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Here's a bit of a problem I've been having lately.

Sometimes I come up with a game. The game has a rather fine-tuned ruleset and mechanics, and by beta comes along it plays very wonderfully and even is a little fun. I give it nice graphics, the beginnings of a multiplayer mode, and a semi-decent AI-agent to fumble along with me. Then I consider ways I could give the game a level progression, to make the game maps and challenges incrementally more difficult, until it climaxes at the borderline of almost impossible to win, and giving you a magnificent tune of victory when you finally do. A "campaign" mode would surely fit the bill!

But, I can't justify it. Try as hard as I can, I can't think of a story to go with the game. Not one line of text. Not one character or mascot thereof. Not even a theme or leitmotif.

Sometimes it could be a matter of micronarrative. The gameplay itself is a story, or evokes one. When a match of the game begins, the story begins, and when it ends with a player winning-losing-or-drawing, the story ends in the same way. This was the intent with an earlier (http://sleights.revasser.net/) game of mine, which was based on the same vein of Magic: the Gathering which also operated like that. Also just looking through some of my notebooks, I find another game like this tentatively called Demon Architect, which is both a game and a story of the Marioesque platformer heroes taking on the evilbad, and the Demon Architect, who has contracted by the evilbad to always be a few steps ahead of the heroes, commanding his league of construction workers to build/design traps which will keep the heroes at bay, but won't make him run out of resources or funding. Two or three players act as the architects, while five or six be the pesky little heroes in opposition.

It might seem perfect like this, when the gameplay and the story are at one, but in truth it only works the best for games that are inherently multiplayer. Playing chess tells a story, albeit a very abstract one. The players themselves act as both protagonist and antagonist to eachother, so having a single player game with level progression becomes difficult because the scope of the game just won't go any further. Anything additional, like setting, plots, or characters, only end up seeming like a dull and predictable substitute for what could otherwise be real person.

Then, on different days, I have the opposite problem. Through either solo effort, or just through speaking with a friend or affiliate, we come up with a story. A game story: a type of story that might only be told through a game. We imagine emotional parts of the plot, and figure out the various ways that the character of the player can become immersed or integral to the world that in many ways existed long before he showed up. Then we imagine the various ways that game artifacts can advance the story or add depth to it, and how the interaction between the player and the game can direct the story in different ways. And then, just to top it all off, we think about variability, and how the story might become different each time a player loads a new game file. A story is made, that only a game can tell!

But no game will have it.

This is definitely the case with a possible game that another dev and I sometimes think about it. Dear Diary is a game set in a little fantasy world where tiny leaflets of paper begin to slowly float down from the sky. The people think it to be a message from the holy goddess, but when the player character sees them he would recognize each page as a private diary entry by an unknown little girl. The more and more pages that are found, the darker and sordid the contents become in the once-innocent pages. Then the world itself becomes affected, with each discovered page slowly transforming sunny fields into barren wastelands, crazed monsters appearing more and more frequently, and turning the once-nice villagers into stoic, agitated, or even hostile people. This might sound nice and all, with a progression in tension on the same footing as the difficulty curve, but we still have no idea what type of game it will end up being. Sometimes we think of it as a turn-based JRPG, and other times as a top-down Zelda clone, and even more recently as a Metroidvania platformer. It seems like it could work for any game at all, and since we can't decide on even the basic makeup of the game itself, we can't begin working on it.

I'm wondering if any other devs here have had similar issues with the creative aspects of their games. Has there ever been a time when a game wouldn't accept having a story, or a story can't find a game to go along with it? This seems very much like an issue of preproduction, so it would be interesting to see or know if anyone managed to mend this for their projects.

Yeah, I think all of us have the same ways of coming up with games. Either via story, or via gameplay mechanics. Both type of games can be good, but it depends on how well you fill the initial void.

Filling in the story is less stressful when you already have a fun game at hand (rather than the reverse). But sometimes good story driven game can also become good game-design, but I think it's harder.

Usually my rule of thumb for game stories is to concentrate the story around an interesting main character (and not just an universe concept like you described). His personality and abilities will define what type of gameplay you can concentrate on.

And for gameplay centric, it's almost the same, except then you have to come up with a main character who may fit the gameplay.
For instance, if you have a magic the gathering type of game, the first question to ask is "what kind of guy would fight with cards?" "what kind of world would make that possible?" and then it's up to you to go from there.

Then don't.

Stories in games are only forced content, not actual gaming content. Gaming content is running, jumping, shooting, solving, dodging, controlling, reacting, planning, creating...

