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It's a narrative game at that. They're incredibly niche even when they're not VR games.
by dleslie 8y ago
It's a narrative game at that. They're incredibly niche even when they're not VR games.
- hesdeadjim 8y agoThis x 100. There have been enough Steam data leaks to calculate that as a genre narrative games are extremely niche compared to the wider market. Then combine that with a VR market of 1% of gamers and good luck making any money at all.
- rwallace 8y agoI was about to express surprise at this, but then it occurs to me: are you using 'narrative game' in a different sense, to mean specifically a game where there is a voiced narration, like The Stanley Parable or Oxenfree?
- dleslie 8y agoThat would be a narrated game. ;) Narrative games are an old genre with its roots in text adventures that focuses on telling a story almost to the exclusion of other gameplay elements. If they do include other elements it will most likely come in the form of an environment puzzle, I find.
- rwallace 8y agoAh, so you are using 'narrative game' as I would use 'adventure game': one where the gameplay content is puzzles rather than combat or strategy? Okay, then I agree, that is quite niche these days.
- freeflight 8y agoNo offense, but "it's a narrative game" seems to have become the new excuse for games that lack any interesting gameplay or actual content and thus have to play up the "artistic angle" by pretending to tell some amazing story. Looking at the Steam page for this its genre is listed as a clicker, a review points out there's literally no progression for the clicker gameplay part, that's a bad clicker right there because those are usually all about the progression. You can't make an oversight like that up with narrative, if the gameplay is driving away the player then you can have the most amazing narrative in the world, most people still won't experience it because they won't get past the bad gameplay.
- dleslie 8y agoBooks are entertaining. Books in visual form are entertaining. Interactive books can be entertaining too, and that's what narrative games purport to be. The tricky part is that they must make up for the absence of other game mechanics. Myst, in a sense, is a narrative game with puzzles. Strip the puzzles away and it wouldn't be so hot. It's a risk to reduce a game to its story, as that story must hold on its own.
- freeflight 8y agoBut books are not dragged down by bad gameplay mechanics, the closest equivalent to that would be printing a book on stinging nettle. Sure, there could be a really amazing story inside that book, but who wants to go through the pain of constantly being stung to read it? The point here not being that "narrative games are bad by nature" but rather that a lot of them sabotage themselves by using the "narrative game" excuse to keep off-putting/shallow gameplay mechanics in the game and then expect the players to "soldier through them" for the supposedly amazing narrative that's waiting along that way.
- dleslie 8y agoWhat you described is just symptoms of bad design.
- plussed_reader 8y agoI disagree about the book mechanics dragging down ‘gameplay’. I can reread Tolkien ad nauseaum, but I still can’t get more than a quarter through any George Martin book.
- fossuser 8y agoThere are a lot of great narrative games: - Firewatch - Life is Strange - Tacoma - Gone Home - Oxenfree - What Remains of Edith Finch It's probably my favorite indie genre and when done well it's a lot different than anything else out there.
- 8y ago