Story in games- Opinions, please

News & General Discussion
1

So ,as a part of another thread, there was a comment that story was secondary in a FPS or high action style game. Do you all agree?

A couple things to think about:

Is it necessary to care about the person whose identity you are assuming, or just advantageous?

Is it necessary to Identify with the character you are assuming, have a fantasy relationship with them, (“I wish I could be this person”), or is it immaterial?

Finally, are there any examples of FPS games that have particularly strong (or weak) stories that significantly influenced your experience?

If possible, let’s try to keep this discussion to FPS for now. Everyone knows how important stroy is in Final Fantasy, but what about this other, very powerful and profitable area of development?

As a writer, I’m curious. Thanks for your input.

2

I think the story is critical in creating a great all-round experience. Without it, games have little substance.

Sort of depends on the story itself. If the story is largely based around the character like Gordon Freeman in half-life, then yes.

Again, depends on the story. It certainly help improve the feeling your players get if they have that connection. It also let’s you screw around with their emotions a bit in your story-telling.

Strong:
Half-life2
Chronicals of Riddick: EFBB
F.E.A.R
Gears Of War
The splinter Cell series (sort of an FPS at times)

-Jeremy

3

one of my favorit fps’s is Mafia, which has a pretty strong story, but id say that it depends on the kind of fps you are creating

games like unreal turnament dont really have a story,
and i personally think that a story would just drag it down unless they added more to the game ontop of the turnament part
while liner (CoD, HL, Doom etc) games should have a very wellwritten story, to keep the player interrested.
multiplayer games are a whole different story (pun not intended :wink: ) the problem is to writte a detailed story that takes place ingame and have all the players be effected by it it, and more emportantly enjoy it,

There are 3 ways as i see it to make a multiplayer game with a story, either you just make a background story to deskribe why the place looks like it does and put down some ground rules for why you should shoot at team a and not team b, or you would need to make it co-op (singleplayer with more then 1 player), or the version that most mmorpg’s have adobted, to have quests ingame, like go fetch the mountain giants smelly underwear, you complet the mission and you might have learnt somthing about the story along the way but you havnt changed anything apart from your personal score, xp/items etc.

Example of a game while not an fps, that still has a very weak story.
mount and blade (www.taleworlds.com) has no story at all, yet it has one of the most active modding communities iv ever seen.

4

Some great games have almost no story. However, a great story NEVER hurt an already good game and can’t make a horrible game good. :smile:

5

It completely depends on the feel of the game you’re creating. No one cares about the story in, say, UT. But if they released a plotless HL, it would be terrible.

Story can be important, but gameplay MUST come first - always.

6

advantageous for sure, but in FPS not 100% neccessary imo.

advantageous for sure, but in FPS not 100% neccessary imo.

Half Life Halo are two examples of FPS game stories that, for me at least, heightened the experience. Of course, the gameplay is what really makes them work, but a decent story can add so much to the immersion excitement.

For instance, i liked Black, it wasn’t perfect but i thought it did a great job providing a nice visceral experience. for the life of me i can’t remember what the story was - and really i don’t care. it was fun. if black 2 is coming out, i’ll get it for sure. however, before hl2 halo2 were out, i couldn’t wait for them, not only for the great gameplay, but the contunuance of the stories as well. i didn’t just want to play them - i wanted to know what was going to happen.

basically i’m just echoing what aaron said - a crap game is a crap game - but a good story on top of a good gameplay can do nothing but help your game ; )

7

Megapixel doesn’t have any “story” at all but I think it is great.

In my opinion games do not need a “story” in traditional sense but most benefit from decent storytelling in the gameplay (does fl0w have a story? Some would say no but I dissagree).

I think that a bad text history type story can hurt a game with a strong story told in the gameplay but that is just my opinion.

An example of a game that needs the story it has is zelda ocarina of time. It is a great game partly because of how the story is nicely put into actions in the game and how it makes sense and fits with the world.

8

Great. Thanks everyone that responded. I want to add another aspect to this discussion since we’re here.

