Not Every Game Needs a Story
Can you imagine if Tetris had a story to it? That’d be ridiculous! There doesn’t need to be a reason why blocks are falling from the sky and why it’s important to stack them into rows. Any kind of narrative would just be out of place, as it is in so many other puzzle games that attempt to give meaning to the experience. A recent example that comes to mind is Raskulls, whose cutscenes tried too hard to be funny and broke up what I was ultimately wanting to accomplish: to play a game and have fun.
Back in the NES days, a lot of games just plopped you right into the adventure and said, “You’re smart. You’ll figure out what’s going on.” Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda are all good examples of this, and they didn’t suffer any from not setting up the story beforehand or making you periodically sit through cutscenes. Of course, later additions to these franchises have since beefed up their stories considerably, but who, honestly, cares about the story in a Nintendo game?
Running through a platformer or gunning through a shooter are their own reward. I don’t need a story to justify my actions, because my actions (assuming that the game is good) are already fun. If I’m playing a game purely for the story, then I’m doing it wrong. I could spend two hours watching a movie or reading a book and get a much better story than I could by investing twenty hours into a game. I can’t think of a single game whose story was so good, it eclipsed everything I’ve seen from other mediums.
You could argue that, because video games are interactive, the story is more personalized. I don’t see it that way. Unless it is a very dynamic story with a lot of possible outcomes, all I’ve done is a bunch of busywork so the game can continue telling me the story it wants to tell. That doesn’t mean I don’t get attached to any of the characters along the way, though. Whenever I play a Final Fantasy game, I’m always sad to see someone leave my party. But it’s not the cutscenes that make me care about the people. If anything, Final Fantasy cutscenes make me hate them. It’s tweaking their skills and watching them kick ass in battle that forms this bond.
The thought of a story-less RPG is probably rather unappealing, though (unless you’re a fan of traditional Western RPGs, but then who is anymore?). While a solid battle system can compensate for a weak story, an RPG still needs a purpose. I’m not suggesting stories should be taken out of games completely, but there are definitely some genres that warrant them more than others. And it would be nice if game designers would stop wasting their efforts on putting in stories where they’re not needed, if they’d use that time to make the game more fun instead of trying to win an Oscar for best screenplay.
I just read an article from the GDC, it was a speech given to developers to step up the interactivity and purpose of the games to better immerse people into story. The speech was by the guy behind Heavy Rain. From that stand point I would have to say that I think that is a great idea. Heavy Rain is one of the most intense games I've ever played, but I think it should be stated, and was likely implied, that not all games can afford to be Heavy Rain. I mean it was great,but too draining to want to play through again any time soon. The thing that is coolest about Heavy Rain is the multiple outcomes and dynamic effect your choices have on the game.
I totally miss the days when you just dropped into things and just went for it. Super Metroid and Metroid Prime are my favorite example of games that just let you go at it. No real story, use your imagination to figure out what is going on. Good article.
I do think it's cool that games like Heavy Rain or any of the BioWare RPGs allow you to change what will happen, where your actions actually have consequences. That's true interactive storytelling. But I wouldn't want every game to follow suit, because not every game needs a rich, complicated story.
I think we can all agree that Mario games would be better off without the Bowser/Peach/Mario drama, am I right?
I didn't even game seriously until I played Prince of Persia: The sands of time (not to say I didn't play games before then). I was blown away by how much a game could feel like a story being told. I love to be immersed into my games that way.
Voice acting has had a big impact on storyline; bad voice acting or annoying characters can absolutely ruin, and actually has ruined, many games for a lot of people. Blue Dragon, anyone? But old-school Final Fantasy's such as FF6J/FF3US did not suffer from such problems and, in my opinion, were definitely bolstered by their stories.
If you want to check out a BioWare RPG that does story telling exactly right, check out Planescape: Torment on the PC. It's pretty old, and somehow slipped through the cracks, but remains one of the best games I have ever played. What makes it unique is how your character's stats and alignment affect the story and gameplay in VERY significant ways, to the extent that a character with high intelligence, wisdom, and charisma can go through the entire game and not fight more than a handful of battles, choosing instead to use dialog and wit as his weapons. I know that most RPGs promise fully interactive worlds where your actions have real consequences, but while even in titles like Fable and Morrowind this promise seems mostly empty, Planescape: Torment really delivers. And back to the original point of the article, this ties the story and gameplay together seamlessly, making one rely on the other and providing a feeling of immersion rarely experienced during a video game. I've never played a game like it before or since; it's truly one of a kind.
The point of my editorials and comments hasn't been to welcome the arrival of a casual gaming takeover. Rather, I'm pining for the days when video games were video games, and movies were movies. I remember you saying the first console you really liked was the PS1, but the first "console" I really liked was the TI-99/4A. I grew up on story-less, straightforward (and hard as hell) games. Back then, we played those games, because we just liked playing them, not because we were trying to get anything deeper out of the experience.
I'm all for the downloadable marketplaces like the XBLA and PSN becoming the norm, because they offer arcade-like experiences that are easy to get into and easy to put down. Does that make it casual? I think it's a different kind of casual, as nobody would ever confuse Peggle with something like Monday Night Combat, but you don't have to invest a lot of time into either. I'm older, and I have a lot of things to do. If I need a rich story, I'll find a 90-minute movie. I can't do 30-hour video games anymore.
Having a cool game doesn't mean we need a story. Dr. Mario didn't need a story, but if they made it today, I bet we'd all know the names of the red, blue, yellow viruses...and what good would it do if we did?
As for what good it would do if the Dr. Mario viruses had names? There's so much potential openened up by just giving them names that it's room for nearly infinite good. Well, as long as the marketing and storytellers are up to using it for good that is.
