually considered Stories made more interesting by games. The game provides a risk of failure, but the purpose of running the application is to experience the story, augmented by the games. Crime and Punishment: Game: 0% Story: 100% This is a narrative. You finish it. You don''t beat it, succeed or fail. This doesn''t really change anything. The game still needs to be a good game, the story needs to be a good story. If it''s straight game, no story. Straight story, no game. Making good Gameplay is an art of it''s own. Making a good story has long been it''s own art. Making the two work together in a way that''s beneficial to both, that''s called the Art of making Video Games (read: not "games"). ====== "The unexamined life is not worth living." -Socrates "Question everything. Especially Landfish." -Matt

quote: Original post by Landfish
Making good Gameplay is an art of it's own. Making a good story has long been it's own art. Making the two work together in a way that's beneficial to both, that's called the Art of making Video Games (read: not "games").

======
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

"Question everything. Especially Landfish."
-Matt

Yes, I feel much better about all this after reading this post. And to bring it all back to your original point about games needing writers, they need it not only for that good story as well as helping to make game & story work together...

(*delightful sigh*) All is well again in the mind of Nazrix. Now I can get back to actually working on a game err whatever the hell we decided to call it

Edited by - Nazrix on September 7, 2000 4:12:16 PM

Huzzah! Naz, thank you for understanding. I can survive metaphysically as long as one person understands what I''m saying.

quote: Original post by Landfish

Huzzah! Naz, thank you for understanding. I can survive metaphysically as long as one person understands what I'm saying.

No, thank you for clarifying. I don't think I could have gone to work today until I resolved this





"NPC's are people too!" --dwarfsoft

"`Nazrix is cool.' --Nazrix" --Darkmage

Edited by - Nazrix on September 7, 2000 4:15:07 PM

quote: Original post by Landfish

Everything anyone has ever said about the role of Story in Games is wrong. That goes for me too.

Hehe, this reminds of the illogical axiom "This statement is false."

quote:
There are two forces at work here. Game and Story. They ARE NOT OPPOSITE. These two forces both exist in pure forms; tetris and Fiction. Somewhere along the line, somebody mixed the two. We put a story around a game, or a game in a story, however you want to view it. What we found is that the game got better because it had a CONTEXT, and the story got better because it had a CHANCE OF FAILURE.

One of the problems I have with this is that it seems the more I have of one the less I have of another. Unless I have a plot that branches a bazillion different ways, and each branch is just as good as another, I can''t see how the essence of fiction, which is perfectly crafted linear storytelling, is parallel to complete player freedom, which might (?) be the essence of gameplay.

This is almost borne out it the percentages you''ve listed. In FFIV, you have tons of story but not that much game. In Quake you have tons of game but not that much story. This makes me see gameplay and pure fiction as opposite ends of a linked continuum.

You could convince me and become a personal diety with your own shrine here next to my computer if you can show me a game that has 100% gameplay, and 100% story. I think then I could come to see them not as opposites in direct conflict.

(BTW, as a mental exercise, let''s add story to Quake 3 Arena and make it really matter...)




--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

I agree with Wavinator,

You can''t say that story and gameplay aren''t opposites although they are two different parts of the (video) game. Some balance must be chosen. Assuming that AI doesn''t get any better then making more of one shifts the balances making the other less prominent.

Game design is about choosing how to make the balance of the two (and choose to be a bit provoking) *opposite* forces. Although you can put more in of one without removing any contents of the opposite you will shift the balance and the player will use more time on the one than you added some to.

In other words the players time must be devided by some relative measure - and I think that that is what Lnadfish did in the first posting. Everything summed to a 100% and that was a percantage of the players time in front of the screen. How much of the time was he/she *active* in the game (gameplay) or *passive* in the game (listening to a story).

I think, though, that you can measure each side with a some absolute value. Not of the time it takes from the player but in quality. This is actually what reviewers do when they judge games. I have seen some that judge gameplay separately. They could judge the story too, if they wanted to.

So we must choose a balance and then focus on making the quality of the players time we use on story and gameplay as good as possible. This does not mean that we should add more content, which use more player time (unless we do it for the other side too so we avoid shifting the balance we choose) but we should make that content that there already is in the game better, so the player has more fun when playing.

This is what Wavinator talks about. Getting a score of 100 in both gameplay and story. This says nothing about the balance in time just that both parts are hugely fun.

Jacob Marner

Woohoo ! very nice thinking here

OK, then. So I''ll just second Wavinator and ask you, why does it feel to me that you have a balance between the two, and not a simple addition. Why do they seem to be complementary ?

What is a story ?
and what is a game ?

What does a story brings to us ? (I ahve kind of found my little conclusion for games, but here ... I can''t understand)

Oh, just one more disturbing thought that occured to me :
"
-So what makes you play a game ?
-well, good gameplay !
"
play game, game play , d''uh ?!

nazrix :
LMAO
There is a word for the kind of questions I am asking : Philosophy. But we have a more common expression in french : "enculage de mouche" (you could translate as "to take flies up the ass").

But anyway...

youpla :-P

There have been many games that do just this, Wavy (Gravy. . .*heh*). (100/100 split that is) I haven''t played them, but Half-Life and System Shock are supposed to, some of the better crafted RPG''s do. I won''t bother giving a list of titles, I''ll just say how you can do it: Have the player _play_through_ the story. Don''t have cut-scenes. Don''t pull away from the action. And why not? Current technology can handle it.

And Landfish- yup. Thanks for stating it so clearly. Through these story v. gameplay threads, I think this is the little thought that''s been gnawing at the back of my brain.

Another thought- I actually like some of the earlier Final Fantasy''s. Why? Even at the time, I was fully aware that the game play sucked, but what kept me going was that I had the ability to actually partake, in however limited a fashion, in an epic 60-hr. cartoon, however limited the quality. Now, if someone were to ''juice up'' both sides of that equation: *YOWZA*, or something to that effect. To express it mathematically, these two attributes have a positive (as opposed to inverse, as most here would maintain) relationship. One boosts the other, and both work in gestalt fashion to increase the whole. Right. . .

So if you only need one person to secure your metaphysical position, how many does it take before you start having delusions of grandeur? I just hope I wasn''t the pebble that started an avalanche. . .(oh what would the neighbors think?)

If you see the Buddha on the road, Kill Him. -apocryphal

Anonymous poster : wooh, you might jsut be right on those examples, though I won''t agree with Half Life, I played it, loved it, but please, don''t mix "creation of an atmosphere" with "good story". On the other hand ... system shock ... aaaaah, that might just be it.

LF : I just forgot something : You jsut justified the creation of a Story making forum, IMnsHO. I think you clearly explained it, and made the two components : story and gameplay (we have to ome up with a better word than that) much more important as music and graphics.

*excellent*

---
Let''s start a war said Maggie, one day.

ahw,
Yeah, I generally like carefully analyzing things, and asking such questions. I was fearful that we were getting nowhere fast. I guess I''m a little extra impatient today

I have yet to play System Shock, but I think that Thief did a pretty good job at balancing game play and story and also making them work together. I don''t think it''s quite 100%/100%, but pretty close.

I especially like the way they made game play and story go together. They allowed you to overhear pieces of the story along the way rather than giving you a bunch of text to read. They also allowed you to read notes lying around occaisonally. This allowed you to experience the story within the game. Plus, the cut-scenes were cool, and didn''t interupt the game.

And, of course, the gameplay itself was quite inovative.