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[rj]

A game needs a story like a song needs lyrics.

i'd agree but the petty semanticist in me would argue that songs, by definition, are works with words in them

but a game needs a story like a piece of music needs vocals, yes

[s0]

Ludo narrative is as important to discuss as framing and editing is to cinema, criic can tell when a frame is wrong and tell a different story than it should, and they do, a lot, when there is a bad movie, pointing at plot hole, mis edit frame and transitio, why? they detract because we notice them.

I'm sure someone with a better English can come and use the correct term i'm dancing around to make my point

thats his point i think. he just thinks the term "ludonarrative dissonance" is bad b/c it still separates "mechanics" and "story" when we should see them as a unit. my counterargument was that mechanics and story ARE in fact separate in many videogames and it makes no sense to treat them as a unit.

btw i dont think so-called ludonarrative dissonance is inherently bad

[gimymblert]

I don't think, I say ludoDissonance is pointing at where the game failed, hence why it is useful (unlike him), just like pointing to bad cinematography show where the movie failed.

he just want to avoid thinking about the two as separate at all, the problem is IMHO he miss that the point of ludo narrative dissonance is not to separate the two, but to point when it fail at being one unity.

[SundownKid]

There is a difference between a "story" and "dialog". Games don't need dialog, but an interesting story can improve a game a lot. Personally, I like games with a lot of dialog, but there are plenty of games with good "stories" and little dialog. It can be told through graphics, sound, animation, et cetera.

[gimymblert]

it also depend on what you mean by story, story is not just complex story, it's someone who overcome obstacle to reach a goal, that's game too

[Cheezmeister]

A game needs a story like a song needs lyrics.

"They're not artists because nobody can play the guitar!"

[rj]

i think games do need stories, just not explicit ones; games will always have implicit stories. the story of pong is that there's a paddle, and there's another paddle, and they're fighting for points. so yes, if you're making any kind of game or interactive object there is a story that exists behind it in some form; that's unavoidable.

but games don't need explicit stories. no. in fact, it can be to the detriment of them if the explanation/explication is subpar

[s0]

he just want to avoid thinking about the two as separate at all, the problem is IMHO he miss that the point of ludo narrative dissonance is not to separate the two, but to point when it fail at being one unity.

i dont think its inherently a "failure" when it isnt a unity

boardgames get re-released with different themes all the time and it doesnt make them any worse. "ludonarrative dissonance" applies to a subset of games that aim for a particular type of explicit "narrative" but not all games. not even all videogames in fact. is it somehow a detriment to tetris that its "story" isnt about its "mechanics" and vice versa? this concept just doesn't make sense for all games. its like criticizing an abstract painting for getting anatomy wrong.

[oahda]

he just want to avoid thinking about the two as separate at all, the problem is IMHO he miss that the point of ludo narrative dissonance is not to separate the two, but to point when it fail at being one unity.

i dont think its inherently a "failure" when it isnt a unity

boardgames get re-released with different themes all the time and it doesnt make them any worse. "ludonarrative dissonance" applies to a subset of games that aim for a particular type of explicit "narrative" but not all games. not even all videogames in fact. is it somehow a detriment to tetris that its "story" isnt about its "mechanics" and vice versa? this concept just doesn't make sense for all games. its like criticizing an abstract painting for getting anatomy wrong.

pls lord of the rings monopoly does make monopoly worse because it doesn't fit at all

[Schoq]

A game needs a story like a song needs lyrics.

"They're not artists because nobody can play the guitar!"

?

[s0]

prinsessa: ya but monopoly is a thematic game to begin with, its not abstract like tetris. i didnt say that retheming is ok for all boardgames ever.

[gimymblert]

he just want to avoid thinking about the two as separate at all, the problem is IMHO he miss that the point of ludo narrative dissonance is not to separate the two, but to point when it fail at being one unity.

i dont think its inherently a "failure" when it isnt a unity

boardgames get re-released with different themes all the time and it doesnt make them any worse. "ludonarrative dissonance" applies to a subset of games that aim for a particular type of explicit "narrative" but not all games. not even all videogames in fact. is it somehow a detriment to tetris that its "story" isnt about its "mechanics" and vice versa? this concept just doesn't make sense for all games. its like criticizing an abstract painting for getting anatomy wrong.

