"The Sims and EverQuest are all about the
story created by the people who play the
open-ended games."

What a crock of shit. No one in EQ cares about any story. They like to kill cool looking monsters and collect awesome loot. I don't know where you get your info, but you're fucking retarded. That's just poor journalism (assuming you're an aspiring journalist.) I can't say the same for Sims, since 11 year old girls are the soul of the community, but I'm pretty sure there is no underlying story about how the Sims came to be, so your point is moot here as well.

Then you went on to say, "and games such as
Battlefield 1942 and Castle Wolfenstein
succeed in large part because players want
to reenact historical tales—or make up
some new story that changes history to
their liking."

Wrong. Maybe one out of every two hundred people says that, and it's because they fucking suck at the game. Seriously, do you even play these games, or are you a typical reporter who just makes up shit to meet a deadline? First person shooters have nothing to do with the story. They're about the graphics, the gameplay, and the action. The action is a given, good gameplay is a must (for it to be successful), and the graphics are a nice feature to have. No one gives two fucking dingleberries about the story of Quake. I've played the game for 8 years and I barely even knew there was a story. Shut the fuck up already.

I guarantee you never talked to anyone at QuakeCon that said something as fucking stupid as what you purported they did.

Yeah, I'm abrasive. I'm also honest, and you need honest feedback after that shithole of an article. Deal with your shortcomings and move on in life.

I think the article is pretty well written, and that it covers the two largest groups of gamers. There are the casual gamers who like to pick something up and then blow the crud out of whatever they are faced with, then there are the people who are in it for a longer haul.

The peole in it for a longer haul like a good story and if they need to will take the basic story given to them and flush it out, that's what people are doing with everquest and the sims, not just playing to kill the cool looking monsters or play dress up.

So in general does the story matter, probably not to most people just picking up a game. But, to those people that are getting a game to immerse themselves into it then the storyline is intrinsic to the game and in a lot of cases more neccessary than good graphics. If you don't believe that then you tell me where all those D&D guides are going....

I'd think that the story element in a game is much less important than the action. How long do you spend playing the single player in a game?
For most FPS's, not very much time at all. While some FPS's do in fact stress the story aspect of the game, (Halflife), the grand majority of FPS's now are MEANT to be played online competitively against other players. Look at games like Quake 3, and UT, where the story element has pretty much been removed. Single player is more or a less a training ground, a place to teach you the ropes before you head on out online. Quite frankly, computer AI can only be entertaining for so long. However, playing against other people, players who improve and learn, provide far more of a challenge than AI or bots can. No one plays Quake for the single player experience more than once. Look, the ending of the original Quake was nothing more than a text message.

Not to say that story isn't important to some games. Most of the adventure genre, and a good chunk of the RPG's out there do indeed focus on story. But for games with an online component, especially with an online competitive component, most of the fun will really be derived from playing online.

Look at Starcraft for example. When it first came out, the story of the game was greatly praised by a lot of reviewers, as well as the balance of the game. Now, six years later, who cares about the story of Starcraft? The BW community now really only cares about the balance of the game and the multiplayer aspect of the game. Balance patches were created NOT to balance the single player campaigns, they were created to balance out the multiplayer aspect of the game. Once the game is out for a decent amount of time, no one cares about the single experience really. You'll play through the campaigns once or twice, and the rest of the time, you'll be playing multiplayer without even giving a thought about singleplayer.

I find this article insightful for one group of gamers while seemingly ignoring another portion of the gaming community.

Sure there are gamers (of which I am one of) who will look into the story for almost any game. Be it fighting games, first person shooters, civ-type sims, or any of the other genre's that are probably too numerous to list. I want a story - In Everquest my story comes from what my characters accomplish.

There are other types of gamers though - those who wish to start up hit play and just whack as many things, people, or buildings as they can. They don't play games to exercise their imagination they play to escape for a few brief moments into reflex and thought.

Neither of these types of gamers are wrong for their type of play and I'm sure there are people who play games for more than just those reasons.

Trying to pigonhole any group of people who do the same thing into one steroetype is not only impossible it's also bordering on morally wrong.

Your article covered some good points about my style of gaming and I hope that people find themselves thinking a bit more about the games they play and exercise their imagination. If they don't however I hope they continue to enjoy the past time and hobby that we all have come to love.