As for giving the Dr. Mario viruses names... that's almost as bad as naming every Tetris piece and saying they are little animals that like to mate but can only mate in complete rows. Hmmmmm... I take it back. I like where this is going.
You're right about it not being the most important aspect, but it certainly is one of the most important. I know that story has a very real ability to pull me in or completely turn me off of a game, something which bad gameplay or poor graphics never really do. This actually just made me realize that besides story, I think the only other thing that can absolutely make or break a game for me is a game's art style.
The more I play games the more I'm annoyed by the story. Gears 3 for example has a horrible story. It's poorly written, badly "acted," and uninteresting. It gets in the way more than anything. Every time the action feels like it's about to hit its stride, another cut-scene breaks things up. I like the idea of classic games where the story, if there was one, was usually a page or two in the manual. If you wanted the back story, you could read it. If not, you just played the game for fun. Story kind of ruins the replay value of a game because I don't want to sit through all of the cut scenes again.
And just to clarify, I'm not saying the NES/SNES was the pinnacle of gaming, I just like games that favor gameplay/fun over story.
Joel, if Street Fighter was a straight-up fighting game with absolutely no backstory, would you still like it? Or would you personify the characters in your own way like you did with OMD's hero? Wouldn't that actually be more meaningful? I think that's why characters like Samus (before she talked) and Link resonate so strongly with gamers, because they are who we make them.
Also, JR the story in Gears 3 was awesome! Not badly acted (especially not the big surprise bit) or uninteresting at all, you just have to been into the series to like it.
Says who? Why can't a game simply be a game? For example, I'm currently developing a zombie survival game. It's just a game. You shoot zombies. You pick up loot. You shoot more zombies. Who the hell cares where the zombies came from? I just want to blow everything up and watch blood and guts splatter everywhere. You hardly need story for that.
What about games like Doom and Tetris? Neither of them have stories at all. Sure you say that Doom had a story but who played it for the story? Nobody. You played Doom for the pure thrill of running around blowing up everything that got in your way.
I'd rather play an awesome game with no story at all than a crappy game with the best story ever written.
I'm not "going mobile," but merely reviewing the games I've been playing in my spare time. Besides, "mobile gaming" isn't the end of consoles and I don't see it as a war between casual and hardcore. It's not a dirty word. It's merely another venue to provide a surprisingly large amount of genuinely good, unique games (along with some absolutely terrible ones as well.)
I wish I could agree that they are two completely different audiences that won't change, but America's general love for all things quick and easy to access, leads me to believe otherwise. Most of my gaming friends play almost exclusively on phones now. It's not black and white or wrong and right, but as I see it, we gamers are on a ship, and a ship is ALWAYS moving in a direction.
While I can see why it seems they are at war, try this: Pretend that technology and game are all where they are right now, but imagine that phones and tablets are still only phones. All of a sudden a lot of your gamer friends would likely be playing no games, or focusing more on DS, Vita stuff, which isn't necessarily considered casual. For me, these casual games are a lifeline to keep me entertained until I am in a place where I can really get into a story again.
It may seem like the casual games are stealing the market, but I think it is more likely that people's gaming habits are changing to reflect the changes in their lives and gaming time loses to more important things. Once again, for me, it's often a choice between something simple or nothing. I don't want blame casual games for seeing a need and filling it.
It's a little annoying, though, how you keep insinuating that we are "inferior gamers" for enjoying casual and multiplayer games. I feel like we're still trying to make "casual" a dirty word when there are different degrees of casual. In the past week, I've put more time into Awesomenauts than I have Where's My Water. Very different games that require very different skill sets. But because they both lack a complicated story, then they're one and the same?
I realize I used the phrase "falling into a gap," to describe how many of my friends are drifting away from what they used to love. I didn't mean it as an insult to them personally. No one is an inferior gamer for playing what they enjoy, and no one said that blockbuster games will completely die. I'm just saying that there is an immanent threat to story driven games being a norm, and multiplayer and casual taking over that slot, leaving story lovers behind with fewer choices.
Last gen, I had a dozen options facing me as I selected one or two story driven games a month. This was largely due to the fact that few people connected their consoles to the internet. This year I'm lucky if I get three choices a month. It's business progression, like Little Ceasars taking over Pizza Hut's market. The majority of people's wants and needs are being met, but there's far less pizza restaurants for those who have time and money for that kind of experience.
As Joe said "Part of the reason casual games are so popular is because it is incredibly easy to sell a game for $.99 to several million people while selling a $60 story-driven game to several hundred thousand won't make even close to as much money."
Obviously, the big money is in the more accessible and lower budget games, and, of course, the $60 multiplayer driven games, (COD), which last longer, and halt sales of other genres. It doesn't make casual and multiplayer games inferior by any means, it just makes new and old developers want to focus on that larger target audience, and leave the story games behind.
Where gamers time and money goes has a direct effect on the future of gaming as a whole, for better or worse. There's no reason to take offense to that statement.
Gaming to me has always been a social and arcade-like experience. In high school, though, I had a lot of free time, so I played a lot of the bigger games that were coming out at the time. They were fun. I liked both kinds of games. But now that I'm older, married, working eight hours a day, I'd rather play what I've always preferred: games that can be enjoyed in smaller increments (and with other people).
But, again, let's not make this as black and white as $1 games and $60 games, because there's so much more in between. I may not play a lot of retail games, but does that mean I rush home every day to jump into Cut the Rope? No, but I do rush home to play Awesomenauts online or Dungeon Defenders with my wife. These games don't have deep stories. I don't have to invest several hours at a time into them (although I easily could). In a sense, they are "casual," but they also embody what the spirit of gaming has been about from the very start.