Well many movie use a wide shoot of the scene to set the place, that does not make each movie a simple reskin just because they use the same cinematic principle ... or the same plot (kill the baddies save the world).

It's failure not because it use the same mechanics across multiple game, it's a failure when the mechanics and the plot fight each other.

BTW you can say the same about mechanics, the mario theme is used across many games with different rules too

[zombieonion]

Quake 3 and Dota work pretty well without a story. They'd work without any setting too, if you'd just keep the mechanics and removed all flavor text and unneccesary graphics.

Then you see Mass Effect which is at best a boring shooter with sort of bolted on "RPG elements", if you take away the characters, the setting and the story. So that game needs a story.

[Cheezmeister]

A game needs a story like a song needs lyrics.

"They're not artists because nobody can play the guitar!"

?

Heh. It's a quote out of an impromptu interview that was notably sampled by Skrillex. The upshot being, no, obviously you don't need to play guitar to qualify as a musician, whatever anyone's specific tastes may be. It doesn't mean everyone has to love bro-step, but refusing to recognize it based on on such narrow criteria is (IMHO) rather petty and short-sighted.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=they%27re+not+artists+because+nobody+can+play+the+guitar

tl;dr I agree, 100%!

[Kytin]

Do games need story? I would say yes, but let's unpack this question a bit. What is the purpose of a game? Do games need story to achieve that purpose?
I would say that the purpose of a game is to entertain. Do stories entertain? Yes (at least, well told ones do). Can you entertain without a story? Yes, but you are depriving yourself of an important and powerful tool if you chose not to have a story. You can make a game without story, just as you can make a painting without color. You might decide that you want to limit yourself that way, you might even have good reason for doing so, but you are limiting yourself.

When the story and the gameplay disagree with each other might be likened to a picture where the linework and the coloring are from two different scenes. A really skilled artist might work this dissonance into being part of the intended experience, but most of the time it just results in an ugly mess.

[JWK5]

Games basically come in two varieties: contest and story.

Tetris, chess, checkers, bejeweled, etc. are contest games. They aren't about a taking the player to another world, sharing a message, etc. they are primarily a challenge with a set of rules on how to accomplish it. The single player campaign of Call of Duty Ghotsts is a story, the multiplayer is a contest. Sports are contest games.

A story is basically a recounted series of events pointing towards a moment of revelation. In story games the events are often the challenges. Castlevania (NES) and Super Mario Bros.(NES) are story games, and while the stories are not particularly deep and the events not particularly logical they do lead you along to a point of revelation, like a joke to a punchline.

The question is not "Do games need a story?" but "How should games tell a story?" The big problem we have with games currently is either they try to be a game with movie interjections or they try to be a movie with game interjections, they are seldom committed to telling the story entirely as a game.

EDIT: Make that 3 types of games, I forgot about exploration games (often tagged as art games) where the goal is just to basically explore some setting, concept, etc.

[s0]

he just want to avoid thinking about the two as separate at all, the problem is IMHO he miss that the point of ludo narrative dissonance is not to separate the two, but to point when it fail at being one unity.

i dont think its inherently a "failure" when it isnt a unity

boardgames get re-released with different themes all the time and it doesnt make them any worse. "ludonarrative dissonance" applies to a subset of games that aim for a particular type of explicit "narrative" but not all games. not even all videogames in fact. is it somehow a detriment to tetris that its "story" isnt about its "mechanics" and vice versa? this concept just doesn't make sense for all games. its like criticizing an abstract painting for getting anatomy wrong.

Well many movie use a wide shoot of the scene to set the place, that does not make each movie a simple reskin just because they use the same cinematic principle ... or the same plot (kill the baddies save the world).

It's failure not because it use the same mechanics across multiple game, it's a failure when the mechanics and the plot fight each other.

BTW you can say the same about mechanics, the mario theme is used across many games with different rules too

ya but what im saying is this "failure" is irrelevant for a lot of games. chess doesn't somehow become worse if you play it with, say, a simpsons set (this is "ludonarrative dissonance" because chess "simulates war" and the simpsons isn't about war. at least not primarily).

you can acknowledge that chess played with a simpsons set is an example of "ludonarrative dissonance" but to rephrase my earlier analogy it'd tell you as much about the game of chess as criticizing an abstract painting for its lack of correct anatomy.

imo the idea that "ludonarrative dissonance" is universally applicable and universally useful is based on the false premise that both "narrative" and "mechanics"/"rules" are always worth caring about and are (or should be) fundamentally linked. nobody really thinks of "simpsons chess" and "regular chess piece chess" as different games. to me it seems like an understanding that is useful for a lot of recent-ish videogames but not that much else.