Homeworld had a fairly average space-opera story, but it worked because it was integrated well into the game itself, more than anything. Same with Halo.

Not every great game needs a story, while a good story can make a game , it does not follow that a BAD story makes a bad game, mind you some gamers do tend to write fanfic, etc for games without it. However, they write far more for those games with story.

While I think the author choose bad examples for games with story, I do think that there are a large number of gamers to whom story is an important element of a good game.

Why is Half-life better than Quake 2? Because half-life had an incredibly good, story based single player element! _That's_ why half-life 2, even with little to no promotion and a multi-month delay, will be huge - not because of counter-strike.

Having said that, a lot of story-centric games do far worse at retail than their story-starved competitors. Take for example Planescape: Torment, a 1999 game that has an amazing, involving and clever story, and compare it to Baldur's Gate, a hack'n slash affair with some story to break up to the bloodletting. Baldur's gate sold, Torment didn't.

Colm

What about Console RPGers?! Final Fantasy, Suikoden, .hack, Breath of Fire, Fatal Frame? Console RPGs are what put the original Playstation ON THE MAP.

The whole point of those games is story. It's like the author left out 20% of the industry.

That is normally because most RPGs are lacking in the actual gameplay category. To compensate for utterly repetitive battles, where the main attraction are "how cool can attacks, bosses, and magic spells look," they embue the games with incredible stories. It's a preventative measure to keep the game from mediocrity in those cases.

I'm not saying the stories are any less powerful or moving, but I am saying that, without the stories, those games wouldn't be successful. They aren't great games at heart. The gameplay is just a vehicle for the story.

All that said, I think that there are definitely people that want a good story in whatever game they play. I also know, however, that there are those that really couldn't care less about the story. For me, it all depends on what genre I'm playing. An RPG better have a great story, but for most FPSs I couldn't care less if it flows well and looks good.

I was thinking the same thing about RPGs, but actually the first RPGs out didn't have much of a story either. I mean, they did more so than Mario, but it wasn't much. People played 'em more for the leveling up and such. They've only been added more as games have gotten more... repetitive.

As for FPSs, I don't play 'em. They were fun when they came out, but they're loosing their appeal. I don't think the story ever was/has been important though. Carmak's right. Story is just a stupid buzz word thrown out by critics so that they seem like they're doing something more important for society than just playing fun games. Football, Soccer and Basketball don't need stories, and neither do video games I think.

Story is all important for (most) single player games. After all, would Final Fantasy or Starcraft be a Final Fantasy or Starcraft without the storyline? Would Deus Ex be good at all if it didnt have a storyline? What propelled Half-Life to the top of the charts? Storyline, storyline, storyline.

On the other hand, you've got to be smoking something hallucinogenic to believe that storyline makes a hoot of difference in multiplayer. I can't imagine anyone saying "I play EQ for the storyline", or "CTF maps in RTCW have such a great storyline". The author of the article is wrong, dead wrong, in this analysis. People play singleplayer games for the storyline, they play multiplayer games for socialization or competition. (depending on if they are "casual" or "hardcore" gamers)

I'd gonna have to say that storyline isn't really that important for most single-player games. I really think a distinction needs to be made between a storyline and a premise. Games like Final Fantasy revolve around a storyline, but I think games like Warcraft and Starcraft have more of a premise. Storylines lead you through a game from scene to scene and plot elements unfold as you go along. A premise simply says something like, "Here's a bunch of races. They hate eachoter. Run with it," and then you play the game. I personally prefer games with a storyline, but I've gotten plenty of enjoyment out of games with a simple premise.

While I agree that story is important for single-player games and fantasy/RPG-type games, I think everybody is selling short the necessity of story in both multiplayer games and fighting games.
Half the reason I stopped playing the Street Fighter series is because the storylines behind the characters got way too hackneyed and ill-thought-through. When Street Fighter II first came out, the whole point to playing was to fight your way through to the end to catch that cutscene after you win and find out WHY you were fighting. Once you knew, most people chose their favorite characters based on that storyline. That's probably not the case nowadays, but a lot of people who game these days are pathetic, unimaginative fuckholes who derive pleasure from kicking the shit out of things. While I'm glad they're focusing their misplaced rage into games instead of kittens or other people, I think these people do NOT need to be determining the course of media in any way, shape, or form, be it games, movies, music or books.
Let's face facts, most gamers are nerds, and many nerds I know read and watch movies. So tell me this then, oh hack-and-slashers, how interesting would The Return of the King have been had it been nothing but two and a half hours of Aragorn fighting orcs?
There is a place for games with no storyline, and even I'll admit to enjoying a few hours here and there of just shooting the shit out of people in Counterstrike for no reason other than the fact that they're not on my team. But the games that I go back to, the games that hold my interest even through several replays, are the ones that tell a story to draw me into this fantasy world they've created wherein I actually CARE about what happens. I'd like to think that a majority of other gamers out there think this way too.

