Do you agree with this sentiment?
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Do you agree with this sentiment?
Do you agree with this sentiment?
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Depends on whether or not the story is a prominent part of the game. The story's important in Deus Ex, not so much in Mario 64
I don't, no. If only because it's way too limiting of a factor to just boldly declare that stories are always worthless
He has yet to be proven wrong, so yes.
>If only because it's way too limiting of a factor to just boldly declare that stories are always worthless
He didn't declare them worthless. He said they're 'not that important'. And they're not. Even the best stories in videogames would be considered barely passable schlock in any other medium.
You need enough story to get the player invested, that's all. Gameplay and content are the things that really matter.
He didn’t say worthless. It’s expected to be there. Reading comprehension
Game play is paramount, but a nice story can enhance the gameplay. That is to say you can have a good game without a good story, but you can't have a good game without good gameplay.
As someone who grew up with 4 hour danish VHS porn tapes, I don't expect there to be a plot. Don't need an excuse for two people to be fricking just about anywhere.
For a video game at least some excuse is necessary since without a story or setup of at least some kind you'd end up with an awful looking game full of out-of-place art assets in a grey untextured level. You can go with the unfinished, untextured look but very few games do.
>grew up with 4 hour danish VHS porn tapes
Dear God
There is an endless list of great stories in video games, I'm not sure you know what you're talking about. I'm surprised you didn't say "ludonarrative dissonance" in your essay, maybe nature is healing
t. screwattack mtv millennial who only played mega man 2
>There is an endless list of great stories in video games,
Then list some, and I will tell you they are all garbage.
>There is an endless list of great stories in video games
name 5.
OMORI, Undertale, Celeste, Bloodborne, both portals, Half life 1, Nuclear throne, Any bioshock
and if you want retro games
Earthbound, secret of mana, Chrono trigger, Final Fantasy 7, Terranigma
Thanks for proving my original point
>makes no argument
>hurr you proved my point
meds, now
Ok fine. I'll just tackle the games I've played
>Bloodborne
Idiotic nonsenseical bullshit about a cabal reaching out to alien life forms and using their blood to heal. Blood is cursed and causes mutations and psychosis among the populace, also creates a "dream world" where the aliens loop events eternally. You break this by killing the nursing mother of a baby who is actually dreaming the world, and then eating his umbilical cords which were trying separate world's together. Half of this isn't even told in the game and is fan head canon
>Half Life 1
Government does secret experiments and contacts Aliens, they kill people, and the government sends in forces to cover it up. Wow what an amazing story
>Bioshock
Libertarianism bad. I'm very smart. Also moronic time travel with more plot holes than pieces of SFM Liz porn
>Chrono Trigger
More moronic nonsense time travel and aliens bullshit. You certainly have a type. Bunch of plot holes and ass pulls, on top of the usual moronic anime tier jrpg plot, along with an incredibly stupid final boss
>FF7
Potentially interesting government conspiracy and political terrorism plot quickly thrown to the side 5 hours in for generic jrpg bad guy who wants to destroy the world for no reason. Schizophreniac follows around generic bad guy, and finds out party member was actually the destined chosen one to save the world. A bunch of terribly written characters join in for no reason at all.
You don't even know what a good story is, you have the tastes of a 15 year old who thinks Death Note is the peak of writing and storytelling. Read a book or even watch a movie or TV show that isn't a cartoon from Japan
>OMORI, Undertale, Celeste
>Earthbound,
Cringe.
I'll defend stories in games, but that's really the best you can offer? Goddamn, at least bring up Planescape Torment or something, all of that shit has passable at best story and characters. Hell, the last Bioshock had fricking dogshit story.
True, a song can have great lyrics which really enhances it, but a song can also have stupid shit for lyrics and still be good and enjoyable.
>For a video game at least some excuse is necessary
>What are arcades
Most arcade games have a story/ excuse you moron. Mario wasn't jumping over barrels because he liked climbing buildings.
In the sense that a videogame should have some kind of gameplay mechanics, sure, otherwise what you're looking at is a VN or choose your own adventure novel or something.
That's not a bad thing in itself, but that's also not a videogame, more, a videogame having story or even a strong focus on story isn't bad either.
An advantage with videogames is that you can have a fricking great one in spite of having a shit token story with little effort, or even no story at all.
I think where things gets bad is if there's a strong focus on storytelling, but the plot and characters are just not good, or worse, completely unremarkable and uninteresting (because at least if it's goofy bad, that can still be fun). If the gameplay is then not very good, or if the plot gets in the way of the gameplay, that would be pretty awful.
I don't agree, Tetris has no plot or setting, it's just a rapid puzzler, and a great one at that.
Same with Columns. Puyo-Puyo features characters and plots, cutesy and anime ones, but you could basically ignore all of that and still have a damn fun puzzler anyway, Puyo-Puyo would still be good even with all that weeby goodness stripped out, not as great, but still good.