[gimymblert]

I'm not sure the simpsons example is relevant, it's like the simpsons is dissonant if you make horror story with them, you can have war with simpson, it's not how LND (ludo narrative dissonance) work. Rules work like a syntax more like than content, they had nuance to semantic (here simpsons is a dictionary of semantics).

Seemingly saying chess and those other game don't have stories is not true, they are to a series of events that lead to a revelation (black wins!) and two games about can have entirely different set of events or narrative, go and chess are about war, but one is about taking victory and the other one about taking the king, two different approach of war, you will never be able to take the king in go, it does not have the same drama.

LND happen when you have two set of syntax that contradict themselves in a non consistent way, the cinematic syntax and the gameplay syntax, it's akin to bad writing and plot hole where one character for example suddenly know things he should not and conveniently ignore it later.

[LeonDaydreamer]

"Do games need stories?"

I think that really depends on what the intention of the game is. If you want a game to just engage you for a time and be done with it, like Tetris, puzzle games, etc, it might actually be quite odd to have a story get in the way of something that is meant to be a purely intuitive experience. But, If you want to actually say something with your game, to really make it memorable and stand out, then I would have to say it absolutely needs a story. You can't connect to blocks and jewels, race cars, and generally things that happen 'just because'. It's not to say those games aren't fun and aren't capable of making your heart race, but they lack a very important element that turns something that feels generic into something unique.

To touch on a related subject though, I think there is a lot of implied storytelling in many games most people wouldn't think much of. For example you could look at Mario as a simple platformer where you stomp on baddies until you get to the boss and save the princess, but if you take a look at even Mario 3, you could tell the story of a character who went through deserts, oceans, and over the clouds battling pirates on airships, undead walking skeletons in castles, and the meanest turtle of all time to save the girl he loves, often aided by his little sidekick Toad. There's a lot of implied story there even if it doesn't feel like it. You flesh it out even more and you get Super Mario RPG with all its humour and drama, and you actually see these characters grow.

Maybe one day you want the one, one day you want the other, but for me nothing can make as much an impact as a really well told story that draws you into its world. That's what I'd like to get out of games.  :-)

[s0]

I'm not sure the simpsons example is relevant, it's like the simpsons is dissonant if you make horror story with them, you can have war with simpson, it's not how LND (ludo narrative dissonance) work. Rules work like a syntax more like than content, they had nuance to semantic (here simpsons is a dictionary of semantics).

Seemingly saying chess and those other game don't have stories is not true, they are to a series of events that lead to a revelation (black wins!) and two games about can have entirely different set of events or narrative, go and chess are about war, but one is about taking victory and the other one about taking the king, two different approach of war, you will never be able to take the king in go, it does not have the same drama.

LND happen when you have two set of syntax that contradict themselves in a non consistent way, the cinematic syntax and the gameplay syntax, it's akin to bad writing and plot hole where one character for example suddenly know things he should not and conveniently ignore it later.

i never said chess doesn't have a "story"

ignore the concrete example i used, just think chess with any theme that has nothing to do with war. im arguing that the visual theme (the shape and color of the pieces) is irrelevant to chess.

what im trying to get at is, does chess even have any potential for so-called "ludonarrative dissonance"? unless we assume that the visual theme of chess is part of the game (which is imo just wrong on its face) i don't see anything. thats why im saying "ludonarrative dissoance" doesnt make sense for all games, only games that try to "tell a story" beyond the narrative that arises out of the game rules.

bonus stage: where is the potential for "ludonarrative" dissonance in tetris & similar completely abstract games?

my other angle which was lost among all the chess talk is: why is "ludonarrative dissonance" bad when it exists? what is the actual problem when a game's "mechanics" and "story" are not about the same thing, beyond just offending some people's aesthetic sensibilities? what is the fundamental problem with games doing multiple things at once? why does everything have to add up to a supposed "whole"? why couldn't we, for instance, take the fragmented nature of many videogames and push it even further?

im playing devils advocate a bit here, ludonarrative dissonance has actually been a problem for me in some games.