Only way where I can imagine that story works in game, is that the story/game is very dynamic and possibly procedural. It sort of requires the player to make something meaningful out of it. Games that are dynamic, are not automatically good story tellers like Sim City. I haven't played such dynamic/procedural game yet where the story evolves even close to any written piece. But I am certain such could be done (or exists?), and I even have few design/game ideas for that. Only if devs could take their heads out of their asses, we would see something someday.

Nothing is more frustrating than forced story. Every time I had to face a cut scene in Prey, I almost had to stop playing. In contrary to that, I only learnt few years ago that Wolfenstein 3D had story. It is there, written in the main menu somewhere. And I still haven't read it. I am fine with the game, it is great.

Just ditch the god damn story, its crap anyway.

I think that, from the massive sales of story-heavy games like Skyrim or Mass Effect, the gaming public has agreed that stories in games are not window-dressing. There is really no "right way" to put a story into a game, since it can be equally as affecting with or without text. It's just that, as a writer, I tend to design games around a story rather than the other way around. All games have some kind of story, though, even if they don't have cutscenes or text.

I try to start by getting a feel for the story/setting while creating the core mechanics, as the rest of the mechanics can then be influenced by story.  If you do either too late it can be difficult to create something good within the restrictions.

I'm going to guess that your standards (regarding game+story) are already high (which is good), which is to say you'd be no less than displeased at a game and story haphazardly thrown together.

If you design a game without considering story along the way, you will end up with exactly what you have designed: a game without a story.

The same is true of a story that is 'meant for a game' but which doesn't actually have one.



If you're legitimately worried about not having an idea with well-meshed game and story, then you have to start from the beginning with that goal; you can't start with one aspect and assume the other half will just fall into place.

On the other hand, there's no reason to beat yourself up over a story-free game (or, if it's what you want to make, a game-free story): follow through with it, if you think it sounds compelling!

You definitely are right about my impeccably high standards in regards to game stories. But where games without stories tend to trip me up is on the issue of context. For example, I can have a strategy game which visually shows to leauges of cardplaying magicians duking it out on a castle-based field. Occasionally a dragon will fly by and a princess might appear in a tower and yell "help" or something. It will look nice and glitzy, and the game itself can still work, but one question could easily ruin the experience entirely: "Why is this happening?"

I don't want all my games to be brands -- an illusion of a complete experience that, like all illusions, are so easily shattered to reveal little substance beneath. Thus far my completed games have almost been just about their design and style, and that is something I want to get away from. A game should feel complete.

A multi player game can have certain things left to the imagination, but a single player game can't leave anything to chance. When people play games by themselves, they use far more critical capacities that would otherwise be blunted amidst the joy of the group setting. If someone where to ask "Why?" and someone responded with an answer, "Because," then they would be satisfied, not necessarily by the answer itself, but just by notion of someone else responded to them. If there is no one else around to say "Because," then the original questioner will begin to expect a real answer.

Of course, fantasy cliches aside, the only possible way I can see myself getting around this is if the core game in question lactates such nauseating amounts of "fun" that it could be compared to a Huxleian power trip or narcotic abuse. While fun is always required in a game, sometimes you just want to make a more reflective game that has the added quality of making you feel smarter just by playing. These types of games usually require some challenge, and challenge begets critical thinking, and critical thinking begets questions, and questions beget context. The player will look for all relevant information they can get, even in just the aesthetic style of the game.

Sometimes I wish I could just make a game as if it were an abstract toy, like English Country Tune managed. Thus far, I haven't been so lucky in the realm of single-player gaming. Perhaps I just need to practice core design a bit more.

(By the way, you have no idea how much I got out of Probability 0. It has to be like, 25 hours by now. Seriously.)

I agree with 1982.

This.
There are bad guys, you need to kill them. End of story.
There are puzzles, you need to solve them. End of story.

There are a few games that mix story and game very well. But that requires just the right mix and just the right game, with just the right implementation. Portal comes to mind (portal 2 in a lesser extend, because it's more story less game)

You can also leave people questioning about the story, see braid and limbo.

But in general, you can get away with stuff being "outside of the story" even if you have a story. I recently pulled a "Ultros" on my Dungeons and Dragons party. Out of nowhere, without a valid reason or anything, an Giant octopus appeared attacking the party. (ok, they where near water, but that's it) Some questioned why, I gave my best "It could be part of a bigger plot!" look, but it was just a random thing. Just like Ultros in FF6. But nobody questioned the fun it added.

Hell, look at most games, and they don't add up.

"Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie.
It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."
- John Carmack

Agreed. If it's not good, scratch it. I can only think a few genres where a story is one of the essential things that make them enjoyable*. (Point and click games, Visual Novels)

*That's, if it has a good story to begin with.

