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Books are entertaining. Books in visual form are entertaining. Interactive books can be entertaining too, and that's what narrative games purport to be. The tr
by dleslie 8y ago
Books 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.