8 ms·

Check out some of the critiques for games like No Mans Sky. The short of it is that procedural “story” doesnt really work. You still need writers for engaging c

Check out some of the critiques for games like No Mans Sky. The short of it is that procedural “story” doesnt really work. You still need writers for engaging content, and that doesnt scale. If you remove written story you get something closer to a tower defense/tactics/arena shooter/grinding genre, which is “fine” but substantially different than most open worlds people envision.

setr 8y ago
See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations, if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — the story (and singleplayer mode in general) is wholly unimportant; players will continue to have, and create, stories, despite the multiplayer modes offering little more than a setting. Interaction between each other becomes the story you tell. No man’s sky (NMS) was simply a bad game, and poorly implemented procedural generation (procedurally generated games are appealing in that you’re exploring the system/simulation, and trying to get a handle on it. No man’s sky had a lot of “elements” to its generation, but its system was very basic; it didn’t take long to mostly understand it, and it was sufficiently complex to allow interesting new phenomena to emerge). NMS’s failure says very little about what procedural generation can offer, because it didn’t make a very good attempt at it. Spore is another example of a failed attempt. Borderlands is another, to a degree. None of these games understood that it’s the system thats interesting, not the combinatorial explosion. Thus their procedural generation is totally unsatisfying, and uninteresting.
- learc83 8y ago
  Dwarf Fortress is a different kind of game from No Man's Sky or The Witcher 3. It has a huge learning curve and takes a lot of effort to play. For every amazing story that people crafted there are hundreds, maybe thousands of failed game attempts. That's fine and purely procedurally generated games can be amazing (I'm working on one myself), but they are a different type of game play, and often attract a different kind of player. Not everyone wants to be a musician, some people just want to play rock band. For open world exploration games in particular, in every single example I've seen, mixing in hand crafted world building with systemic game mechanics always provides a better experience.
  - mjfl 8y ago
    I don't think the difference for Dwarf Fortress is the learning curve, I think the difference is that Dwarf Fortress is better designed and it is designed in such a way that it's goal is to produce "stories" that Tarn and Zach have explicitly written. I think for No Man's Sky, they had a much more vague idea of what they wanted the user to experience, and thus the experience is more vague, and less interesting.
    - learc83 8y ago
      That's a good point. That is a big difference with Dwarf Fortress. It's definitely a masterpiece of game design. To donavanm's point that you need writers to create engaging content, as you've pointed out Dwarf Fortress has writers--they're just operating on a different level. But I still think the learning curve is a big part of it. Just look at how many "Get started with Dwarf Fortress" tutorials are out there.
      - setr 8y ago
        I'm pretty sure the learning curve is more a result of DF's total lack of interest in reducing the learning curve, than any kind of necessary function of it. Obviously the complexity of the game leads to complexity of the interaction, but 10% of DF's learning curve is its nonsensical UI, probably another 30% is the fact that it has no tutorial or manual of its own, 20% is all the additional tooling surrounding it, which should be but isn't native to the game. And if my percentage allocation means anything, then only 40% of the game's current learning curve is essential (that is, unavoidable given the