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[AlexDJones]

Gameplay should always come first. This is because a game is based on its play, the rules that define the play, and the ways in which the player interacts with the rules. This is the foundation of every game.

I think the one thing that sometimes marrs this debate is the idea that since player interactivity is unique to the medium of videogames, it should therefore be considered above and beyond all else. While gameplay is necessary for there to be a game whereas story is not, gameplay on its own is either gratuitous or nothing more than a tech demo. In these cases, videogames cannot grow as a medium, and devolves into "lol chaynsors r funz".

I'd argue that in some cases, if not many, that story is the foundation of the game. If you asked someone to come up with a game idea off of the top of their head, I'd say there's a 50/50 chance that they would come up with an idea for a story, or a vague scenario. The story would then become the foundation of the game, and the mechanics would be built around the narrative in order to give it purpose as a game.

Stories are, by their nature, non-interactive. It is possible to write branching stories that will lead the player down various available paths based on decisions and input. But for the most part, the player rarely changes the story itself. It is something that the developer makes and places in the game for the player to discover.

Scripted stories are, for the most part, but not stories in general. I'd cite Dwarf Fortress as an example of this. DF is a game with no script from the developer, and yet these is plenty of story, all of which is emergent of the gameplay. The player's actions within the world create reactions, and this is the basis for narrative which is completely interactive and not simply something buried beneath the mechanics to be discovered by completing a certain objective.

[gimymblert]

And yet cinema is not just pretty image moving ...

wait wat?

[mirosurabu]

Scripted stories are, for the most part, but not stories in general. I'd cite Dwarf Fortress as an example of this. DF is a game with no script from the developer, and yet these is plenty of story, all of which is emergent of the gameplay. The player's actions within the world create reactions, and this is the basis for narrative which is completely interactive and not simply something buried beneath the mechanics to be discovered by completing a certain objective.

Might be a tangent, but DF doesn't have a story. I don't know why people keep using these games as a good storytelling examples when they don't attempt at any storytelling.

Dwarf Fortress is a toy. Toys do not tell stories, they assist in developing fantasies.

When I was a kid I used to create "my stories" with toys. That's the same type of entertainment that DF and Minecraft provide. Yet, nobody considers these toys to be doing any storytelling. They are not, really. That's not storytelling.

[AlexDJones]

Scripted stories are, for the most part, but not stories in general. I'd cite Dwarf Fortress as an example of this. DF is a game with no script from the developer, and yet these is plenty of story, all of which is emergent of the gameplay. The player's actions within the world create reactions, and this is the basis for narrative which is completely interactive and not simply something buried beneath the mechanics to be discovered by completing a certain objective.

Might be a tangent, but DF doesn't have a story. I don't know why people keep using these games as a good storytelling examples when they don't attempt at any storytelling.

Where DF differs from a toy is in the way it creates the narrative, or "assists a fantasy" as you put it. Since DF relies on emergent gameplay, the player's actions have reactions. If I do this, the dwarves will react this way and this event will occur. My decisions have consequences, and this can have profound implications for me as the player. I would call that storytelling. If I crash two toy cars together then I am creating a narrative, but there is no reaction. The narrative begins and ends with my input. I would not call that storytelling.

To be told a story, we have to take a passive role in the narrative at some point. Not always, but at some point. This happens with DF, but not toy cars.

[mirosurabu]

Toys provide feedback too, it's just that you have to find someone else to play with or resort to actions that you don't have under complete control. Cannon toy for example. Since you can't be sure you will hit the target you are destined to experience what you call "emergent narrative". Games are definitively better at this, though, but that doesn't make the experience less toy-like.

So, I still think that's not storytelling. First, it's not the same type of entertainment. And second, authors are not telling a story.

It's just a virtual world. And when you combine that world with your fantasies you are going to experience plenty of interesting events, but only interesting in relation to your fantasies.

[AshfordPride]

I just don't see why a simulated world would have any more potential for story than the real world would.  My real life has no sort of predetermined plot, but there certainly are many emergent gameplay elements that help me weave the intricate narrative of my life.  Anything has the potential to have one of them emergent gameplay narratives if the player is willing to react to it in such a way.  No amount of paranoid muttering to myself in Minecraft or Stalker is going to make the narrative of the game anymore complex, it's purely my reaction to what's happening and completely dependent on the player rather than the game.  Maybe I wanted to spend a few hours talking about the significance of that specific obsidian block, or maybe I want to tell the tale of how I managed to escape a dark cave full of monsters.  Either way, it's all up to the player, the game simply just there as a thing for the player to describe. 

[gimymblert]

Picture yourself going into a cinema to stare a bunch of toys ...

[s0]

Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

[superflat]

I'd say it depends on the project.  The spectrum of what constitutes a game starts at the purely mechanical and ends at the semi-interactive movie. 

Actually I'd say it ends with no interaction, or gameplay, at all.  I've played games where there are no choices in them, besides not playing. Actually I'm pretty sure increpare's done one couple where it's literally just a stream of text (Queue)  .

To use an opposite increpare example (he has a game to disprove every generalisation about games), Activate the Three Artefacts and then Leave has no story whatsoever, but they're both compelling to me.

