I think many people aren't keen on following links to long articles. Anyway, I gave it a bit of a read:

"When a studio says it invested tens of millions of dollars in a game, you can bet the story was the one driving the spending. The studio hired an experience script writer which wrote the most amazing story ever written."
- I have my doubts, both about story being the driver and about the studios hiring good writers. The AAA industry is geared around delivering big over-the-top blockbuster style experiences at big blockbuster prices. From my understanding the main direct costs would be content (art assets, level design, etc), programming and marketing. True, a story can be a cause of requiring a lot of content, but assuming that games will be short on content/budget without a story is overstretching. I believe they would still make huge levels with insane detail and lots of character models without a story. It would be interesting to compare budgets for single player only games vs multiplayer only games, as multiplayer games are often low on story or lack it altogether.

"Second reason, it kills imagination and the freedom of movement. It locks the player in a specific pattern in which it feels captive. "
- True, I have felt this often, particularly when the imagination offers a host of solutions to a problem, and the gameplay offers precisely one.

"Third, it breaks game-play flow."
- Agreed. If the gameplay actions have little/nothing to do with the story actions, how is the player really involved? If the crowning moments of awesome occur in cutscenes, what was the whole point?

"Well, I personally think the best solution to this is the background story. "
- I like the idea. Let the player pay as much attention as they want to. Not a solution to all problems, but a tool nonetheless.

Overall I thought you jumped to some conclusions and overstated your case, but you had some good points.

Firstly, story is not what drives a game's budget. In most cases (outside of very select studios like Valve, Obsidian, Bioware, etc) story is done last. They make the assets, levels, etc for the game, and then a narrative designer is contracted to basically explain how everything fits together. This is the reason why so many game stories are either incredibly cliche, or feel tacked on.

Secondly, I have to disagree with you on how story should work. In Story-driven games, such as Dragon Age, The Witcher, Baldur's Gate, etc, the player knows exactly what they are getting into. They know that this is a story driven game. To say that this is unfair to the player, is similar to saying that a shooter is unfair to the player because it isn't a turn-based strategy game.

Games like Serious Sam where the story is just there to explain why you need to shoot stuff are not magically better games than story-driven games, yet you present the argument that the only games that should have story at the forefront are interactive narrative. I'm sorry, but this idea is nothing short of ludicrous. Can story be done better in many games? Yes, and one of the ways it can be done is by writing the story first and structuring everything around it, rather than the opposite way. Most games, as I said earlier, construct nearly everything about the base game before bringing in a writer. This, and not simply the presence of an important story, is what causes the break between game play and story in most cases.

Additionally, even in open world games or games without story, you still only have a set amount of ways you can deal with a situation. I cannot, for example, run up in Serious Sam and attempt to talk a Gnaar out of trying to kill me. My options are: A. shoot it; B. Run away while shooting it; C. run away. I have no other options than that. So to say removing story will add more choices allowable by the imagination is, sorry to say, quite ridiculous.

A video game is designed by a group of people who each have their own imaginations and ideas. Any game, regardless of the presence of story, will only have a set amount of ways you can deal with issues. Games that push story to the back can easier give an illusion of larger choice, but in many cases actually have fewer choices than in-depth story driven games. For example, let's take Elder Scrolls. When I get a quest I have two initial options: Run off and don't do the quest and just run around, killing things and looting things, or take the quest. That is a binary choice. Now when I take the quest, let's say I am told that I need to clear a cave of goblins. My choices are: Clear the cave of Goblins and Don't Clear the Cave of Goblins. Once again, I have a binary choice. Sure, in a game like Elder Scrolls, the combat system allows me to choose how I clear the game of goblins, but this has everything to do with mechanics and nothing to do with the presence of story or lack thereof.

Do some games work better without story? Yes, but to say that only interactive drama type games should have an in-depth story is nothing short of ridiculous to me.

I like story a lot, so I agree with you there. However another article made a great point. Don't thrust a characterisation on the player. Regardless of who you tell the player their best friend or long lost love is, many players will get through the levels the most expedient way. So... if your story is about the protagonist's character, that character better align with what most players will want to do anyway.