game's complexity). I'm also not sure its fair to consider DF's writing as similar to donavanm's -- they're not operating at a different level so much as a totally different task. donavanm's writer as I understand it is trying to lead the player through a story, whereas DF's trying to produce a story through the player. The former produces an overarching theme, plot, characters, etc. The latter produces pieces that could fit in a story (or stories), and hope it will occur as an emergent phenomena of play. It's like writing a protocol versus using one; you could say both are doing software engineering, but they're very, very different kinds of software engineering, and require totally different thinking. Notably, story-component-writing probably also scales pretty well (the engine develops it out), while story-writing does not. Which of course is true of procedural games in general. You get the engine and the pieces right, and you've got exponentially many scenarios to explore (the problem is that, if you do it wrong, you have exponentially many scenarios that you don't want/care to explore ~~ No Man's Sky)
- revscat 8y ago
  To be fair, No Man’s Sky has apparently seen some significant improvements. I don’t myself play it, but my kids have reported as much.
- donavanm 8y ago
  As the sibling said Most people dont see dwarf fortress as the same “open world explore & build” genre. And the arena style FPS was called out explicitely as an interesting, but different, type of game. “No story” doesnt mean no fun. But when people say “I want to go and build and explore” they usually, unintentionally, miss the draw of a well done story component. There are plenty of interviewers with producers of games like warcraft, witcher, or skyrim who explicitly call out the limitations/benefits of a written story system in an “open world.”
  - setr 8y ago
    I think the issue is that you’re thinking of open world rpgs, which have trended towards very heavy-handed story telling. Mostly because they derive from dnd 3+. But you also have dnd/adnd to derive from, which put much less effort into story telling, and more into setting/emergent stories. Roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, etc offer very, very thin stories wrapping the gameplay (dcss for example boils down to: you want to steal the orb of zot, and its on the 15th floor of this dungeon). Minecraft also gained most of its popularity before it too added a very thin story on top. But the main thing to realize is that most games don’t have very compelling or interesting stories; at most approaching a marvel film. Yet the succeed regardless. And even warcraft (I’m assuming WoW), I’d bet good money that 90% of its players don’t have any idea what the plot is, except at the most superficial level. I think its mostly that the open world genre happened to really only have RPG’s currently available and well funded (I cant even think of any major ones atm beyond bethesda, witcher and bioshock); but there are plenty of games that put zero to little efforts into any kind of story, that it’s not at all obvious to me that its required in open world games. I’d like to see some of these interviews you’re referencing, if you have links handy.
    - patient_zero 8y ago
      Indeed, as a once-heavy Warcraft and WoW player I can confirm that Blizzards story writing is to be actively ignored, even mocked. Great games, terrible writing.
- pdpi 8y ago
  > I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. I’d offer Braid and Bioshock as clear counter examples, where a significant part of the emotional punch of the storytelling comes from the interaction. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons too. Much like “build your own story” as a genre can’t be judged from the failings of NMS, it’s just as true that games as a conventional storytelling medium as a whole shouldn’t be judged based on the “make it cinematic” approach that a lot of studios aim for.