Ok, so its come down to whether a game needs a storyline or not. In truth, games dont need a storyline, but it can help. Take halflife for example. If the game gave absolutely no reason as to why you were bashing headcrabs and shooting swat teams, it would still be a great game. The storyline enhanced the already incredible weapon, level, and enemy design that are probably the some of the most important aspects to a game. The storyline added a little bit of spice that made the game one of the best of its genre. Again, without the storyline, it would be good, but with a storyline it would be better.

Everquest using plot? I dont think "27 druid LFG" or "WTB stone of coolness" counts as a plot.

As for the RPG console generations of the SNES and the PS, lets face it, the plots tended to be repetitive and mediocre at best. There are entire websites aimed at square cliches. If i have to play one more game where i have to collect x item with y adventurers including the angsty main character, girl who is actually a princess, shadowy/ninja type side character, and the girly love interest that squeals at the sound of footsteps, i'm going to snap. Its all about the combat systems that seperate rpgs. hell, lets take the final fantasy line. Nobody ever points out the difference between them by the characters or storyline, its always "ff3/6 used espers, while 7 had materia, and 2/4 had learned spells." Nobody mentions that the storyline is basically the same, with a few variations on said storyline.

You obviously have had very little experience in playing games for yourself.

Firstly.. Quake. Quake is part of an old school breed of games, at which time the story of a game was about as important as not crossing your hands while driving. Noone cared that these strange marine things were fighting them... in fact I bet 80% of people can't even tell you WHY they were killing those mutated marines, I certainly have no bloody idea.

I think the big problem with this article is you've tried to describe "games" as a whole, and you simply can't. Every game is different, and people play those games for different reasons. I play halflife all the way through to the end because of it's storyline. However I didn't play command and conquer because I particularly cared if NOD achieved world dominance or not, I played it because the strategy was fun.

The fact is there are many different aspects to a game that makes it fun. For a sotryline to attract gamers it must be well blended into the game itself. This does not mean a game NEEDS the storyline, just as much as a film doesn't need good FX to be good, but it can help.

And just a quick sidenote on BF1942... this particular comment shows you up as a particular fool. If you had actually spoken to anyone that plays the game, or even played the game yourself, you would know that people play that game for the teamwork, big tanks and huge battles. They couldn't give a flying monkey if it takes place during operation marketgarden or in the northpole, as long as it's a good map.

Finally I'll help your argument a bit, Medal of Honour is a fine example of the game being added to by it's historical content. But this is no way made the game great, this just ADDED to the game. Stop trying to simplify the simple, games are good for many reasons. Not one.

In reference to the comparison between Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate, you're wrong. Baldur's gate had far far more marketing than Torment did, and it is a well known fact in the development industry that marketing can make or break a game. It broke Torment.

A story's importance in a game is highly relevant only to what the selling point of your game is. Everquest didn't have a story as a selling point, so it wasn't highly relevant. I would personally mark a sad sad day on my calender the day that games stopped having stories. All the examples given in the comments are great ones.

The Oddworld series is defined by its story, as is Half-Life, Deus Ex, Final Fantasy (including most Square type rpgs), and the list goes on and on. Their stories contributed a large part of their selling points.

On the other hand we have games like Serious Sam, Doom, Everquest, Diablo, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Unreal. Although these games have a story, it wasn't their major selling point and they did quite well too.

Other games did a great job of using both action and story like Baldur's Gate, Halo, Starcraft, Warcraft, Parasite Eve, Silent Hill, and etc.

In either case, just like all other elements, when a game is developed, you must decide what will be the selling points of your game and do it right. Whether it be the graphics, story, gameplay, or technology, each element can make or break your game. (Along with marketing ^_^) Luckily, all of these elements can sell a game, which is why everyone, casual and hard core gamers alike, have their own preferences, and likes their games for different reasons than others.