I see that most if not all of you feel story is secondary (at least to the gameplay itself, obviously )in many types of poplular games. Fair enough. So how is game story different than linear film story? In essence, what makes an interactive story differ from traditional filmic story?

This is important:

For millenia, humans have learned morality, survival and social behavior through story, myth, etc. While the linear story format is so deeply ingrained in our way of thinking that no one really duoubts it’s power to stay around, how does the format of interactivity change the way that information ( morality, etc.) is communicated? Is it experientially?

Here is an example. In traditional (linear) story telling , you might tell your audience: “Don’t break the law or else”, then make the movie “Die Hard” or something like that. The bad guy loses. In games, you can give a player the experience of actually breaking the law like “Grand Theft Auto”.

So, assuming it’s better for us all that we abide by the law, how is GTA accomplishing the same goal? By letting us “get it out of our system”? ONe of the big arguments against violent games is that they promote viokent behavior, but no study supports that position. Most likely, it’s the opposite. So what it is about the story, the structure, the format, etc., that accomplishes the same goal by telling the opposite position?

I’m curious not only for the present moment, but also for the future of the medium which seems to be in the same place as movies 100 or TV 50 years ago. What are your thoughts? Thanks.

Mark

9

Check out the latest GDC podcast found here. It’s a little too singularly steeped in Joseph Campbell for me, but it’s still an interesting listen regarding story in game design.

10

Most of the best games take advantage of human curiosity and reward players for exploring, experimenting, and finding new things. My favorite games are the ones that are completely open-ended, allowing for possibilities even the game’s creators hadn’t considered. There are, sadly, very few of these games out there; that’s the niche I’m attempting to fill with my game.

I think that, if there is an effect on the individual, it probably, again, has to do with experimentation: we try all these things. In the GTA example, someone who in an alternate, GTA-free universe, might have stolen a car, might steal a virtual car, get away from a few waves of cops, then get stopped by a roadblock. His alternate self might not have thought about the roadblock; in the movies, they always get away if they get away from the first wave. (That’s probably not a very good example, but you get the idea)

11

Are there any docs around that quantify the effects of violent/educational games?

Also Film vs game :the whole thing about multiple endings has a relevance. That aspect could be explored plenty. Say you release you game on a dvd Rom .thats a huge amount of space, so once the player takes a left rather than a right, a whole plethora of different stuff could result…
Even “same level, different AI entities” is funky, So you use the same scene assets, but depending on the players choices, theres 1 friendly or 15 enemies type thing.

Physics kinda alows for “occurances” to happen that could be part of the narrative. I’ve heard some xbox 360 titles have things like erosion, and weather that modifies the terrain and so on, but havent actually played one yet.

Have you checked out the 3du game comp? Theres some real gems with no story, like blocks away, megapixel etc, but I tried (I have only used Unity and Maya for 1 year) to kinda have a narrative, tried to do the blockbuster filmic type thing. Even though it probably doesnt come across like that. If going down that road, you have to remember to tie up all the loose ends, which for me, almost fried my brain. Getting all the audio cues done, the scripting all spot on. It might look simple, and at the end it should, but once my brain was full with all that was going on, it was easy to “fix 1 thing, break 3”.

But it was my first attempt, and once I fixed the odd bug (post 3du), I was happy with it…exept my car goes in circles…nevamind.

A game is either simple and mindless and you can play for 1 min and its over(no story) or an epic as far as I see. Thats my opinion. I get bored with games real quick and whenever I play a halfassed game, I tend to boot Unity and fiddle instead, as its more gratifying.

Just to reiterate my first statement: Are there any docs around that quantify the effects of violent/educational games?

Good thread MP.
AC

12

Telling a solid moving story is extremely difficult. Modern day audiences are extremely demanding and critical.

Now, adding multiple “endings” multiplies (maybe even exponentially) how difficult the task becomes. That’s one reason why it so rare. It is usually done with simple or formulaic stories. Think about those old choose your own adventure books and how soulless they usually were.

