Video Game Storytelling - How Much "Game" Do You Need?

I think videogames need a wide spectrum. I think videogames can afford this wide spectrum of gameplay and story.

Angry Birds has a minimal story, but it is very succesful. Take it a notch below on story, and you got things like Tetris, Bejeweled, or Candy Crush. Take it a step above in storytelling (just a bit) and you got stuff like Plants vs Zombies, etc. These are, or can be, very succesfully commercial games.

Personally, sometimes I just need that. Grab an easily accesible game. Throw birds at pigs because reasons or just pretend I am dancing or playing a guitar, with little to no explanation. This is fine. And this is a Videogame, in all its definition, despite its poor, or absolute lack of Storytelling.

Sometimes you want to get more involved. Sometimes you want to reach out to make a point, be teased intellectually and challenged interactively. You want to storm a castle, and have a reason to do so, want to set up a magnificent tower defense, knowing it is the right thing, want to build an army and overtake your enemies knowing they are the good guys and you are bad. Just to take part in it. To feel more involved.

Sometimes despite stomping goombas and avoiding canonfire, you wish to be able to Braid an intricate story from every action, know why you are doing it. I found myself thrilled when I grasped the oh so various meanings behind the Bastion that was being built. It was emotionally engaging to be forced into the awful situation of Papers, Please.

In short, I think that Videogames can be used to tell a simple story with minimal interaction (compared to other videogames) a la Heavy Rain, tell little to no story with all gameplay interaction, like Angry Birds, Just Dance, Poker Night at the Inventory, or Guitar Hero, or bedazzle us with intricate philosophical ponderings that can easily be a mockery or jocose take on our ways of thinking (Say, The Stanley Parable, Bioshock) much akin to Voltaire´s Modest proposal in its time (and there are other examples of political treatises) or a Serious Business take on strong emotions (Dear Esther, Slender, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout New Vegas Addon: Old World Blues).

I think cutscenes are just tools. Not necesary. Powerful when used correctly. Sometimes misused, or abused, sometimes missing.

In general, I think the Industry has space for all these and more kind of games and the differnt levels of Storytelling within it. From little, to no interaction, and personally, I am fine with all of them. I think Videogames can teach us, entertain us, and amuse us. It is not just a narrative platform but an exponential one of ideas, and values, and amusement and Aesops, even.

Like books or movies, videogames are a lot more than to easily be restricted in what they can, and cannot use, and can, and cannot talk about. I would say that there is more than enough space for all of these to coexist, and will all still be Videogames.

...Did I answer anything, or did I just ramble like an idiotic madman?

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

I would sy SH 4 had a better story than 3 although 2 is really the only SH game I'd hold up as a true example of video game story brilliance.

@onyhow: I'll confess that I don't follow many of the AAA developers these days—for a few reasons, I tend, with a few exceptions, to give more attention to games produced by medium-scale or indie teams.

Indeed, even if all AAA developers are indeed pursuing cinematic games, there's always the medium-scale and indie sectors to look to. Perhaps there you'll find more games that are to your liking, and if a significant proportion of gamers move away from playing cinematic games then the big developers may take notice and shift their focus.

(For example of such an indie game—if you don't mind an old-fashioned JRPG-ish look—consider Always Sometimes Monsters. It's also perhaps notable for not having a fantasy or sci-fi setting.)

As to frame-rates, the following is somewhat uninformed and speculative, but I gather that this is primarily an issue on consoles, which suggests to me that it's more a matter of either squeezing power from the device or attempting to normalise the frame-rate, locking it to a value that the developer can be confident of holding without sudden drops. I'm not defending such frame-rates, just noting that the issue seems to be connected to the platform, rather than the game-type.

My Games & Writing

I'm good with To the Moon, which is basically a step above a Visual Novel in terms of gameplay.

Me and my friend's collaborative webcomic: Forged Men

To respond to two questions that I didn't answer previously:

... What about them? I'm afraid that I'm not sure of what you're asking—would you please elaborate? ^^;

Hum... Presuming that I'm using the term "visual novel" correctly (to include both works that include player choice and those that don't, as in KineticNovels), then I think that I'd only exclude Kinetic Novels.

edited 30th May '14 5:12:59 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

My Games & Writing

Who's saying anything about quality? I just want enough "game" to feel like I'm playing a video game, because that's what I'm playing. Unless that Gamestop I thought I walked into was a local DVD store.

There are two types:

1. Scenes where the player character(s) are not in the scene at all (essentially, any Meanwhile Scene)
2. Scenes when they Player Character is Not as You Know Them. The best example would be a scene set in the character's past where they don't have all of their skills yet (though even then you can still move and talk), though scenes where the PC is Mind Controled would also be counted here.

In either case, I'm not sure of how that affects what we're discussing here: one can have gameplay segments the use a character other than the protagonist, so why would a cutscene be any more or less acceptable for not featuring the protagonist, or showing them acting against than their main characterisation?

With regards to (2), I'm not sure that that's what Not as You Know Them refers to—looking at the trope page, that appears to be about adding a new protagonist, and making way for doing so by altering the character of the previous protagonist. On the other hand, if I understand you correctly, you seem to be talking about another trope (or set of tropes). (I'm not sure of what the trope name might be, presuming that there is an umbrella trope for all instances in which a character is shown to be different under some circumstance.)

edited 30th May '14 8:40:04 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

My Games & Writing

So there's something I want to say real quick and I figured I'd just post it here.

So as a fan of video game stories, I've had to deal with a lot of shit. Over the years, over the many forums I post on, the same tired insult gets repeated over ad over.

"You liked [Insert Game]'s story? What, have you never read any good books?"

No, I guess I haven't. I love MGS 2's plot therefore I never read To Kill a Mockingbird or The Scarlet Letter or any of that. I never read anything except the instructions on my 30 cent Ramen packs and hell, I couldn't even read those because I'm probably just illiterate. That is the ONLY way I can think Metal Gear Solid 2 had a good story.

It gets even funnier when you take into account different genres too. Like, I enjoyed the plot of System Shock 2. But what if I did read a good book? What if i read The Odyssey? Does that mean I can't enjoy my science fiction horror story?

The obvious intent of these detractors is to portray anyone who think video games have great writing as uncultured simpletons who spend all their time living in their own filth and watching Jerry Springer. God forbid I think Xenosaga is interesting even though I've read some "good books." Only unwashed plebs enjoy video game writing.

edited 4th Jun '14 2:39:24 PM by Nikkolas