I feel I need to address comments made by the first commentor (yeah,right). "Killing cool looking monsters and collecting awesome loot" is in a sense creating your own story within the confines of the game. This is not a story in the traditional sense (i.e: the story is not embedded in the game), but rather the story emerges by the actions of the player, whether the player thinks of it or not. But think about it: everytime you tell a friend about something you did while in Everquest, you're telling them a story--this is what we in interactive media research call an "emergent narrative."

Mike S., it's not always that simple. There's quite a lot of debate in research circles over the actual definition of story and narrative. In your example, the story told by the player to his friend is a narrative, but it doesn't become a narrative until it is told. The same player might have survived a car accident and recounted it to his friend as a story, but the car accident itself isn't a story, nor was the player intending to create a story when he crashed his car.
BTW, where are you doing your research?

Whoever the first poster was, this is for you:

You are an Idiot, FPS do have great storys and even tho you don't pay attention to them,or play games that have lesser ones they are there. You are the type of gamer tha is mindless, you play games without caring about the characters at all, I bet you skip cut scenes too, you'll never enjoy Silent Hill 2 or Metal Gear Solid or Half-Life. Now, you SHUT THE FUCK UP already.

I thought carmack's comment was a delightful piece of humor and not something created for debate. I think he directed it at the idea of the typical convoluted game story that is nothing more then a way to place an anatomically ideal male or female badass in cool envirourments either blasting hordes of mindless computer controlled minions, solving puzzles, or running one of ten thousand errands. In example, look at the plot of games like UT2003, or FZero GX. I think Carmack's comment is hilarious when put in the proper context. As for RPGs, I to much plot can water down a good RPG. I stopped playing FF10 cause I felt like i was watching a slow movie with an overlong convoluted plot not to mention the bad acting. Want an excellent plot? go to the book store. Even the best adventure games dont really have much in terms of plot, I mean sit back and think about the whole plot of the first monkey island, its ludicrous (im sure to get flamed for that statement). However, all the interesting fun characters, puzzles, and humor along the way is what makes it a great game. I think the cheesie plots concieved for some of these games are so inane (painkiller anyone?) that they would be better off making a joke out of it and writing "Plot: Big badass killing an army cool demons and knights with a futuristic arsenal, HAVE FUN!!" in the manual. But then it wouldnt be like porn. So the plot is needed, cause really the closer it is to porn the happier I am :P

To the person who commented about "mindless gamers" not caring about the characters and skipping cutscenes,

of course it's "mindless". Video games are a medium of interactive entertainment. They are not movies. There is nothing wrong with playing a game to have fun, and not caring about the characters. Does anyone who plays Mario Kart or Smash Bros really care about the characters? They might like certain characters because of their appearance, abilities, voice acting, or even background (what games they came from - a Kirby fan might want to play as Kirby in Smash Bros for instance), but they don't care for story reasons. They just want to play as someone they like and have fun.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Just like there is nothing wrong with thinking that a certain game has a great story (i.e. Silent Hill 3). But there is something wrong with this ignorant belief that your way is right and everyone else's way is wrong. Games with zilch stories exist and sell because people like their fun play mechanics, or they like their theme (i.e. where they take place and what you do), etc. Games with rich stories exist and sell for their own reasons too.

Games with IMO weak gameplay are the ones that float along on the basis of stories alone. It's like their saving grace. But I also think no game can have a story as good as a well-written novel or movie. And to buy video games so you can "experience" what amounts to cutscenes and dialog, rather than to play them, is IMO a little strange in the context of the real world.

Just my opinion.

Cerebral porn? Mindless violence?
Maybe they're just two ends of the spectrum meeting in the middle to form "game content",
which the enthusiast can then assign a notion of a storyline or not...take it or leave it.

For example, what do people think of the hookers in GTA3? Deepens the narrative or titilates the voyeur within?

I quite like Carmack's comment too, maybe not so obviously tongue-in-cheek as the preceeding comments show.
Sure are some opinionated fools out there who have zero grams of debate to weigh in.

Now back to shooting monsters with sensitive emotional needs...

