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neon
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« on: September 13, 2008, 07:27:17 PM »

ok, so in the vein of architekt's awesome threads about different video gaming discussions, i thought i'd start one over a question i have hammered myself over the head with over and over for a while. 

The storytelling element of games has been severely neglected, almost to the point where it doesn't exist.  on places like lostgarden.com there's a lot of rhetoric about "game mechanics first, story second" and etc etc which is fine.  fine, sometimes.  but i think we also need games that exist firstly to tell a moving or captivating story and create an immersive atmosphere, and to showcase game mechanics second.  we haven't yet had an epic of a video game that would drive someone to rethinking their life, or that would stand on its own as a classic of art, alongside music, painting, writing, and etc.  so, in this thread i'd like to discuss both why this neglect of story has happened, and what other art pieces (music, art, literature) could be the basis of incredible story-driven games.

also, if anyone would like to tell about games that they think have amazing stories, or atmosphere, or etc i would love to hear it.

also sorry architekt your threads were so awesome i had to steal your idea because i'm just that much of an asshole


DISCUSS!
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Hempuliā€½
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« Reply #1 on: September 14, 2008, 12:50:13 AM »

I took the moment to write what Kirby would be with story: Grin
"Kirby woke up. He could still feel the ugly taste of raw meat in his mouth. He smoked a cigarrette to make it disappear. Suddenly, the memories from the day before came to his mind. He swore hardly, and fell back to the bed.
 Yet another wonderful day in Dreamland was about to begin."

I think the need for a good story depends on the style of the game. Although games like Portal and Braid are great to play because along with other stuff they have a great story, sometimes I want to play games that are just simple. Though nowadays it's more like that we sometimes want to play games that are intelligent.
 I love the fact that sometimes the story can be told with very small things. For example, Super Metroid (although the story wasn't that great) didn't have any text apart from the very beginning, but I still could understand what was happening and such. It's cool.
 Meh, I'm bad at talking.
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« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2008, 12:53:25 AM »

I think it has been neglected because story and gameplay have remained pretty separate things.

Most of the time it is just cutscene-gameplay-cutscene so on and so forth, with no real connection between the two.

Portal was good in that aspect that you were always playing while finding out the story, though I must say that I don't rank Portal's story as fantastic when taken out of the context of a game.

Also, it seems that a lot of people that can write good stories go and write books rather than go and write for games. Or something. There must be a reason why so many game stories are shitty.
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William Broom
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« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2008, 01:22:37 AM »

Indeed, most 'proper' writers wouldn't want to write for a game, though there are a few who do (such as Orson Scott Card and Warren Ellis). The other thing is that in most mediums the writer has a lot more control over how the story plays out. A novellist basically writes whatever book he wants and then tries to sell it to a publisher, whereas a games writer, even a well-treated one such as those who work for Bioware, will get a lot of restrictions on how the story plays out. That's why I think indie games have some of the best storytelling in games - because the writer and the director are one.

But really, I don't think we need book/movie/comic writers to come in and write game stories for us. What we need are good game stories, not good book stories squished into a game.
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« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2008, 05:47:31 AM »

Maybe we just need the writer to be involved early on in the project's development; the writer can come up with some crazy plot, which inspires a new gameplay mechanic that the writer can justify in the context of the story. Especially when one considers how much dialogue is written for AAA games now, maybe studios should have a dedicated writer like they have dedicated programmers and artists.

As far as telling stories in games, I think a lot more things can be said without any dialogue. As the player explores the environment, the way the place is designed can hint towards its backstory, and of course the Half-Life school of mise en scene works well too.

The way an environment is shaped, the way it's colored, how you can interact with it (including what works and what doesn't) are all important things to think about. After all, if gaming is a medium that allows interactivity, then surely that interactivity is what must be important. Not necessarily game mechanics, but it's the idea that how you interact with a game determines its nature, and thus (hopefully) its meaning.
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« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2008, 05:51:40 AM »

...  Cave Story

Some jRPGs do a pretty good job at telling a story but a pretty crappy job at gameplay.

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Gnarf
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« Reply #6 on: September 14, 2008, 05:55:53 AM »

Final Fantasy VII is like famous for letting its story get in the way of the game Grin

but i think we also need games that exist firstly to tell a moving or captivating story and create an immersive atmosphere, and to showcase game mechanics second.
Maybe some need that. I don't think it is what gamers want from a game: If it's story first and game second then it's a story with game mechanics, not a game with a story. Which is cool, just not really a game.

