4 ms·

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 m

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...
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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...

deleted 3y ago
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