[gimymblert]

Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

[AshfordPride]

Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

So, what, action-adventure? 

[gimymblert]

Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

So, what, action-adventure? 

Picture AshfordPride in an ART game THREAD

[s0]

I don't need to picture that.

[AshfordPride]

Picture AshfordPride in an ART game THREAD

I think my avatar sums it up nicely. 

[Richard Kain]

You can't really say that emergent gameplay is the same as "story." Stories have characters, protagonists, antagonists, pacing, arcs, dialogue, etc... Stories can be told and re-told. In theory, it IS possible to create a story through emergent gameplay. However, most modern games do not then save the story to be retold. It is a story that is particular to a single experience had by a single person. (or in the case of multiplayer games, a group of people) These kinds of stories are also extremely simple. They normally involve very rudimentary interactions involving the mechanics and rules of the world, and the ways in which the player interacts with them.

So yes, these can be stories. But are they good stories? If you took a video camera into your house and taped your life, would anyone else actually be interested in watching it? Even for people with exciting lives, a running commentary would be poor entertainment for everyone else.

So for the sake of this discussion, I am limiting the term "story" to a pre-defined narrative, under the control of the designer. This is where all of the deepest and most insightful stories in games come from currently. Perhaps in the future sandbox games will be able to incorporate persistent elements that will result in interactive stories that result purely from the player's interactions. For now, AI hasn't reached that point.

[gimymblert]

So yes, these can be stories. But are they good stories? If you took a video camera into your house and taped your life, would anyone else actually be interested in watching it? Even for people with exciting lives, a running commentary would be poor entertainment for everyone else.

Reality TV and Tabloid beat you on that.

EDIT:
And sport show ...

[s0]

Yeah but even reality TV is often heavily scripted.

[Triplefox]

You can't really say that emergent gameplay is the same as "story." Stories have characters, protagonists, antagonists, pacing, arcs, dialogue, etc... Stories can be told and re-told. In theory, it IS possible to create a story through emergent gameplay. However, most modern games do not then save the story to be retold. It is a story that is particular to a single experience had by a single person. (or in the case of multiplayer games, a group of people) These kinds of stories are also extremely simple. They normally involve very rudimentary interactions involving the mechanics and rules of the world, and the ways in which the player interacts with them.

This is veering away from story in particular, but we work with the building blocks of fiction regardless of how much story is "designed" into the game structure. Characters can be developed through game mechanics alone(example: the Pac-Man ghosts) and the experience of these characters can be shared, even if the specific story is somewhat different. The tendency of games to combine "plausibly exaggerated" experiences(wacky physics, overpowered abilities, etc.) with simplistic motives(beat the bad guys, save the princess) could therefore be construed as a means to help along a player-internal narrative, even if it holds no water as a non-interactive story.

Imposing story-by-design constitutes a shift from the player-internal narrative towards a takeover of all storytelling functions. The main issue presented once you do this is that the internal narrative never goes away in an interactive experience, so you actually have two narratives running in parallel, each one stating "This is why these things are happening." If they clash, they both lose power.

But in such cases, the mechanics are more readily believable, since(as long as a bug doesn't make them break) they are shown to be self-consistent all throughout gameplay, while non-interactive story elements are presented in arbitrary fashion, with no room for player experimentation.

There's an interesting distinction here - a character with an extremely detailed backstory has no contradiction, as long as the backstory resurfaces through mechanics like attributes and powers. But a story layered on top of the mechanics, where scripted events override the rules, is going to be more fragile.

[gimymblert]

Yeah but even reality TV is often heavily scripted.

They also slap template into the emergent bit, like:

Detecting some kind of relationship then
Triggering a script that pass that relationship as parameters
Slapping a stake with an event (along th line of enemy must work toghether to give immunity to someone they like, forcing them to reveal hidden affection or strategize about social position).
? ? ?
PROFIT!

EDIT:

But a story layered on top of the mechanics, where scripted events override the rules, is going to be more fragile.

What if a story is seen as a serie of state instead of a serie of event.
When the player push a button to fire an animation, it works like the current state override the rules of the previous state. Idle state is not hitting state, idle is vulnerable, hitting may have some invulnerable state + negate gravity while theanimation is playing.
Game like metal gear have the stealth/search/alert state that already override the flow of event (notice they have distinct STAKE too), maybe something from an higher level perspective (story) would work.

[Muz]

I didn't read the whole thread yet

What I do first is identify the kind of players who want to play my game. I write out a bunch of things that they'd like. I make RPGs, so I boil it down to people who want to blow up/kill stuff, people who want to explore, people who want to have a cool character, people who want to change the world. Effectively writing down the kind of gameplay I want.

Then I work on the story. I make sure that the story has all those gameplay elements. There'd be a story path for killers, there'd be a story path for heroes/villains, there'd be one for explorers, there'd be one for a shiny guy.

And I try to merge them around a bit. Someone who's playing a social/killer kind of character might be allowed to duel or assassinate to gain political capital or lead armies against other nations. Someone playing an explorer/social might be allowed to make deals with tribes, or marry a tribal girl and retire in the jungle.

Once I have all the story I want, I build the levels around these stories.