I think the need for a good story depends on the style of the game. Although games like Portal and Braid are great to play because along with other stuff they have a great story, sometimes I want to play games that are just simple.
Lacking a story doesn't make a game simple.

But really, I don't think we need book/movie/comic writers to come in and write game stories for us. What we need are good game stories, not good book stories squished into a game.
Yes. Good game stories. Like in DooM. It establishes a context and doesn't get in the way. Great stuff.

I think it's funny how people think Half Life does good storytelling things. It's a mindnumbingly boring story. It plays out like game-cut scene-game just like every other game, only that they're not really cut scenes  so they all feature insane mute running back and forth for no apparent reason and you can't skip them. And the first Half Life has the slowest, most boring beginning of any game ever. Oooh, exaggerations. I haven't really played through all of any one of the Half Life game, so maybe I missed out on some bit of genius that's really what people are raving about, but it seems to me that you never ever make an interesting decision during a bit of "story" and the story is as separate from the game as in games that use cut scenes to tell their stories.
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Bree
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« Reply #7 on: September 14, 2008, 06:05:24 AM »

I can't say that I've played the original Half-Life (I know, for shame) but the sequel's story is decently told. Yeah, it ain't that original (Aliens invade and take over mankind, and only one man can save us), but the way that it's told is fairly novel. I thought that Portal, meanwhile, had a more interesting (if not highly original) story, again due to the way it was told. Imagine a story told with one character and a bunch of rooms- and that's it.
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Melly
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« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2008, 07:14:22 AM »

I think the way a story can be told in a game taking advantage of both worlds is not through linearity, but through creating a world from the writer's mind and letting the player discover it. This is one reason I love games with "archeological storytelling", as I've seen mentioned, where you find out about characters, events and places through logs and messages strewn around the world, as well as, obviously, great characters you can interact with. That's basically telling a great story while letting the game give the writing its best gift, the ability to make the writing more than a single-track rollercoaster ride and into an actual world to be explored and discovered with all its wonders.
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« Reply #9 on: September 14, 2008, 07:17:57 AM »

I can't say that I've played the original Half-Life (I know, for shame) but the sequel's story is decently told. Yeah, it ain't that original (Aliens invade and take over mankind, and only one man can save us), but the way that it's told is fairly novel. I thought that Portal, meanwhile, had a more interesting (if not highly original) story, again due to the way it was told. Imagine a story told with one character and a bunch of rooms- and that's it.

I played through most of the first Half Life and had a pretty good time. Can't really recall much of its story, other than the beginning which I remember very well indeed, mostly because it's painfully boring and crawls along at the speed of crawling.

I've started playing Half Life 2 a few times, but I never get very far. It's a lot of being locked away from any action going on because there's a bit of story going on, there's a lot of you can't shoot that guy because he's a story guy and there's a lot of this would feel a lot less awkward if Freeman opened his damn mouth every once in a while. The mute bit is sort of beside the point, but. It's just, Quake seems a pretty good improvement on the Half Life 2 formula, you know. It expands on the interesting bits and ditches the dreadful bits. It's ace.

Portal is fairly enjoyable though. It's a puzzle game with a story told through voice-over. It's fairly easy to have the story be very present without it slowing things down and getting in the way that way. You can take your time and that anyway, so it doesn't matter if you're distracted a bit.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #10 on: September 14, 2008, 07:19:44 AM »

I think the way a story can be told in a game taking advantage of both worlds is not through linearity, but through creating a world from the writer's mind and letting the player discover it. This is one reason I love games with "archeological storytelling", as I've seen mentioned, where you find out about characters, events and places through logs and messages strewn around the world, as well as, obviously, great characters you can interact with. That's basically telling a great story while letting the game give the writing its best gift, the ability to make the writing more than a single-track rollercoaster ride and into an actual world to be explored and discovered with all its wonders.

System Shock 2 does an amazing job of this.
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« Reply #11 on: September 14, 2008, 09:27:06 AM »

some novels have an intention, games don't have it, why?
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Melly
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« Reply #12 on: September 14, 2008, 09:39:47 AM »

Intention? Could you clarify?
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Bree
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« Reply #13 on: September 14, 2008, 11:05:31 AM »

I'm guessing you mean purpose, more specifically a message or theme to discuss? I suppose it has to do with the idea that most game development begins with the mechanics themselves, and then have the story worked into it later. There are exceptions, of course, but this seems to be a fairly large problem.

I love the idea of 'archaeological storytelling'. Melly, if you made that phrase, I'd go ahead and get to work on a presentation about it so that you can take full credit for it.
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DjangoDurango
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« Reply #14 on: September 14, 2008, 01:22:47 PM »

some novels have an intention, games don't have it, why?

