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[Radix]

If that's a valid criticism then the novel I'm reading is bad because it isn't a choose your own adventure.

Preemptively: interactivity is how the medium functions and distinguishes games from CG movies etcetera; to call it a relevant distinction would be to say that all games must play a certain way, or even that they must all have stories.

[JeremySpillmann]

If that's a valid criticism then the novel I'm reading is bad because it isn't a choose your own adventure.

Preemptively: interactivity is how the medium functions and distinguishes games from CG movies etcetera; to call it a relevant distinction would be to say that all games must play a certain way, or even that they must all have stories.

I heavily disagree.

Warren Spector gave a great acceptance speech last week for the GDC lifetime achievement award where he stressed out that we work in games, not literature, not theater, nor movies, a medium which has the sole unique feature of empowering the player. By making a story completely pre-written it might be a wonderful, moving story, but it might not be told through the right medium.

Of course we all know the difficulty of adaptive storytelling and the sheer impossibility of doing it right, but the criticism seems pretty valid, for me, if we talk about games

[Radix]

Games aren't those other things, that's a self-evident, immutable fact.

Given that, anything which games are used for are a legitimate use of games. An approach to storytelling (or the absence of a story) is not more or less valid than any other because it does or does not aspire to "adaptive storytelling" to a greater or lesser degree.

If you're attempting to do something and fail, that's fine. But the idea that all games need to be something other than entirely pre-written just because they can be is simply horse shit.

A living human storyteller can be agile with a story, can adapt it on-the-fly and can make literally anything happen within their world. Yet while traditional table RPGs have this option, there are adherents to both the freeform storytelling approach and the rigid pre-written plan or module-based approach, which may even include prerolled characters along with rigid mechanics. Many players enjoy both. Some GMs enjoy both. Feel free to walk into someone's roleplaying session, slap your dick down on the table, and say "no, this story should be told through a different medium".

[Nix]

You guys are crazy. Portal is fun. Very few people would disagree with that. So is Super Mario and Donkey Kong and many many many other games where you are "forced" to follow a linear path. You're acting like a game can't be fun unless it's some magical non-linear open-world RPG shit. Games are games and they come in many flavors. Portal wasn't trying to make the storyline the game itself. The storyline was a fun backdrop that added a lot of character and made players come away with an overall more wholesome experience. The real game was the series of countless little thought puzzles. It's not some unexpected twist that so many people enjoyed both the Portal games. They were fun, and no amount of "analysis" will disprove that.

[Paul Eres]

i found portal fun but being fun is not enough to make a game good; i didn't like it otherwise, it felt too polished and overly balanced, as if it were an exercise in game design and game theory rather than a personal or creative project

[Nix]

i found portal fun but being fun is not enough to make a game good;

to me, if a game manages to be fun I think it's succeeded as a game. I don't mean fun in an abstract sense. I mean I come away thinking "gee, that was fun. I enjoyed that experience" and Portal (1&2) did that for me. The puzzles and graphics and story all contributed to that complete fun-ness.

[unsilentwill]

By starting me in a shiny jail cell, Portal had a pretty motivating story from the beginning. It said you are a test subject, we will crush your humanity. That was hard for me to ignore. But somehow, like others, when it came to the incinerator part I was fully along for the ride, because the game had taken over so much control that I figured it knew what it was doing and my character's desire for escape was completely ignored. This is a really good point, thank you for bringing it up.

I chose Portal 2 to bring this up, not because of it's incredible linearity, but because of its purposeful attempts at telling story it's gameplay couldn't handle. Like a movie with terrible actors or a poorly written book, I can't ignore the story because the special effects or jokes were good enough, there is a serious problem in telling a story against dehumanization, while using those same techniques and keeping the gameplay all about scoring points while being manipulated by a computer overlord.

If it was just trying to be fun, that would be fine by me. But outlined in the first post are reasons why it was trying to do way, way more (especially Portal 2). And so I hoped for way more, and am not willing to let such a failure in storytelling (not story) go by under thousands of 10/10s. We should learn from it.

[Zaphos]

I guess something at the heart of this is that the game leaves Chell's emotions/opinions completely ambiguous, so a player (like unsilent) can impose a 'dissonant' interpretation of Chell if they feel like it.  It's not actually dissonant for me but if you assume specific things about Chell then it could become so.  I can't really see that as a problem though -- seems very pebkac.

[unsilentwill]

You guys can call me Will.

Sure, you could assume she's pumped up on morphine and has no fear of death or mental breakdown, I'm willing to grant that honestly. My biggest complaint is not with the treatment of Chell's character (she doesn't really haaaaave one) but with Apereature's treatment of the player (Chell) compared to Valve's treatment of the player. Valve is telling a story about humanity breaking free from the technological and scientific oppression (again), but is telling it through technological oppression! Mistake! Ooh I see a mistake!!

Again, this is in the first post guys, I wrote it for a reason.

[C.A. Sinner]

i found portal fun but being fun is not enough to make a game good; i didn't like it otherwise, it felt too polished and overly balanced, as if it were an exercise in game design and game theory rather than a personal or creative project

I felt it was competently put together but tbh I didn't really enjoy it. The game is more or less perfect at what it sets out to do but as a tradeoff, its focus seems extremely limited. The mechanic is "innovative" but the design still feels very "safe" to me. I tend to prefer games that take more risks and try to combine different ideas instead of taking a single one and polishing the fuck out of it.

talkin portal 1 here, haven't played the sequel

[unsilentwill]

Then go away. We already talked about Portal in a thread way back when. Please don't come into a discussion, unaware of the topic at hand, just to argue with Paul Eres. Again.

[Christian Knudsen]

What's with the incredibly condescending attitude?

[C.A. Sinner]

Then go away. We already talked about Portal in a thread way back when. Please don't come into a discussion, unaware of the topic at hand, just to argue with Paul Eres. Again.

yes sir i will sir

[unsilentwill]

Trying to keep a bit of humor, I don't mean to be condescending. I'm just simplifying my point because people are dancing around it a bit. Apologies.

Unless you're talking about me and C.A., but that I'm just fed up with by now.

[Zaphos]

Again, this is in the first post guys, I wrote it for a reason.

The arguments backing your first post were bad though; I explained why I didn't accept them in my first reply iirc.
To re-iterate: As a player, given the chance I *would* escape (the plot just didn't present that chance); your 'proof' re the moon was invalid (not escape); bringing a separate unrelated story in to it was just silly (and also player-dependent, as someone else mentioned not being interested in playing the co-op).