Someone at work forwarded around this article/manifesto about how “Great story is the Holy Grail of gaming”. I read it, and replied that I found every single paragraph had at least one stupid claim or ridiculous statement in it, and that overall the manifesto was basically a load of ****.
It was a Monday morning, maybe I overreacted. Maybe not. Anyway, someone asked me to explain more specifically what I was objecting to, so I write a quick analysis of the first three paragraphs. I was going to go through the whole first page, but realised that even after just one sub-section, it was clear the rest of the thing isn’t even worth reading (I did read the rest of it first time around, of coure). I thought it might be good to post here, mainly because I object to people spouting crap about game design. There’s also a blog post where you can comment about the article. This is all in my own humble opinion, of course, I expect you have your own opinion…
First section – “The Glorious Cause”
“Great story is the Holy Grail of gaming” – no, this is not and never has been the Holy Grail. If anything, “fun”, and especially “how to make things more fun”, is the Holy Grail.
“Story … separates the game world from the other narrative arts.” – IME, there are many many books and films that have story that would be bested by some of the weakest of games. Rather, it is “interactivity” that separates the game world from the other arts. This is possibly the single most important thing to understand about games compared to other narratives.
” it could very well be said there are only seven types of games.” – FPS, RTS, Monty-Haul RPG, SHMUP, platformer, puzzler, immersive world, adventure, battler/dueler, collectibles, world-sim, god-game, rhythm, … I have gone way over seven already, and each of those is clearly (I hope) separate. I can go to about 15 more I think, without trying too hard. In my own experience as a gamer, having played thousands of different games, I’d say that new genres are still appearing every couple of years with a satisfying regularity. I haven’t noticed a slowdown. I get the impression I play (and have played) a LOT more games than the author of that article.
” it’s clear the glory days of inventing entirely new genres are fading away” – please go visit http://kongregate.com, click on “badges”, and try playing the five most recently-added games. Ten times that many are added to the site every few days, so that’s only a tiny tiny sample, and yet among those 5 you are likely to see a kind of game you’ve never seen before.
” As the industry moves forward, great story will be the single unifying trait that will separate the good games from the great ones.” – no, the only unifying trait will be “fun”, and in reality the games industry is far too broad for there to truly be a “unifying trait” – we have to fallback to an extremely vague concept.
” the fantasy of integrating rich, complex stories with first-rate gameplay is now a reality.” – few people share this “fantasy” – indeed, it’s almost certainly going to cause an ugly mess of a product that is satisfying to almost no-one. Rich, complex stories capture the audience and forceably take them somewhere and make them experience something. First-rate gameplay is highly interactive and re-active, and usually allows each player to enjoy many unique experiences – even to create “stories” of their own. Whilst you *might* be able to create a game that has strong elements of both, it is very likely to be in a small niche where the two can come together, and the best you can achieve is almost certainly going to be less than the best you would achieve with a more pure “story” or more pure “game”.
That was all just in the first sub-section. I found the rest of the article to carry on in a similar vein, stuffed with naive claims and patently false statements, buiding them up to reach arbitrary conclusions.
Which is sad, because some of the final claims *can* be made on a basis of fact and understanding, instead of on the basis of … well, pretty much nothing … as they are in this article. IMHO there is value in merging good story with good gameplay, but it’s a heck of a lot harder and more complex than the author of that article would like to face up to.
4 replies on “Stupid article on “VideoGame Story Design””
Reading between the lines a bit, the author(s) of the manifesto are only interested in recognizing, discussing, or responding to AAA games in the “single-player shooter, action and role playing game” genres with “linear, plot-centric” design. Not only are those the only genres they’re interested in talking about, the developers of those games are the only intended audience – I’ve seen the opposite thing, but from inside the intended audience, when people talk about MMOs to an MMO-centric audience.
…and it all boils down to selling Iron Hearts, or at least the author(s) of the manifesto as “who you should hire for YOUR story-driven single-player game.”
The author of the article clearly hasn’t seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYnliHrcQyo
I particularly like the game with story “bricks falling from sky in soviet russia”. :D
Hello,
The author clearly advocates the niche market of its future game.
And also why the features that are not in his game are not important for gamers.
It’s about managing the hype effect !!!*
I personnaly don’t play much games with great story . I only do multiplayer games. And i see a lot of things that are more important to the game fun (gameplay) that the story behind …
Like choice balance, progress path and rewards, level of mastery… , logic….
For me a good game is always about making choice, difficult choice…
between weapons, between path, betwean factions , between placement etc…
“For me a good game is always about making choice” – IMHO, that’s a pretty good starting point if you want a simple description of games. It’s too simplistic for a lot of things, and there is a even a small niche of games for which this is not true, but nothing’s perfect :).