When it comes to story in games, I think they should be approached in an "all or nothing" kind of way. If you really have a story you want to tell through an interactive medium, then you should make something where the story comes first, though you'd need to ensure that the the story is best told through an interactive medium and not a book or a movie. If the game doesn't need a story, then it shouldn't be attempted at all, as it'll usually only serve to get in the way of the game.

Percon, I disagree with you. That's a dangerous statement to make, because all sorts of people have all sorts of different thoughts about what a "story" is. If you mean only to discourage walls of text between levels of space invaders, then... well, okay.

There are times when the context, potential emotional connection, and sense of extrapolated space and time of pieces of story--or, frequently, well-used 'story elements' (i.e. THEME SETTING PLOT CHARACTERS! I REMEMBER GRADE 10 ENGLISH CLASS)--can really hit home and make a game feel that much better.



So, ah, still: I, too, think story should be approached in an "all or nothing" kind of way, but that shouldn't mean "make a game that's all about story or don't touch story with a ten-foot pole". Just don't half-ass it.

(That's not saying much, though, because it should probably be understood that unless you want to half-ass the game, don't add anything to it you're not willing to full-ass.)

i think that if you feel the story you come up with is bad, you could also consider getting a writer who is good at stories to write a good one for your game. or learn to write better stories (storytelling is a skill, just like anything else). it's no different than with art; if your art is bad, either get an artist or improve as an artist. you wouldn't tell someone who is bad at art to do without it and just make a game with ascii art or ms paint art or something, you'd tell them to get an artist, or to get better at art. exact same thing for stories

Fair enough; I guess I was being a bit too extreme in what I was trying to say. If the gameplay comes before the story, though, I would hope that the developers don't compromise any part of the gameplay for a halfhearted story.

Yeah I've been thinking about this lately and I heartily agree with Droqen. I take back my older post in here.

stories can make games nice, yeah, but I think sometimes settings are enough as well. Like, does this guy really need to be the legendary hero foretold of in prophecies of yore? Or can he just be, I dunno, a random adventurer, and you just take on the role of his everyday routine in this setting you've created (it just so happens that his everyday routine involves a lot of monster slaying and exploring or whatever the mechanics of your game are) I think sometimes it's more fun to explore settings themselves with just the barest minimum amount of setup regarding the character's role. I think that can be an okay thing to do.

"You are a hunter. You need food."
"You are a god. You need prayers."
"You are a seven thousand pound trampoline. You long to thrust your pelvis towards the sky."

And that's all you get.

The game that follows has no super antagonist or character development, only an exploration of the game's mechanics as presented within the setting, or an exploration of the setting through the game's mechanics.

The biggest problem with stories in games is that the game developers try to deal with certain themes but just end up doing something obvious. They feel a story has to have an antagonist, a protagonist and three arcs to it. Then they force relationships to the characters so that they can have these "correct" story elements in the game.

In the end the relationships and the situations might've had twists and turns but the end result has been nothing more than the forced problem being solved in a way or another. Did that make the actual gameplay any better? Most often the actual gameplay hasn't got anything to do with the story. They could've had any kind of a story shoved between the gameplay moments.

There aren't many games that truly feel the stories in them are deserved to be there and fits exactly in that certain game.
One I can think of is Harvester on PC. The story wouldn't have worked as well if it had been as a book or a movie.
Another one is Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The actual story isn't forced to the players face. Sure there are cut scenes and lots of talking but the final reveal at the end turns everything upside down and manages to give to meanings the game situations, sceneries and even to some of the gameplay mechanics. Surely the other Silent Hill games work like that too, but Shattered Memories puts it a bit further.

I think making your own story in a game is a valid approach, and that more games should do that.

Games before video games used to be abstract tests and so they were primarily logical. With the advent of video games, games are both logically and aesthetically engaging.

Thus, video games are a tight, immersive mix of tests and context.

Stories are one way to deliver that context, and they are absolutely the worst way to do it. People who love stories in their games do so mostly because of the promise - they want their games to be capable of dealing with a variety of different topics. I like the promise too, however, when I look closely at the gameplay of story-driven games, it's obviously bad.

The problem is: story-driven games have bad tests that often do not even match the context really well.

When you let your story dictate what kind of tests you have to design, you're really only giving up on game design.

You might be able to match every single moment of your story with a suitable test that is fun on its own, but what you will miserably fail at is test consistency.

Games aren't about individual tests. They are about the system of tests. When I like games, I don't like them because I like that single level or boss fight. I like them because of the way one fight moves to another fight. This is what test consistency is all about.

For tests to be consistent they have to share a lot in common. The knowledge that you learn from previous tests should be applicable in future tests. The rules that apply to one test, should in part apply to other tests. Tests should also be visually consistent. Going from shooting to driving mode shouldn't feel like switching from shmup to pseudo-3d formula racer. Basically, all tests should be derived from one, single core ruleset.