Basically, we have three kinds of games out there.
Some games, like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid, rely heavily on plot to create an experience. This style of game is somewhat analogous to a movie, where action is welcome but not altogether necessary.
Other games, like Unreal Tournament and Battlefield 1942, rely more on action. These games are like sports, where the gameplay mechanics are what make the game interesting. I mean, really, who cares about the history of football? Just throw the thing.
Finally, we have games like Half-Life, where the story is not presented in the conventional sense, and the player is left to make up as much or as little story as they want based on the atmosphere, and subtleties of play. You could try to understand who the G-Man was while battling aliens in Half-Life, or you could just focus on finding the Rocket Launcher. You can enjoy it either way. These games have no real analogy to other forms of media, because they pick and chose from both to create a new experience all their own.
So, you've got movies, sports, and some god-knows-what mix.
Keep in mind these analogies are just meant to make a general point. Obviously, there are many exceptions.
Please feel free to ignore my argument and pick apart these exceptions if you disagree with my main point, as par the course.

Actually, I find this to be a very illustrative article, especially of the fact that there are two different camps of gaming. I can use the video game Metal Gear Solid 2 to prove this.

My brother skipped EVERY cutscene and codec conversation on his first time through. He just wanted to shoot stuff, and by "stuff" I mean "people." I, on the other hand, watched every cutscene and listened to every non-essential conversation, even going so far as to listen to all of the Colonel's crazy codec calls to make sure I heard all of them.

Both of us enjoyed the game immensely, but he enjoyed the sneaking and shooting part, wheras I enjoyed both the action AND the story.

John Carmack is right; the story is often thrown in to video games as a result of an expectation, rather than it being a main part. However, he forgot something.

David Croenenberg's movie Crash was pornographic, too.

N2- I am doing my research at the USC School of Cinema-Television's Interactive Media Division. Our site is actually hosting this thread--threads in our forum are typically only responded to by fellow MFA students and faculty, so however all of you found us, welcome!

Anyway, in your example of the car crash, sure no one would think of that as a story, but in a sense, it is--it is the emergent story that is created as all of us live each day of our life. Now, if a car crash is a possibility created within the rules of a digital game, then indeed this could be considered an emergent story that, yes, would become an emergent narrative as soon as you told someone about it. This type of narrative potential is discussed in "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals", by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.

But as you say, there is quite a lot of debate about the validity of this concept, particularly in research circles.

I really like AngryGhandi's response. Well thought-out and cool-headed. I'd like to add one more thing personally:

I think part of the reason the "story over gameplay" people like story-based games is because unlike movies, you have some control over when something happens, or the order in which you watch the scenes, plus you get to walk around the world the story takes place (think Silent Hill series. They wouldn't be able to tell the story quite as well if they were only movies, since the ability to die is part of the fear).

Also, the scenes "define" the character, and you are fighting for a goal. Though it really gets my goat when people say they buy a game for the story, and they don't even care about gameplay. Why call them "games" then? When someone says "the story and characters make it one of the best *games* ever", that drives me nuts. Call them interactive movies, please, if you don't buy them for gameplay.

I personally am a gameplay first person. Silent Hill is a *rare* exception for me, but I otherwise play games where the emphasis is on just having fun in a world with only a simple premise to set it up (Mario Kart, Billy Hatcher, etc).

Oh yeah, and as to how people found this article, other sites are likely linking to it. Penny Arcade links to it for instance, and that's how I found it. They're a neat video game commentary site.

perhaps I'm just summarising, but IMHO, I see games as the following 5 types:

1. Non-Story games: think Pac-Man, Galaga, Q3A (I think there MIGHT be a story there)

2. Games with attached stories as afterthought: think UT, numerous platform games

3. Equal parts story/gaming: this is debatable, but think Half-Life, and any action RPGs (except Dungeon Siege...that has NO STORY whatsoever) like Diablo 2.

4. More Story oriented games: think any hardcore RPG, like Baldur's Gate 1/2, Planescape Torment (though with more story), Final Fantasy etc. Also Deus Ex, because you have the choice to pretty much not have ANY action in the game (ie sneak around everywhere)

5. Mostly Story games: surprisingly enough, IMHO most Adventure games are like that, because you are playing along to a story, and there is very little room to move within the game, somewhat like interactive fiction.

