It really depends what is your gameplay genre, what is your target audience, are there any restrictions on what art style you can use... Personal taste is the other main factor. Do you want to make something vary humorous, or something very dark and scary, or something serious and dramatic, or something romantic and heart warming...

Make the game affect the story.
Make the story affect the game.
Let the player have an effect on the story by how he plays the game.

Re:

Quote: I am working on a new game and was wondering what do you put in your stories to make a game more fun to play?

Since the posts above covered the overview, here is a specific idea:

You could create extraordinary situations that let the player use the skills in a new context. Breaking the mode can be fun to some people. The story explains the circumstance so that the situation is not out of place.

[Edited by - Wai on September 12, 2010 1:29:39 PM]

Making the gameplay and story affect each other is probably the best way may the story and game more fun.

Alpha Protocol for all its faults was the best game I’ve ever player for that. It had lots of reaction to the player’s choices both large and small. From a small conversation between the Main Character and his Handler commenting that last safe I decided to use wasn’t nearly as impressive compared to all the others I'd stayed in. To a large change like the decision to tranquilize a boss rather then killing her giving me the opportunity to have them become and ally later on.

These subtle changes shaping the story in response to how the player plays creates a much more personal experience.

I think the more illusion you give to the player that he can do anything and interact with anything, the more fun will come... absolutely!

I want to throw in an opposing voice here.

Games in which you can affect the storyline with different choices bother me because all the choices tend to become "optimizations" not emotional story elements. If I'm playing an RPG like Fallout for example, I personally become paralyzed when faced with a decision that will change the game--I start thinking about what the "right" choice is, in terms of gameplay fun, in terms of perks and equipment that will become available to me, but never in terms of what I actually want as a player character.

In InFamous, the choice between good and bad karma for me was just a choice between chain lightning or making enemies float around with antigravity missiles. It wasn't about my moral stance toward the story, and it wasn't a decision I made from an emotional level at all.

Unlike many gamers, I'm also not impressed with sandbox games. They are fun for a little while, but once the story bits are over, I get bored very quickly. I personally want that strong narrative to carry me through the world.


What I'm more impressed with are games in which the story and gameplay play into each other. One recent example in Braid--that's a game about being able to toy with the passage of time, and the story is all about time. It all comes together really brilliantly in the last sequence which I won't spoil, but which ties the time manipulation gameplay and storyline together in a really satisfying way.


For my game, I'm trying to convey not only historical and mythological information about the Maori people of New Zealand, but my goal is to design the gameplay in such a way as to make the player feel what it feels like to be Maori. It's sort of like watching a horror movie--the idea isn't to watch people on screen who are afraid, the idea is to identify with the people on the screen to the degree that you yourself feel afraid. Any game that can make you really FEEL the theme of the story through the use of the gameplay mechanics has succeeded in my book.

Re: Pete

Quote: Games in which you can affect the storyline with different choices bother me because all the choices tend to become "optimizations" not emotional story elements.

Do you mean that you prefer gameplay choices to be separate from storyline choices? I also noticed that the association with strategy robs a choice of its emotional value.

Quote: What I'm more impressed with are games in which the story and gameplay play into each other. One recent example in Braid--that's a game about being able to toy with the passage of time, and the story is all about time.

Could you be more specific about the relation between the story and gameplay in Braid?

A) The story introduces the setting and era of the level
B) The story introduces the abilities and actions of the player's character
C) The story and the gameplay have the same theme (e.g. time) but they don't interact
D) The player can make choices about the story, and choices during gameplay, but those two types of decisions do not interact
E) Choices the player make about the story affects the content of gameplay
F) Choices the player make during gameplay affects the development of the story

Wai, basically yes -- storyline choices bother me especially if there is strategic value in the choices, like making a choice between two party members or something. It's not a choice about companions, it's choice between who is the better fighting machine. To be honest though, even choices that have no strategic value either way tend to bother me, because I like the idea of experiencing the entire game, and knowing that I'm cutting myself from some of the content of a game by making a certain choice bothers me. The concept is to make thing replayable, but I don't want to wade through 14 hours of sameness to get 1 hour of difference, you know?

To answer your question about Braid, you basically can't make any meaningful choices as you go through the levels.

--------------SPOILERS FOR THE GAME BRAID FOLLOW

It's a side scroller in which you can reverse time at will, and the story is a little convuluted, but essentially you and you girlfriend the "princess" discover that you can go back and erase the past, and redo things to be "perfect," but over time their perfect lives become meaningless, like a trap.

So you're trying to find the princess again after losing her, but you don't know how you lost her because you can't remember. You are confused about time going back and forth so you can't figure out what happened, but you know the princess is in danger and you're trying to find her so you can rescue her.

In the final sequence, you find the princess, and you run along with her -- you're separated, she's on top of the screen, and you're on the bottom. She escapes from this big guy, and you run together. She helps you by pulling levers above, and you help her by doing the same, opening doors and lowering ramps, and that sort of thing. You're helping each other to escape.

Then at the end of the sequence, she runs into her house, and up to her room, and lays down in bed, while you climb to her balcony.

Then comes the twist -- at this point the only thing you can do is press the reverse time button. You watch as the scene you just played -- helping each other escape the big bad guy, is reversed and the truth is revealed. You're not with the princess anymore because she ran away from you. You are the bad guy. She runs and tries to close doors, and raise ramps to block you, while you do the same to her, but you are always just a little too late and she runs farther and farther, and at the end the big guy comes and rescues her from you, the bad guy.

That's when you realize what happened, and you leave to go home, remembering now that you drove your love away.

--------------END SPOILERS



So it's not about choices affecting anything, it's about the gameplay itself informing and allowing the storyline to unfold. Without time reversal there is no story in Braid, and without the time reversal as a game mechanic, there is no big emotional reveal, it's just a cut scene.

Make sense?