When you let story dictate your game, all the awesome game design variables will be left at random: difficulty curve, learning curve, pacing, etc and the game would end up feeling like a series of disjointed tests that are unfair.

To solve this problem some game developers use lowest common denominator test such as QTE, but QTE can hardly be variated, and so, you can't really have a continually interesting gameplay with it. Others, on the other hand, stick with one or two sorts of tests and try to variate them (e.g. Phoenix Wright), but they still ultimately fail at making their tests feel consistent (it boils down to guessing rather than deduction).

Okay. I know for sure that I'm biased, but... For anyone saying that games absolutely should not have stories, do you even understand how a story works?

For one thing, a simple setting can potentially be a story in itself, at least if it has characters and some sort of chronology. I think what I'm referring to would be called 'minimalist' storytelling.

Also, if the story causes the gameplay to be too inconsistent, that would most likely be a problem with the quality of the story itself rather than the attempt to combine storytelling and game design.

Story isn't necessary, and it can cause a game to be worse, or it could end up making the game better. It's all up to the storyteller. The potential audience consists of people with different tastes, so who can say that games can't have stories if there will be so many people who would like those games anyway?

I think the story makes a game, just look at half life :)

By that definition, everything is a story. My dog is a story. I am a story. You are a story. This whole forum is a big giant story. The thing is, wherever you look at, you can see a chronology of events. So, no, I don't think that chronology of events is enough to make something a story.

When I say story I really only mean traditional storytelling i.e. novels and films.

Setting is therefore not a story. Nor is emergent narrative a story. These things give meaning to the otherwise abstract tests. They may eventually become a story. If I score a really funny goal in Football Manager that may become a story if I decide to share it with other people. But Football Manager on its own doesn't have a story.


A good story will most definitively limit what kind of tests you can put in your game. In other words, writing a story is optimized for engaging storytelling. It's not optimized for making engaging tests.

Making a compromise is probably the only solution, but not a single adventure game yet has managed to prove me that you can have both consistent and immersive tests within the context of a story. It's either immersive (Phoenix Wright) or consistent (Professor Llayton), never both.

Looks like I was misunderstood... What I was saying is that a story can come from a combination of characters, setting, and chronology (which would be plot and backstory). Or, if I wasn't actually misunderstood, there are very simple things that can possibly be considered stories.

I'm not entirely sure if I can answer the second part. I don't play enough games as an aspiring developer... Might I ask if you could elaborate on those examples? What makes Phoenix Wright inconsistent, and what keeps Professor Layton from being immersive? And do you really think that what you're saying generally applies to games with stories?

My suggestion is to just throw around random ideas until something fits. My games so far are mostly light on story, and in all cases but one, the story was made long after the game mechanics were designed. Example:

I have a game where you're in a Tron-like world blowing up robots and combining all their weapons. About 6 months into development, I asked my character designer and writer to come up with a story for it. He made a character who can copy other superpowers, and she got a virtual reality machine for her birthday in order to train those abilities and become more skilled. This is all told through exactly one cutscene in the first 1 minute of the game. It gives the player a reason to be there, even if it's not important to the gameplay at all, and all the people who were complaining about a lack of narrative are surprisingly satisfied now!

You can also consider telling the story indirectly. For example, come up with little biographies for all the minor enemies, but don't explain the main character and let the player fill in the blanks.

Majority of tests in Phoenix Wright are based on intuition. There is no consistent internal logic you can use to pass the tests. Instead, you have to intuit what characters' intentions are. Basically, there is no learning curve. The game teaches you nothing. And so, you might be able to solve some puzzles, but others, you will have to go brute force or walkthrough. Second game is especially bad.

Professor Layton on the other hand has somewhat consistent tests (albeit, didn't play it much, so I might be wrong) but it's not immersive. It's not immersive because, unlike Phoenix Wright, you don't feel like you're part of the world, and instead it feels like you're playing an abstract puzzle game wrapped inside a story.

mirosurabu, I really like what you said here. It does make sense, and I have yet seen a game that is both immersive and consistent.

If I understand you correctly, Phoenix Wright is actually consistent in term of the type of test they give you ( present evidence, find conflicts in witness testimonies), but the core rules of the test itself is inconsistent (detecting one lie doesn't help detecting the next ones) Correct?

Actually, Prof. Layton isn't really consistent as well, I think. Each puzzle stands out as its own puzzle, and has nothing to do with the previous one.

Exactly.


Just checked it on youtube and I stand corrected.

Stories are cool, but so are thing that aren't stories. I think this is a really great article right here: http://boingboing.net/features/morerock.html