As you add more and more flexibility to a story it becomes more and more generic and shallow (or at least full of holes.) The best stories often have rich characters that lock into the only satisfying decisions possible. They take on a life of their own and any variation from the truth of the character leads to a disingenuous feeling. Audiences pick up on the flatness it creates very quickly.

Twisty mysteries and logical (often heartless) stories would probably fair best.

Anyway, in my opinion, experiencing one great story is far more satisfying than making a couple arbitrary decisions and getting a mediocre one… and then feeling like you have to go back and do it all over so you can see another mediocre one… maybe the third time you might get the good one… if there is one.

I don’t mean to be a downer or anything. My suggestion is just to make sure you can tell one good story first before trying to take on a decent branching one.

13

I don’t know of a specific study off the top of my head, but I read an Economist cover story a while back (August 2005) called “Breeding Evil?” on that topic.

Despite giving the impression that violent games could make violent kids (the cover image showed a teenager with little devil’s horns playing a PS2 or something), the article went on to conclude that there is absolutely NO evidence to point to a correlation. They actually sited a few accepted studies I’m sure you can find on the web.
If I remember correctly, they went so far as to call the argument basically ridiculous and the politicians championing anti gaming initiatives as simply playing politics and told them to “knock it off, already”.

But you bring up a more interesting point: linear story has a finite mission- go here , say this, etc. I know this from script writing. It’s almost impossible not to conclude what your audience is supposed to think and feel since you are controlling the entire experience. moment by moment, shot by shot, you craft their emotional state for them.

Interactive story is inherently different since the player controls everything. Maybe it’s not supposed to try and do the same things linear story is trying to do- instruct, inform, warn, empower, etc. Maybe the story is just there to facilitate ‘experience’ and the experience will never actually be the same for ANY player. Create a situation into which the player is dropped and let them conclude what they conclude by exploring in their own way? I don’t know. I guess that’s why they call it ‘play’.

Still, we are wired for story and have been for 20,000 years. How do you rectify the two? How do you create a freeform narrative that adheres to a mode of thought that existed before… farms? Before money, before maybe even fire?

People are habitual, structure bound animals. Freeform anything is pretty threatening to most of us. Maybe because it’s ‘just a game’ we can embrace the randomness of it and explore things that wouldn’t make sense in another medium? That’s a pretty exciting concept, actually.

Interesting topic…

M

14

Interesting point, Aaron. So how about this:

Instead of trying to create an interesting story in it’s entirety, what about creating a complex and interesting character and let the player flesh them out with their actions in the game? Put more emphasis on connecting the player to their avatar than on the path they have to follow to success?

I guess you might say “build better shoes not a better road, then every step will be more interesting”. What do you think about that?

M

15

I think that’s a good start. The burden of the story still lies in the player’s environment though. Unless you take it the extreme of something like tamagotchi where the player IS the environment.

The biggest problem with providing a flexible set of experiences for the player is that you need insanely complex interactivity to allow they player to truly form their own story using even the most interesting character.

Most games let you kill NPCs, jump on top of them, go get something for them, pay them, or just take something from them. That’s pretty limited when you compare it to what a real person can do.

What’s usually missing is the emotions, which drama springs from. What games need is a natural way to express anger, bitterness, hatred, love, cheerfulness, encouragement, humor, boredom. Then, the NPC’s need to react to those in a realistic way so that it’s sometimes surprising and sometimes very moving what they do and say as a result.

Construct something like that and the player could really stir things up. A daunting task, for sure, but I think it will reach an incredibly large audience as games like this begin to advance.

16

Good ideas, but maybe not impossible to impliment.

What if you, as the player, approach a NPC. You have a few options:

Ignore
Talk
Attack
etc.

If the NPC has a set of inherent ‘personality’ traits (fear, aggression, cooperation,etc.), you can explore any of the player options and still have an interesting interaction since the player has no idea what the NPC’s traits are until he interacts with it. Based on the player’s actions toward the NPC, those traits might shift over time. If you attack now, he might run away before you can talk next time. If the NPC has something you end up needing, you fucked yourself and have to find another way.

This is something you can do already in some games, and I think the trick would be just to expand on the trait set of the NPC (over time- obviously you can’t have ‘normal’ human interaction yet) to create something interesting.

