Only 20% of Games Should Have Stories

[ad7venture]

I love good movies.  I love good books.  I love good TV series.  I’m a huge fan of noninteractive media.  Yet I skip through most cutscenes in videogames.  Why is this?

Gamasutra

[Erwin_Br]

From the article:

So what types of games should have complex, involved stories?  Easy: the games that are based around stories to begin with.  If the inspiration for making the game was to tell a story, than there’s a chance the story is actually worth telling.  This is the case for games like Monkey Island, and Heavy Rain but is not the case for Gears of War.

Sounds logical, but I still know people who rush through adventure games, skipping most of the story and dialogue. To me that's sacrilege, but it happens. Maybe because some gamers play adventure games only for the puzzle solving. Not me, though. I like to immerse myself in the story and the world around it. And not only when playing adventure games.

[Imari]

I agree , Trum.  What's the point really of playing an adventure game unless you get involved in the story?  If I'm playing a casual game where I'm only interested in the puzzles, I almost always hit "SKIP" to bypass the intros, as they are almost always  very thin on storyline and not worth my time.   

[ad7venture]

I think game developers should really make up their mind if it's going to be a story game or not.  It's pretty much accepted in adventures, but other games use a half way approach that really would be better, in some cases, to drop the thing completely or else develop it further.  If a cut scene can be skipped without affecting the game, then it really doesn't belong there. 

[Kickaha]

I too like stories with my puzzles, but do know those who think stories just get in the way in Adventure games.

There's different levels of stories - I like little details, little comments about people and places as you play which give a feeling of a world with depth.  The over-arching story is not so important for me.

[ad7venture]

There's different levels of stories - I like little details, little comments about people and places as you play which give a feeling of a world with depth.  The over-arching story is not so important for me.

I kind of put those in back story category.  That kind of deals with the momentum of a game.  If you do those things without a main story, then there is some other goal required.  It might be missions, or simply leveling up, but you have to do something to push the character forward rather than just having them interact endlessly.  The game is definitely more simulation at that point.  I played a space trading game like that without ever engaging in the main story.  I think I played it about the same length of time if I would have engaged in the story.  The only trouble was I just quit because of boredom.  I had leveled up to maximum and there really weren't many challenges left.  It didn't have that satisfying conclusion.  Most of the time, with role playing games, I never make it that far, anyway.  The game play becomes too repetitive for me to bother finding out what happens with the story.
I think a main story is a separator for games.  They are going to all start looking very much alike without a main story.  There's only so much you can do on the game play side of things.  You can trade, fight, or solve puzzles basically.  Puzzles can only be solved once, so they are in a slightly different category.