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There is a fun to be had with games divorced almost entirely from any storytelling though. For example various abstract strategy games I play like rule the wave

There is a fun to be had with games divorced almost entirely from any storytelling though. For example various abstract strategy games I play like rule the waves, or games like rocket league. The fun there is not largely enhanced by the fantasy of it, I think. The mechanics themselves are the challenge, and overcoming them and creating things using them is the fun, something that is more abstract with books (you'd have to go to fanfic or fanart etc) I do appreciate though that this is written for a prospective author thinking of making the leap to writing for video games. They'd probably be interested more in the creation of narrative games. But maybe its worth considering how what I mentioned before can contribute to a narrative. An example that comes to mind is how in some simple games, items have a description that has some lore or a little joke. It reinforces the already existing player desire to explore and discover items, and makes it fun to see what each new one says. The key point here is that the descriptions don't even have to be good for this to work

bee_rider 3y ago
I haven’t really enjoyed the actual plot of very many video games at all. When I have tried to watch cutscenes and dialog, it has typically been pretty shallow stuff. In my head, the plot of the game is the imagined story of my guy. The cutscenes and whatnot, that’s just somebody else’s fanfic about my guy, a much better character that exists in my head. Environmental storytelling can be pretty good, though. The FromSoft games did a great job of setting up environments that evoke the feeling of a type of world, you fill in the blanks, despite having basically incoherent actual plots.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  I concur, I'm not sure I could even tell you the plot of many of the games I've played, even solid crpgs ostensibly based on plot like the bioware games. They had great stories everyone agrees, but I mostly was just playing for the meta game. But item descriptions and dialog, good writing there can totally make or break a game for me. A whole coherent story is second to the texture of the world that interactions create.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    KOTOR 2, a buddy comedy about an assassin drone and his sidekick (an overwhelming psychic monster called the exile) has all these scenes where meatbags try to threaten our protagonists or tell them to do things. And, completely uncharacteristically, these meatbags are for some reason allowed to get a whole sentence out before being blasted. It is unrealistic writing, but the game is fun.
falcolas 3y ago
I love stories, and I love games which tell good stories. More specifically, I prefer good stories over gameplay. Most games which focus only on deep gameplay mechanics rarely stick to me. I'll play them until I'm competent, and then I lose interest without something else to keep me attached to them. Honestly, if you took my favorite games and stripped them of their stories, they would be mediocre games at best. Yet they tell stories which I can not find in any book. FFXIV: A MMO with sub-par position-based combat (compared to WoW and other MMOs) which has made me cry a few times, which makes me crave the next installment in the story. I've never found a villain redemption arc to compete with some of those found in this game. Mass Effect Trilogy: A pretty boring ability shooter whose difficulty lies in bullet sponges. The story it weaves for a surprisingly immense cast of characters is astonishing. Neir Automata/Reincarnation: A pretty standard Platinum spectacle fighting game, with a branching story system which will outright fuck with your mind. The story is ridiculously deep and convoluted, with absurd characters you'll love even as they're ripped from you. Anyways, all that to say that I can understand why people would prefer mechanics over story, but I'm definitely not one of them. :)
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  Hey thats totally fair, like I think I said, there is a split amongst gamers. As another point of data people may find interesting, I dont really watch movies or tv shows or whatever. I dont think I find fiction that compelling? I much prefer being creative myself. Is that common among strategy gamers etc? I don't know?
- LegibleCrimson 3y ago
  My conclusion is that different people take different things from games, so the idea of making a "perfect" game or even an "ideal" game is nonsense. It's the same premise as "There's no such thing as an average pilot"[0]. So, how do you make a game that's just "good"? Not "good for some players", but just "good"? Logically, the only way to do this is to make the game customizable and configurable, so that every player can choose to make the game their own perfect game. This isn't possible, so the next best thing is to make a game that is perfect for some people, and the ideal is to have a wide variety of different kinds of games. I'll also note that having every game configurable would be a downfall as well. A big part of connecting to other people over a game is knowing that you played the same game. If everybody tweaks every game to their liking (or in some future we just use AI to generate our perfect games), then we lose the ability to connect meaningfully to one another over shared experiences. So love what you love about games. Don't let anybody tell you that you're wrong, as long as you accept that what you love about games is wrong for very many other people as well. Personally, I love a good story, but it's entirely secondary to gameplay for me. If a game is mediocre with a good story, I simply can not play it. I'd rather read a good book, because I've never played a game with a story as good as most books, movies, or even TV shows that I've enjoyed. If I'm ranking quality of story out of all stories I've experienced, the top video game probably comes quite far down on the list, beyond 30 or 40 books, movies, and shows. [0]: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages/article_e3231734-e5da-5bf5-9496-a34e52d60bd9.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-disc...
frantufro 3y ago
You are absolutely right, and also understood that my goal is to help writers create interactive stories. Of course games are way more than that, and storytelling is not limited to full stories. World building, character design and even the “metaphors” we use in game mechanics ARE types of storytelling and benefit from narrative design. Thanks for pointing this out, it might be helpful for other people that are not necessarily writers trying to create interactive stories.

