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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

But that's the point: what exactly do you mean by "part of the story"? Isn't having them in the game enough to mean that they're a part of the story for the player?

[Alevice]

Perhaps I am going right now a little too far when considering story elements as anything that happens during cutscenes (read, non-interactive portions of the game that make the narrative flow), but, at least in FFVII (which is our current discussion example), any other elemnt doesn't pretty much make the story progress. You could say fighting does it, but plot-tied battles winning conditions end up being just a trigger for a cutscene.

I could agree with you if you are trying to say the setting, yet not the story, contradicts itself, but this is a point we are not discussing.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

By 'story progress', do you mean the plot? Because I think the story and plot are distinct, the story includes the plot but also all the rest: the setting, characters, the nature of the world (including all its rules), the backstory, whereas the plot is only the sequence of events which the characters are involved in.

[increpare]

Still, what part of a game is *not* a part of its story?

Closest I can think of would be DRM ;P

Maybe those copy-protection questions that you get in ultima; these reach outside the story from the inside; making you go and check your manual for details about the game world, their intent is nothing to do with the game itself (though justified in-game, you know that's not the real reason), but rather about people purchasing the game.  I don't really buy this myself; I wouldn't want to clearly excise anything from the 'story' part of a game: any such statement would be really easy to subvert.

[Movius]

Still, what part of a game is *not* a part of its story?

I thought I offered some fairly explicit examples there.

[increpare]

Still, what part of a game is *not* a part of its story?

I thought I offered some fairly explicit examples there.

Oh, I hadn't seen your comment.  You extend game to encompass extra-'story' events.  People might just as easily do it the other way around.  It's much of a muchness, I think.

[Alex May]

You guys need to come to an agreement or nomenclature regarding prescribed story and procedural story. 'Narrative' and 'tale' respectively? The tale includes the narrative of course. The elves always turn up in dwarf fortress but each game tells a different tale.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

A think that's a bad distinction too, because to the player, it often doesn't matter if the story had to happen that way (was deterministic) or if it were a result of their decisions. It's still story either way.

As an example, at the end of Passage you die, along with the girl you meet. Does it matter that that death is a result of rules (take x steps and then you die) or if it's coded explicitly (at the end of the game you die)?

Also, again, story isn't just narrative and tale: the appearance of a character is part of the story, the way a character talks is part of the story, the sound your footsteps make in a game is a part of the story, the way the monsters look is part of the story. Those things are certainly part of the story of a novel when they're described in writing, so why should it work any differently if they're conveyed through means other than text?

[Alex May]

It is a bad distinction in terms of the player, possibly - you might not be giving players enough credit there - but we're discussing this rather in terms of development, or at least with some analytical depth. Since there was a page of argument about it using the same word (and it is kind of off topic anyway), there should be some attempt to resolve it, in my opinion.

[Balrog]

I like saying that a game is a metaphor for something even when I don't really think that. Like:

Gears of War is a metaphor for illegal immigration.

Rez is about the Vietnam War.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Maybe, but the way I saw it, the page of argument was about whether there's such a thing as a distinct story/game separation at all, rather than whether to distinguish between the procedural and the hard-coded aspects of the supposed story part.

What I meant by bad distinction was that I don't think a game is best understood as having a distinct story set apart from the rest of the game at all, regardless of whether or not procedural story events are included in that story subset. I think pretty much everything in a game (aside from the DRM, I guess) is the story.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

(As an aside, if a player doesn't distinguish between a "procedural" aspect and a non-procedural aspect, it means that that player is playing the game better, not worse -- so it's not that I'm not giving them enough credit, I just think that anyone who consciously separates a game out into parts as they're playing it isn't playing it right, they aren't immersed in the experience enough.)

[Alex May]

Or maybe the developer failed to sufficiently smooth over the procedural / prescribed / etc story aspects

Sorry, I would post more but have no access to a PC at the moment.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

That too -- many attempts at procedural storytelling are obvious, such as randomly generated levels that are unbeatable, etc. -- but even then it's hard to distinguish that from plain bad level design. There's no real way to tell whether or not a game's levels (or anything else) are procedurally generated unless you're told that. Because there could always be a large database of levels and they're randomly chosen, rather than the levels being spontaneously created based on a random seed. And especially for a non-technical audience, they often don't even know what's the technical difference between the two. When I first played Diablo I didn't know or care that the levels were randomly generated. It didn't matter to me. I suspect it's the same for many players.

[increpare]

Here's my attempt at contribution to this discussion.