Okay, Half-Life and System Shock are excellent examples to chew on.

Now, I may have a very narrow interpretation of story, but I believe what ahw said about HL applies to SS has well: Both of these games had *excellent* atmosphere, and that''s not the same as story. (Or is it?)

I guess when I think of story as it applies to a game, I expect it to be something I can play *in*. That is, something that I can affect, just as I can objects and enemies in the rest of the game.

I''d classify both SS and HL as 75% gameplay, 25% story. In both, you mostly interacted with the level (combat, navigation and object use, mostly); then you stopped to watch a scripted senario (the ghosts in SS, or the game events in HL). I didn''t see you really being about to interact with the story all that much.

BTW, I thought the story in both was mediocre. SS was probably better than HL, but both would never end up on a best seller list. (I do believe they were better than anything we''ve had to date... but that''s different.)

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Doh. You''re right, I was contradicting myself more than a little.

The percentages were referring to time spent, not quality. It''s my belief that length has nothing to do with quality, if anything, brevity does. (take that you 300 hour RPGs) If you have 99% game and 1% story, that 1% had better be damn good if it''s going to help the 99 at all. Hence my original call for better writing in the industry.

I''ll be happy if I can just get you all to agree with this: An RPG is not a game, but a reference to the vessel which holds the game in the context of a story.

Wavinator, if you accept the above statement, you will not be conceding. If you consider the most important aspect of the "game" part of an RPG to be Gameplay, I whole-heartedly agree. If, however you say that gameplay is the most important part of the RPG in general, I can have an army of angry Square fans banging down your door in no time.

quote: Original post by Landfish

I''ll be happy if I can just get you all to agree with this: An RPG is not a game, but a reference to the vessel which holds the game in the context of a story.

Urghhh? *scratches head, pounds club against ear* OK, an RPG is a name for a thing that is both game and story? Therefore they''re inseperable... am I following you?

quote:
Wavinator, if you accept the above statement, you will not be conceding.

I''m totally cool with conceding, but I''m not sure I completely follow.

quote:
If you consider the most important aspect of the "game" part of an RPG to be Gameplay, I whole-heartedly agree. If, however you say that gameplay is the most important part of the RPG in general, I can have an army of angry Square fans banging down your door in no time.

*buys a shotgun, lots of nails, lumber, and a hammer...*

I have got to get a friggin'' console! I knew there was something mystical about Square games when a coworker could eerily recount all the details of a Chocobo dance...

PC CRPGs are my game of choice. When I played Fallout, Sentinel Worlds, Starflight, System Shock, or the the early Ultimas, I didn''t so much remember the story. I more remembered the object use, the exploration, the puzzle solving, the leveling up, and the combat. (IOW, the gameplay)

Now, I freely admit that I don''t understand consoles RPGs. I''ve heard the Aeris death reference that you made in another post mentioned time and again elsewhere. Could the rules and audience of the console be that different? If so, then maybe what I''m talking about applies only to PC CRPGs (heck, maybe it only applies to sci-fi CRPGs, I dunno!)

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Actually, I cannot stand Square. Especially FFVII.

Anyway, I think you''ve got it. Kindof. In all games with a relatively high ratio of story to game, the line between the two is very clear. When the boss is talking to you, that''s the story. When he attacks you and you fight back; that''s the game, becuase this part of the RPG has specific rules and a win/lose structure. You could actually just play combat or just view story, but the two would be diminished in quality without eachother. (that''s why we mix them.)

So in essence, when you say "the most important part of a game is GAMEPLAY." I say yes. It is. Many RPGs suffer from horrendous gameply in the "game" part", and hence people all but ignore the combat sequences, feeling that they are just an obstacle to the plot.

So an RPG, some select platformers, and the very rare shooter is something that can not be called just a "game". There are games IN it, but it is not itself the game. It''s more. Like Game + Story = video game. By that logic, tetris would not be a "video game" just a "game". Confusing, I know. Can we find some better terminology?

BTW, today is my birthday! Happy birthday Landfish!

Ugh ugh ugh. This is not a good day to be moderator here

Landfish, glad you spotted the contradictions in your original post. Yet, there is still one GLARING one:
First you say "Game and story are NOT opposite". I agree. They aren''t even related.
Then you go on to give statistics that are of the n, (1-n) type. Probabilistically, mutually exclusive events. I.e. Game and story ARE opposite. Do I have you retching yet?

Now, here''s my little heretical view.
You can make a game that''s a full 1 ( on a scale from 0 to 1 ) in the game department, and a full 1 in the story department. This will be called a story game. When you start, there is no story. There is only a game. The way you play the game develops into a story. This story is based around you.

THIS is 100% pure, unadulterated roleplay. This is what we used to hit on every now and then in our RPG club when it was still around. This is rare, hard, weird, new...
but not impossible.

The story is interactive, a living entity, something growing and wallowing around you, something beautiful, ugly, painful, blissful...



Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
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MAdKeith : LOL

The holy Grail of P&P RPG, the ruleless games. It exists, I played it !

But, did you notice that what we so hardly try to do, kids do it naturally, and everyday ?

Yes, I have noticed, and I think it attests to the wonderful complexities of the Human Brain that we still haven''t figured out how to do this with a CPU.

I''m trying to do this, now that I know what I''m aiming for. I''m aiming for a new kind of interactivity, based on story, and not on whacking.


Give me one more medicated peaceful moment.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~
ERROR: Your beta-version of Life1.0 has expired. Please upgrade to the full version. All important social functions will be disabled from now on.

A computer is just a *tool* taht we create to compensate what our brains can''t do; just like a sword is an enhanced nail (or claw for that matter), a hammer is an iron fist, etc

now can we make a tool more efficient than its natural model ? And given the fact that the brain is probably the most difficult organ to simulate/emulate, and the fact that not all things that we create really can do better than their natural counterparts (I think about wings vs planes as I say that), I really wonder for the future of AI

youpla :-P

The question is, I suppose, do you truly want 100% gameplay and 100% story, rather then 50% game and 50% story (a perfect balance between the two). What I mean to say is that to have the CRPG entirely game and entirely story simultaneously, the gameplay would have to BE ''writing the story'' as you go along, based on what the player does.

The obvious problem with this is that the player can''t write the scripts for all the other characters in the game as well as his own and still have things to discover/overcome - thus no challenge, no game. That only leaves the designer to cover every possible action the player could ever possibly imagine taking, and build them all into the game. Why hasn''t anyone done this yet?? Couldn''t be simpler.

... Isn''t it our dissatisfaction with this situation that often motivates us to become developers in the first place? The perfect game doesn''t exist?? Fine then, I''ll create it myself!

Anyway to *completely* meld the two, the story would have to be dynamically rewritten as the game progressed in response to the player''s actions. The current state of AI technology isn''t up to the task, and if we could build it, then what computer could run it in real time? Maybe we can ship an entire development team with every copy of the game to manage the gameplay and content on demand.

What''s the middle ground? Ah well, no one said life would be easy...

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"Two wrongs do not make a right; it usually takes 3 or more."