I agree on the "different types of games and gamers" statements. I, however, believe story plays a more important role than most people seem to think. I believe story dictates setting, which is crucial to fun gameplay in my opinion. I play BF1942 primarily for the gameplay, but I absolutely love the WWII aspect of it. I really like being able to "live" those battles... by air, land, or sea. I am looking forward to Battlefield Vietnam for the same reason. I heard about the game and immediatly thought "Dense jungle! Napalm! Helicopters! Charlies in the trees!", so I suppose that those games qualify as having gamplay and story being one in the same.

I also play the Final Fantasy games. The newer ones seem to be increasingly more boring because of the gameplay becoming more tedious, but the stories are my primary reason for playing them... I wouldn't play them if they weren't fun to play, though. There's a strategic element to it that's more than just mashing buttons. There's a certain satisfaction in having your characters incredibly strong at the end of the game. As you watch their personalities grow as the story progresses, you turn them from average people into superheroes by the end of the game.

Essentially, video games are meant to be played. So it is possible for a game with no story to be fun (I love arcade games, for instance), but games are also what I consider "playable movies". They have the ability to allow one to live the life of somebody whose life is much more interesting and entertaining than one's own, rather than just watch it. In video games you can be a mobster, a WWII soldier, a teenager who has to save the world, a superhero, or just some guy racing a car. I think story is important to games, and I believe story is becoming more important as time goes on.

I'm going to finish with two examples: Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City. Those games have story and gameplay tightly woven together for an incredible experience, and they are probably the most successful games of this console generation. That speaks for itself. For games to be good, they can have one or the other. For games to be incredible, they need both. (with a few exceptions, of course)

Paul

Gameplay and the inclusion(or exclusion) of story has gradually shifted and evolved over time from the onset of video games. In the begining, the games had an almost abrasivly barebones story , like "ok, you are a plumber, but you don't mess with pipes, you jump on these turtles and mushroom guys and you shoot fire out of your nose if you eat a flower. Oh yeah, save the princess from a turtle/dragon named Bowser" Not the most compelling plot. But it worked, because the gameplay was fun and new.

Now, old RPG's, like Hydelide and Crystalis and the like, they really were more about story than gameplay. Lacking the freedoms of modern video game camera angles and musical scores, the game makers found themselves at a loss: 'how do we make the player feel as though they are getting stronger and progressing through the story while making the game rewarding, but not make the battles progressivly take longer and longer--in an attempt to show that the enemies are tougher?' Simple, as a human grows more experienced with every new action and ordeal, the player will gain 'experience points' and progress through the story. It was rather archaic, and it seems to be phasing out of games now, but I liked it.

Now that game companies don't have to use such old gameplay mechanics, I feel that the quality of RPG's in particular is taking a steep drop. Final Fantasy X and X-2's visuals are dramatically better than even the cinema scenes of FF7 or FF8, but it seems that in their zeal to create a new and quriky world, they forgot to make the new games FUN. Perhaps games have now become the 'playable-movie' that the first RPG's strived to be, but I think having camera pans, and fully voiced dialouge really detracts from chracter inclusion.

When I played FF7, I WAS Cloud, I KNEW Aeris, I KNEW TIFA, I HATED Sephiroth. At the end, I beat Sephiroth while woefully underlevelled, for I ravenously plowed through the game whilst savoring the deep plot. But then I went back and did some leveling and finally squared my level 99 Cloud with Buster Sword alone versus Sephiroth, I killed my team mates and went one on one. I think that the lack of voice acting really benefited those old games. I WAS Cloud, I WAS Squall too, and even Zidane (hey, no laughing).

Now Square and Gamecompanies in general have beceome excessively story-centric in their videogames, and I think it is derogatory to the industry. If the 'game' they produce isn't fun, then it is basically a painfully slow fourty-five hour long movie, and we don't see too much demand for those.

And for the record, Killing Nazis makes any game better. If I am just shooting random guys, it doesn't really affect me, but EVERYBODY hates Nazis. Thats why BF1942 and Wolfenstein are so popular. I do agree that the multi-player games are primarily gameplay oriented. When the game is unable to centralize the story around one person, and must have a general story, the drama of a game can quickly be dilluted. The online MMORPG's have never really been about true roleplaying, they have been more about Leveling up with your friends and meeting new people.

Thus, we are back where we started. Some games can survive with no story at all (Madden, Galaga, the like), while some games try and survive with little to no gameplay at all (Recent Final Fantasy's, etc). There is a perfect mix, and occasionally great games like Prince of Persia come by and remind us all of why we started playing games in the first place.