bee_rider 3y ago

I haven’t really enjoyed the actual plot of very many video games at all. When I have tried to watch cutscenes and dialog, it has typically been pretty shallow stuff. In my head, the plot of the game is the imagined story of my guy. The cutscenes and whatnot, that’s just somebody else’s fanfic about my guy, a much better character that exists in my head. Environmental storytelling can be pretty good, though. The FromSoft games did a great job of setting up environments that evoke the feeling of a type of world, you fill in the blanks, despite having basically incoherent actual plots.

galangalalgol 3y ago
I concur, I'm not sure I could even tell you the plot of many of the games I've played, even solid crpgs ostensibly based on plot like the bioware games. They had great stories everyone agrees, but I mostly was just playing for the meta game. But item descriptions and dialog, good writing there can totally make or break a game for me. A whole coherent story is second to the texture of the world that interactions create.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  KOTOR 2, a buddy comedy about an assassin drone and his sidekick (an overwhelming psychic monster called the exile) has all these scenes where meatbags try to threaten our protagonists or tell them to do things. And, completely uncharacteristically, these meatbags are for some reason allowed to get a whole sentence out before being blasted. It is unrealistic writing, but the game is fun.

falcolas 3y ago

I love stories, and I love games which tell good stories. More specifically, I prefer good stories over gameplay. Most games which focus only on deep gameplay mechanics rarely stick to me. I'll play them until I'm competent, and then I lose interest without something else to keep me attached to them. Honestly, if you took my favorite games and stripped them of their stories, they would be mediocre games at best. Yet they tell stories which I can not find in any book. FFXIV: A MMO with sub-par position-based combat (compared to WoW and other MMOs) which has made me cry a few times, which makes me crave the next installment in the story. I've never found a villain redemption arc to compete with some of those found in this game. Mass Effect Trilogy: A pretty boring ability shooter whose difficulty lies in bullet sponges. The story it weaves for a surprisingly immense cast of characters is astonishing. Neir Automata/Reincarnation: A pretty standard Platinum spectacle fighting game, with a branching story system which will outright fuck with your mind. The story is ridiculously deep and convoluted, with absurd characters you'll love even as they're ripped from you. Anyways, all that to say that I can understand why people would prefer mechanics over story, but I'm definitely not one of them. :)

RugnirViking 3y ago
Hey thats totally fair, like I think I said, there is a split amongst gamers. As another point of data people may find interesting, I dont really watch movies or tv shows or whatever. I dont think I find fiction that compelling? I much prefer being creative myself. Is that common among strategy gamers etc? I don't know?
LegibleCrimson 3y ago
My conclusion is that different people take different things from games, so the idea of making a "perfect" game or even an "ideal" game is nonsense. It's the same premise as "There's no such thing as an average pilot"[0]. So, how do you make a game that's just "good"? Not "good for some players", but just "good"? Logically, the only way to do this is to make the game customizable and configurable, so that every player can choose to make the game their own perfect game. This isn't possible, so the next best thing is to make a game that is perfect for some people, and the ideal is to have a wide variety of different kinds of games. I'll also note that having every game configurable would be a downfall as well. A big part of connecting to other people over a game is knowing that you played the same game. If everybody tweaks every game to their liking (or in some future we just use AI to generate our perfect games), then we lose the ability to connect meaningfully to one another over shared experiences. So love what you love about games. Don't let anybody tell you that you're wrong, as long as you accept that what you love about games is wrong for very many other people as well. Personally, I love a good story, but it's entirely secondary to gameplay for me. If a game is mediocre with a good story, I simply can not play it. I'd rather read a good book, because I've never played a game with a story as good as most books, movies, or even TV shows that I've enjoyed. If I'm ranking quality of story out of all stories I've experienced, the top video game probably comes quite far down on the list, beyond 30 or 40 books, movies, and shows. [0]: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages/article_e3231734-e5da-5bf5-9496-a34e52d60bd9.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-disc...

frantufro 3y ago

You are absolutely right, and also understood that my goal is to help writers create interactive stories. Of course games are way more than that, and storytelling is not limited to full stories. World building, character design and even the “metaphors” we use in game mechanics ARE types of storytelling and benefit from narrative design. Thanks for pointing this out, it might be helpful for other people that are not necessarily writers trying to create interactive stories.