I don’t think it’s necessary to have REAL human interaction to give the player a better sense of reality, just incremental to what they have experienced before either in a different game or earlier in the same game.

That in itself is almost story. Increasingly complex or surprising interaction over time would certainly keep me glued to the screen (just to see what would happen next), and for now that should be enough.

10 years from now, though…

M

17

I would have to say yes though based on my opinion. A game is just an advanced movie where you get to control a character or characters. As far as FPS are concered it depends on what kind it is. If its arena based then no you can get away with a prologue, but games like Half-Life, Crysis, and such then yes I feel as a good story is required to make it good. A good game has 3 things: a good story, eyecnady, and playability. Without those its nuthing but hard drive space to me :stuck_out_tongue:

18

Well, Macupuntur, i think that you’ve just described Fable (2 especially)…

At least, to my knoweledge of currently shipping games, this is the one where “freedom” is implemented in the best way, although it comes with various holes here and there…
I don’t think Fable is the real “complete freedom” game, but still, for me, it is the one getting the nearest to the point.

Personally, I think that we have reached the point where Role-Playing-Games need to reach a deeper player-game connection…
For that to happen, I think that a deep background story is the only thing that is needed, along with some special “polished” quests: let every game be different by implementing some sort of “AI” driving every king and his decisions… for example, in an rpg, wouldn’t it be epic if “the mighty kingdom of Althar decided to wage war to the elf’s ribes hiding in the remote forests of Ulthuar” ? What if, you, as an elf, find yourself blocked, because the war is destined to kill the vast majority of elves and you will die? What if then you decide to escape, run to a remote village, start to study your enemy… prepare to assassinate Althar’s reign king?What if, to do so, you convinced about your cause all the villages around here?

Yes, this may be the basic, “linear” story in a game, the actual story of a game… it might even be epic… but it will not hit the gamer and interest him as much as if all this was procedurally generated on the fly, if he had the chance to do everything, if he could even sneak up to the king as soon as he ran away from his forest…

Player’s emotions are what I think should be considered the main point, we should create some scenes that he will remember for a long time, that he was proud of… not because it was the storyline that brought him here… but because he, on his own, worked his way toward here… and because his story is unique.

Though, that kind of a system would be pretty epic to develop, too: just to name a few components, outside of the basic game mechanics, I think it would need to include an AI for every kingdom, for every village, resembling the ideas that every person has, maybe driving all the elves in a city to migrate, etc…

Personally, FPS games need a good story, but nothing else, what needs, instead, an higher level of interaction are RPG games…even RTS, maybe.

19

Well I wouldn’t describe Jan 2007 as “just” :lol:
But other than that, all good points!

20

I think there’s a useful distinction made by Randy Smith in this interview. In it, he describes what he calls a “push” story, where a pre-written story is foisted on the player via cut scenes, loads of expository text, etc., versus a “pull” story where the story emerges organically from the environment and the player’s actions in it.

Lots of games tack on a “push” story, especially if the story itself is just an afterthought to the gameplay. The problem is that it takes you out of the experience, whereas for effective storytelling, not just in games but in movies or books too, taking the audience out of the experience is generally always detrimental to the story you’re trying to tell.

Then there’s also the fact that games largely take their cues on what makes a ‘good’ story from movies. The trouble there is that most of the movies they’re aping have terrible stories. Die Hard 2 looks like bloody Shakespeare when compared to most FPS plots, though, which tells you that even then it’s not going very well for the game writers. Gah. I have to stop myself or I’ll end up in a full rant, but suffice to say, I hate most game stories for being as utterly disappointing and ridiculous as they are. But then, I could say the same for a lot of movies.

“Epic” is a four-letter word to me. I hates it, because nothing better says “we were far too busy working on the blood shaders to respect your intelligence, so here’s a withered carrot on a stick. Now salivate! SALIVATE!”. “Prophecy” or “the chosen one” can go suck a lemon, too.

Whoops. A little bit of a rant. :stuck_out_tongue: