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[Xion]

...but not necessarily a game.

Something I've encountered several times is this in response to story ideas I have for games. I wonder why. What makes a story - without any indication as to what kind of game it would be - seem more suited to basically "any-medium-but-games"?

"That sounds cool but it seems more like a short story."
"Neat idea but maybe it'd be better as a comic?"
"That doesn't sound like a game."

Is it the specificity? The idea that if you have a specific story to tell that it should be told without the Player Variable to muddle affairs?

Or the lack of apparent requisite conflict? The belief that a story whose major drama and obstacles are ones of psychology, philosophy, character growth, or generally nonviolent in nature, would result in an unfun game or a half-assed telling?

Or is it that people just aren't used to having stories for games that don't follow established game-story or action-movie tropes that story ideas which explore less visceral concepts are perceived as not suitable to games, except perhaps as particularly wordy rpgs?

Or something else entirely?

I'm not really concerned with whether it's a right or wrong thing to say, more of: why do people react this way, and if you have yourself done so, what makes a story seem like it belongs in a certain medium to you?

[Belimoth]

Final Fantasy is an example of something that should really be movie/tv series instead of a game. The story just kind of happens without any input by the player.

Military games can get away with linear storytelling because you're playing the part of a soldier and soldiers follow orders, but other kinds of stories just come off as restrictive.

In my experience when games try and make you feel something directly the emotions being called upon are either fear or guilt, to the point that I'm not sure what other emotions are consistently doable in game format.

I don't know, maybe people see stories as set pieces that games happen to pass through.

[SundownKid]

Final Fantasy is an example of something that should really be movie/tv series instead of a game. The story just kind of happens without any input by the player.

That basically applies to every jRPG. And no, Final Fantasy would suck as a movie or series because the stories are far too long and convoluted... and didn't you see the actual Final Fantasy movie?

In my experience when games try and make you feel something directly the emotions being called upon are either fear or guilt, to the point that I'm not sure what other emotions are consistently doable in game format.

Mainly because these games are trying to work within the boundaries of arbitrary violence. Take out the violence and you can evoke other emotions.

[ink.inc]

didn't you see the actual Final Fantasy movie?

i liked the spirits within

[Belimoth]

Okay so, your story should be a game if the runtime would be over 2.5 hours as a movie because people are dumb and will sit and watch it for 12 hours if they get to push a button now and then.

[Evan Balster]

I'm designing and writing a game right now that started as a short story.  The decision to make it a game instead felt like a terrible idea because, no, I don't think what works in one medium can work in another.  At least not unchanged.

It took me a while to design a system of mechanics that would work well for telling this story -- you're not in a hurry, there isn't any combat, there aren't dialogue trees, you aren't solving puzzles.  I made a system of mechanics that serve the kind of story I want to communicate and the emotions I want to evoke -- they are custom-made for their purpose.  However, even the perfect set of mechanics would be incapable of telling this story unchanged.

The narrative has reshaped itself in response to the game design as it has developed.  I observe that this would not have been possible had the story been more complete.  The game and story develop together so as to be intimate with one another.  The inseparability of mechanics and narrative is a measure of that intimacy, and should be bidirectional.  So I've been challenging myself with questions like -- Would this story work without being a game?  Would it work without these mechanics?  Would these mechanics work for a different kind of story?  Would they work for a different story?  Each of these is something I hope to answer in the negative, and each is a greater challenge than the last.  It is my hope to achieve at least the first three; the fourth challenges my sensibilities as a programmer and eludes my understanding.

The ideal result would be a deep and intimate cohesiveness.  To play the game and to learn the story would be one and the same in the mind of the player.  I believe this is possible.


...

The ultimate measure of my success will be this:  Someone must make a film adaptation of my game, and it must be awful.  

[Soundhound]

Most stories in games don't make a lot of sense when you take into account the player. I mean, there's so many games that the story feels totally separate to what the player is doing.

For instance, take a game like Red Dead Redemption. Sure it has a great story, but what does me running around for hours skinning bears and killing wolves with dynamite have to do with me trying to get my life back? The two are totally unrelated and your actions have no effect on the way the story unfolds, mainly because if you give the player free reign they won't act like the character is supposed to, they are a gamer not an actor in a film.

Even in games where your actions do make a difference to the story (even if these differences are still a bit arbitrary), it still often doesn't work. Like Heavy Rain. I would have enjoyed that story so much more if it had just been a straight forward, 2 and a half hour psychological thriller (film). But instead it's like watching a film and then pushing button prompts and waggling analog sticks to progress, which is just annoying. (I won't talk about all the plot holes either as that's irrelevant to this).

Another trap games fall into is that they think to have a good story they need half an hour long cut-scenes. I mean I love the MGS games but come on, those cut-scenes are ridiculous (mainly because it takes so long to explain the overly-convoluted plot).

I think a game can still have an engrossing story without having to take the player out of the game, I think Shadow of the Colossus is a particularly good example of this. Yes, it does have a few cut-scenes but it's basically *spoiler alert* at the start: Your girl is dead, kill the big bad stone guys to bring her back to life. At the end: You were being used all along, now doesn't what you've done make you feel bad? And it really does. AND it wouldn't work as a film, because a film that is basically a guy riding around for hours and killing giants in between would be terrible, but as a game it works so well. 

...Hopefully I've understood your question correctly. 

[Xion]

I guess I'm in a minority in thinking that a story premise doesn't necessarily have to suggest an ideal medium for its execution, but I think Evan's point about developing the story and the game together is an important one. For the examples you've given - final fantasy, shadow of the colossus, the metal gear games, red dead redemption - It seems to me like they were all developed with different levels of connectivity between the story and game.

Of course SotC as it is would make for a poor movie, but if they had developed it to be a movie from the start - evolving the scenes and dialogue and shots side by side from the same starting premise - maybe it would've made a good movie that people would say could never translate into a videogame.

Similarly, if a story is developed hand in hand with the game and all that being a game entails, why shouldn't a game about a family dealing with the sudden diagnosis of their eldest daughter with tuberculosis make a good a game?

I think the difference is between using the story as an excuse for your actions in the game, or letting your actions become the story to the fullest extent that they can - not necessarily to the exclusion of cutscenes, but to the point where your actions in gameplay are as relevant as they would be in any amount of cutscenes or dialogue, rather than gameplay just being an excuse to go from story point to story point. Of course this might be easier to do for some stories than others, but I don't think it necessarily means that those stories are unsuited for games, just that they need to be developed together with all the considerations necessary to make it a cohesive experience.

Would this story work without being a game?  Would it work without these mechanics?  Would these mechanics work for a different kind of story?  Would they work for a different story?

while interesting questions and probably worth asking, I don't see why they should have any bearing on your decision to make this particular story into this particular game. Say the answer is yes to all questions, does that necessarily mean that this story would be better in another medium, or this game would be better with another story?

[Evan Balster]

Xion:

With some effort, I imagine a given premise could be made to work with any medium.  But there's a distinction between a premise and a story.  To use an accessible example, the plot summary of Harry Potter is a premise which applies to both the film and the book, but the story differs quite a lot between the two.  There are a lot of scenes and details in the book which are unsuited to film and vice versa.

I ask those questions to make sure the story which I'm developing from my original premise -- lifted from a piece of writing -- is achieving a deep cohesiveness with my game mechanics.  If I could take the scenes of the game and place them into a film with the same effect, I'm not achieving intimacy with the medium.  If I fail at that, then why am I even making games?

To be sure, even if I do my work correctly it might be possible that the story could be adapted to another medium.  My metric is that no other form should do it justice -- that any such adaptation would necessarily tell a different story.

[antoniodamala]

With some effort, I imagine a given premise could be made to work with any medium. 

Agreed, totally. You just gotta now what each mediums has to offer. Like why some fight scene  may look cool on a movie, but may not work on a comic nor a game and so on.

And you do seem to know these stuff, but i gotta warn you: beware To The Moon or Dear Esther; Amazing stories but bullshit games.

I think a game can still have an engrossing story without having to take the player out of the game, I think Shadow of the Colossus is a particularly good example of this. Yes, it does have a few cut-scenes but it's basically *spoiler alert* at the start: Your girl is dead, kill the big bad stone guys to bring her back to life. At the end: You were being used all along, now doesn't what you've done make you feel bad? And it really does. AND it wouldn't work as a film, because a film that is basically a guy riding around for hours and killing giants in between would be terrible, but as a game it works so well.

I haven't played SotC but from what i've heard so far, it could actually work very well on a movie, and with the right cuts it could at least be an arthouse movie.

[Evan Balster]

I enjoyed To The Moon a lot.  My analysis: it uses gameplay as a vehicle for the story and a pace-regulator, but the story doesn't necessarily factor deeply into gameplay.  (That is, it doesn't affect gameplay to the extent where the logic and interestingness of the narrative are reflected in the interactions.)  With the story removed, it would be an awful game.  With the game removed, it would be perhaps a slightly less interesting story..?

It isn't a reinvention of narrative gaming, but it did feel like a little step forward to me.  Perhaps that's only because of the scoring and writing, though.


Oh and that slider puzzle was totally forgettable bullshit.  <_<

[Evan Balster]

Thought experiment:  Split brain test

Hypothetically, one half of your brain is only cognizant of gameplay details, and the other is only cognizant of storytelling details.

The amount of communication which is necessary for each of these to fully understand their subject is a measure of the intimacy of gameplay and storytelling.

Class D:  If each can be understood in isolation, without the help of the other, the game lacks ludonarrative cohesiveness entirely.  Gameplay and story reside in different spaces.

Class C:  If ignorance of the narrative severely impairs gameplay, but not vice versa, the gameplay is informed by the story but irrelevant to it.

Class B:  If ignorance of the gameplay impairs understanding of the story, but not vice versa, the story is communicated through gameplay but irrelevant to it.

Class A:  If both narrative and gameplay can only be understood in the context of the other, they are cohesive.  The deeper their codependence, the more intimate they are.


The lines between these categories are a little fuzzy, since a judgment call must be made about what constitutes a meaningful amount of communication from one side to the other.  Does a character telling the protagonist where the Wise Old Sage lives constitute gameplay being informed by story?  Does walking to his house constitute a story communicated through gameplay?  Or are these bars set higher?  Perhaps my attempt at categorization is futile.

But it seems to me the elevation of these concepts is the progressive merging of the logic of gameplay and narrative, to the point where they become effectively indistinguishable.  Which is to say a system where acting in-character is both the ideal means of experiencing the story and the most obvious way of playing the game.