setr 8y ago

See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations, if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — the story (and singleplayer mode in general) is wholly unimportant; players will continue to have, and create, stories, despite the multiplayer modes offering little more than a setting. Interaction between each other becomes the story you tell. No man’s sky (NMS) was simply a bad game, and poorly implemented procedural generation (procedurally generated games are appealing in that you’re exploring the system/simulation, and trying to get a handle on it. No man’s sky had a lot of “elements” to its generation, but its system was very basic; it didn’t take long to mostly understand it, and it was sufficiently complex to allow interesting new phenomena to emerge). NMS’s failure says very little about what procedural generation can offer, because it didn’t make a very good attempt at it. Spore is another example of a failed attempt. Borderlands is another, to a degree. None of these games understood that it’s the system thats interesting, not the combinatorial explosion. Thus their procedural generation is totally unsatisfying, and uninteresting.

learc83 8y ago
Dwarf Fortress is a different kind of game from No Man's Sky or The Witcher 3. It has a huge learning curve and takes a lot of effort to play. For every amazing story that people crafted there are hundreds, maybe thousands of failed game attempts. That's fine and purely procedurally generated games can be amazing (I'm working on one myself), but they are a different type of game play, and often attract a different kind of player. Not everyone wants to be a musician, some people just want to play rock band. For open world exploration games in particular, in every single example I've seen, mixing in hand crafted world building with systemic game mechanics always provides a better experience.
- mjfl 8y ago
  I don't think the difference for Dwarf Fortress is the learning curve, I think the difference is that Dwarf Fortress is better designed and it is designed in such a way that it's goal is to produce "stories" that Tarn and Zach have explicitly written. I think for No Man's Sky, they had a much more vague idea of what they wanted the user to experience, and thus the experience is more vague, and less interesting.
  - learc83 8y ago
    That's a good point. That is a big difference with Dwarf Fortress. It's definitely a masterpiece of game design. To donavanm's point that you need writers to create engaging content, as you've pointed out Dwarf Fortress has writers--they're just operating on a different level. But I still think the learning curve is a big part of it. Just look at how many "Get started with Dwarf Fortress" tutorials are out there.
    - setr 8y ago
      I'm pretty sure the learning curve is more a result of DF's total lack of interest in reducing the learning curve, than any kind of necessary function of it. Obviously the complexity of the game leads to complexity of the interaction, but 10% of DF's learning curve is its nonsensical UI, probably another 30% is the fact that it has no tutorial or manual of its own, 20% is all the additional tooling surrounding it, which should be but isn't native to the game. And if my percentage allocation means anything, then only 40% of the game's current learning curve is essential (that is, unavoidable given the game's complexity). I'm also not sure its fair to consider DF's writing as similar to donavanm's -- they're not operating at a different level so much as a totally different task. donavanm's writer as I understand it is trying to lead the player through a story, whereas DF's trying to produce a story through the player. The former produces an overarching theme, plot, characters, etc. The latter produces pieces that could fit in a story (or stories), and hope it will occur as an emergent phenomena of play. It's like writing a protocol versus using one; you could say both are doing software engineering, but they're very, very different kinds of software engineering, and require totally different thinking. Notably, story-component-writing probably also scales pretty well (the engine develops it out), while story-writing does not. Which of course is true of procedural games in general. You get the engine and the pieces right, and you've got exponentially many scenarios to explore (the problem is that, if you do it wrong, you have exponentially many scenarios that you don't want/care to explore ~~ No Man's Sky)
revscat 8y ago
To be fair, No Man’s Sky has apparently seen some significant improvements. I don’t myself play it, but my kids have reported as much.
donavanm 8y ago
As the sibling said Most people dont see dwarf fortress as the same “open world explore & build” genre. And the arena style FPS was called out explicitely as an interesting, but different, type of game. “No story” doesnt mean no fun. But when people say “I want to go and build and explore” they usually, unintentionally, miss the draw of a well done story component. There are plenty of interviewers with producers of games like warcraft, witcher, or skyrim who explicitly call out the limitations/benefits of a written story system in an “open world.”
- setr 8y ago
  I think the issue is that you’re thinking of open world rpgs, which have trended towards very heavy-handed story telling. Mostly because they derive from dnd 3+. But you also have dnd/adnd to derive from, which put much less effort into story telling, and more into setting/emergent stories. Roguelikes, dungeon crawlers, etc offer very, very thin stories wrapping the gameplay (dcss for example boils down to: you want to steal the orb of zot, and its on the 15th floor of this dungeon). Minecraft also gained most of its popularity before it too added a very thin story on top. But the main thing to realize is that most games don’t have very compelling or interesting stories; at most approaching a marvel film. Yet the succeed regardless. And even warcraft (I’m assuming WoW), I’d bet good money that 90% of its players don’t have any idea what the plot is, except at the most superficial level. I think its mostly that the open world genre happened to really only have RPG’s currently available and well funded (I cant even think of any major ones atm beyond bethesda, witcher and bioshock); but there are plenty of games that put zero to little efforts into any kind of story, that it’s not at all obvious to me that its required in open world games. I’d like to see some of these interviews you’re referencing, if you have links handy.
  - patient_zero 8y ago
    Indeed, as a once-heavy Warcraft and WoW player I can confirm that Blizzards story writing is to be actively ignored, even mocked. Great games, terrible writing.
pdpi 8y ago
> I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. I’d offer Braid and Bioshock as clear counter examples, where a significant part of the emotional punch of the storytelling comes from the interaction. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons too. Much like “build your own story” as a genre can’t be judged from the failings of NMS, it’s just as true that games as a conventional storytelling medium as a whole shouldn’t be judged based on the “make it cinematic” approach that a lot of studios aim for.