If Otaku's guess is right, then I've asked that question a number of times and the answer I get is usually some variant of "games are meant to be an escape from reality; we don't want to have to think about the real world."

Films used to be "an escape" too. You went to the theater during the Great Depression so you could see The Wizard of Oz so you could forget how shitty things were for an hour and a half. Games are very similar to films. They're very similar to most other art forms. Games can have these things too, messages and themes. the problem is simply knowing how to properly show these things in such a way that it doesn't detract from the game as a whole.

Games are a difficult art form to work in, especially if you're trying to say something with it, because they are a fusion of many other types of art. You have to be proficient in all of them or the end result won't come out as it needs to.
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Bree
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« Reply #15 on: September 14, 2008, 01:46:12 PM »

Escapism doesn't necessarily mean that you can't talk about issues- it just means that you have to find a more imaginative way of doing it. Don't forget that The Wizard of OZ has been speculated to be a metaphor for the Great Depression itself; the Yellow Brick Road as the Gold Standard, Dorothy as the Everyman and innocence of America, and the Tinman as the industrialized factory workers of the North.

Games dabble more in surreal imagery than perhaps any other entertainment medium *insert tired joke about the absurdity of Super Mario Bros. here*, so the only thing that's missing is making those images mean something.
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DjangoDurango
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« Reply #16 on: September 14, 2008, 02:02:29 PM »

It has a lot to do with how you handle having a message too.

Like, for instance, Super Columbine Massacre RPG!. That game most definitely had a message and a story, but it was confusing for a lot of people because Ledonne tried to tackle too many things at once. It pokes fun at videogame conventions, criticizes the media's reaction to the massacre, and puts you in the perspective of the killers. That he tries to do all of these at once makes it difficult to tell what he is commenting on at a time. When you "defeat" a student and it praises you for being a "brave boy" or cheers that it's "another victory for the Trenchcoat Mafia!", one can't exactly be sure what he's saying. Is he glorifying the shooters or is he commenting on how games almost always put us in the character of someone strong and heroic? Ledonne says the latter, but you wouldn't be sure unless you asked him.

Or perhaps Sigvatr's recent Muslim Massacre. What is that game about exactly? We can certainly try to come up with our own conclusions, but since Sigvatr has neither given us a real reason for making the game apart from "I wanted to have a laugh" and the game itself offers no concrete message, we can only guess. Which is exactly why the media flipped their shit the second they caught hold of it. It says something, to be sure, but whether it's that we're generalizing an entire people or that we really should go out and kill a bunch of Muslims is anyone's guess.

It goes back to something they used to say a lot on the forums for this old webzine I used to write for: "If the reader doesn't get it, then you did it wrong." Given the way games are perceived as a medium, what people believe the purpose of games themselves is, it's important that we know how to go about trying to say things with them.
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Seth
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« Reply #17 on: September 14, 2008, 02:06:23 PM »

I highly doubt that The Wizard of Oz was intended to be read that much into it, much like I doubt the Lord of the Rings was meant to be a specific metaphor for the rise of nuclear power, but because the authors of these books lived during these times it's likely that all the concerns that everyone had on a day to day basis got somehow affected their work.

Which isn't to say that The Wizard of Oz has nothing to say about the Great Depression, just that the main reason the book was written wasn't to make some elaborate metaphor that no one would get until decades later.

Talking about infusing meaning or themes, I think it should be done afterward rather than starting your game with that focus.  I think if there is a unique setting or mechanic you want to make a game out of, do it!  Then, take a look at it and see what sort of themes you had been dealing with all along (if you make your work personal at all, themes you are interested are bound to be in your own work, whether you are aware of it or not).  The next step is working to take those themes out of the muck they are in and illuminating them and expanding on them.
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« Reply #18 on: September 14, 2008, 02:14:32 PM »

Sometimes it needs to be taken into consideration beforehand. Since games are made of many other types of art, they all rely on each other.

SCMRPG! was made in RPG Maker 2000 even though there were newer versions of the program available because 2K had a first-person battle system. The game would've been less on-point if he had made it in 2003 with it's side-view battle system because you are meant to be in the character of the shooters. First-person benefits this, side-view would detract from it.

The message is enhanced by the gameplay.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #19 on: September 14, 2008, 02:15:03 PM »

No, Django is right--The Wizard of Oz is an allegory. If you read the book (as opposed to merely watching the movie) the thing that gets Dorothy home from Oz are silver slippers (i.e. the silver standard).
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