Red,

"...Killing Nazis makes any game better...Thats why BF1942 and Wolfenstein are so popular."

That's funny. One big reason why I like playing Wolfenstein (or rather, ET) is because you get to kill Americans.

- a Canadian

Dude, Butter, not cool. Let's keep the hate down a bit, can we please? This is about video games and stories and the intertwining of both. Can we please keep it that way?

But in response to everybody else, I must stand corrected. I agree that the stories are important to some games, and extraneous in others. What really worries me about where this thread is going is that I don't want to see games getting categorized too much more than they already are. It's bad enough that games and gamers are already getting pigeonholed into category after category, but now, with this debate, we're coming up with even newer categories/niches to try to limit people/games to.

Can't we all just say we're gamers and leave it at that?

It’s funny how J.C. is now spending a good deal of his resources for the new Doom3 game on the plot. But of course no one will care, all people will care about is the general flow of the game. Take Halo, well written plot that has a ton of back story, you can literally go out of your way and research the many easter-egg-like parts of the plot by reading the Marathon story or any of the Halo novels behind it. But no one really cares about that. The plot of Halo is so thin and undetailed that you can literally ignore it and still enjoy yourself. After all no one really cares about the moral value of an inter-species holly war.

All you really need to do in order to prove this is look at the most played and most successful games. Counterstrike is probably the most played and most enduring first person shooter today -don’t mind the fact that it’s made as a splintered project of Half Life that has infinitely better story… oh wait CS doesn’t have a story- and it’s because it’s a fun game and is versatile. Beyond that a complicated game with a story is nice but last for about as long as the story does. You can pass Half Life in a few weeks and after that the game is useless; Counterstrike you can keep playing till your eyes melt.

As someone that really cares about storylines and the mental growth of the industry, I can say I am appalled by the strong words thrown about here.

No, I lie. I don't care. Because I know there are people that agree, people that agree that a large part of System Shock's creepyness, whether you admit it or not, was the overlord computer. It was the story, and things connected to it, like characters and their design. Because there are people that loved the old adventure games, the interactive movies, so to speak. Because there are people, like me, that mostly just play single player games, and want to be told a story. Not everyone likes multiplayer games. Not everyone is prepared to tolerate other people when playing a game.

Half-Life made me wonder. It made me think. The action was what I had to go through to get to the next piece. The shooting, the adrenaline coursing through my veins was the distraction, what filled the void, until I was treated to yet another vague plothook.

Doom III does not excite me the least. It sounds like yet another glorified, slightly outdated technological demo from the people that refuse to even touch DirectX unless forced to do so. Overturned spider skulls? Doom III's only reason for existence is the technology driving it. And judging from the videos, it lacks the punch of the old games. I do not believe that John Carmack is a good designer. He's just a very good programmer.

But what do I know? J.C. might luck out.

Story is a difficult thing to nail down. For example, Halo's story is an amalgamation of just about every sci-fi cliche imaginable. But by giving characters names like "Foe Hammer" and "343 Guilty Spark" , and having said characters say vague and cryptic things (basically everything Guilty Spark says) it gives people the impression that it's far deeper than it really is.

And again, the Final Fantasy series (and frankly most japanese rpg's) have stilted, needlesly complicated and illogical storylines, but most gamers seem to eat them up.

I play tons of single player games for fun. And not for their story. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg has no story, unless you count being told pieces about the legend of the giant egg by anthropomorphic chickens every now and then to be a story. And you can mash A and B to zip through the dialog anyway.

But it is fun. It's fun to roll around like a madman, to bounce in the air with an egg, to go from giant ring to giant ring and hop through the air, etc. I don't consider it the driving "void filler" to the next plot element. This is a game and I'm playing it. The story don't mean a darn thing to me.

There *are* games I think have good stories, but if story was truly what I wanted most, I would read a script on the internet or download cutscenes from sites that feature them (yes, such sites exist in some cases).

As for the "mental growth" of the videogame industry, I think it would best be served by featuring games which require you to think, and by that I mean adventures and puzzles, not stories. Stories only tax the mind when you're not playing - a well-written novel could do that. People won't respect video games for delivering cutscenes and dialog. They'll respect them for their interactivity and fun. Which is why fun single player games with no story continue to sell.