Yes. The game which exemplifies how to implement story in vidya perfectly is The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past. Not too much narration and dialogue, and not too little. The perfect amount.
>Not too much narration and dialogue
Have you been playing randomizer? That cuts out all the text. Play the original again and you realize just how often the characters stop you to talk your ear off.
He's a LTTPgay. Chances are he hasn't played the game since he was 8
I usually play the game in Japanese and ignore all the text. And it turns out you only have to read a handful of dialogue boxes in the whole game. That's how I know you are lying.
>I ignore the text so it doesn't exist.
>I usually play the game in Japanese and ignore all the text.
What does this have to do with it being there in the first place lmao
ALTTP has a fairly barebones story. That's fine, the game is good, but I think there's other ways to do good story in a videogame.
>There's not really any game with a good story because it's impossible to have a good story that lasts 20-40 hours
Those are generally not one single story stretched out to that length, more like one longer core story where there's frequent bouts of gameplay as well as sub-stories and side-stories.
Given that you aren't consuming the story in one go, but rather saving and coming back later (at your leisure), it's not like you're actually trying to consume a 20 hour book or movie in one go. It's like saying a TV series cannot have a good story because the main story arc adds up to about 20 hours across that arc's run.
Agree.
Yes. There's not really any game with a good story because it's impossible to have a good story that lasts 20-40 hours, and is broken up for large amounts of time with gameplay. Games can have good writing, or interesting premises, or characters, but unless you're making an extremely short, very focused game like Papers Please or something like that it's basically impossible to have a good full story.
I think story in porn is more important than people give it credit for. It doesn't have to be a literal written out scripted plot but an implied narrative really cranks up the allure. That's why there's so much interest in amateur stuff. People want to believe its real.
Video games can get by with just mechanics, like Tetris. But once you start introducing characters it helps to do some world building. Mega Man has a shitty story but it's a fun narrative.
well it depends on the game but overall no, that said obviously focus on the gameplay first and then build a story around it instead of doing a story first unless it's a vn or summit
some games may benefit from doing it less directly than others too like the metroid games for instance
oh yeah and if there is a lot of text and/or cutscenes, add a way to skip it because that gets annoying on replays
Depends on the game tbh. Carmack is "right" in the sense that if we look at a game as a set of systems and nothing else, then story really has little place in it. I enjoy some story-heavy games, but frankly when replaying these I often end up skipping a lot of this and going straight to the game; I know the story and its beats, and since I'm replaying it I just want to engage with the systems, hence the story is now in the way.
That said, I think its a mistake to completely write off story if the game is actually built around it. Monkey Island could probably be a more "fun" moment-to-moment game if it had a combat system or was a platformer or something, but then you wouldn't really be able to do conversations or puzzles the way you do. Or how about a game like Myst or Outer Wilds? Tons of systems, but once you figure them out, the game is over and you have no reason to play it ever again since you know the solutions and the story beats.
Figures a very logic-driven and utilitarian person like Carmack would consider story to be a vestigal feature, but its hardly suprising given his resume. Carmack probably could had made a heavily-story driven game but it simply isn't what he does.
Sure, Doom is a timeless game I can still boot up and have fun with today while I will never really have a reason to play Outer Wilds ever again; But you know what? Thats fine - Outer Wilds provides a different kind of experience and I'm glad to see the industry is healthy enough to supply both.
There's room for both types of games and you'd be an idiot to completely disregard either.
I agree to an extent. In some cases the story can elevate a game though. The Persona games would be dull and torturous without their stories and characters. Danganronpa is honestly pretty fricking bad in all areas except making you want to see what happens and that was enough for me to finish the first two games.
There's that, the story of a game can drive the player.
Pulp is fun, a story doesn't need to be heavily intellectual to be enjoyable. H.P Lovecraft lived a fairly miserable life and which is interesting to read about, but he also wrote some damn fun horror stories, and part of what makes them fun is how his personality and his neuroses colored how he wrote those stories.
The Color Of Outer Space is simply far more engaging than the story of someone trying to come to terms about their parental abandonment, or an alcoholic describing how life sucked as a peasant in the 1800s.
Enjoying that kind of story is fine, but enjoying it also doesn't make you a high-brow intellectual, rather the insistence on that aspect screams of an immature person with narrow and undeveloped tastes who really wants to be viewed as mature and cultured. You're essentially the Oscar Academy, that is that you're a public masturbator, and your tastes are actually easy to cater to.
Doom gives you some very token story. It's story, but it's lightweight and with little depth, and can outright be boiled down to "Hell is invading reality and you must kill them." The story is also completely unnecessary for playing and enjoying the game, you can ignore it entirely and not be worse off.
Yeah and that might make sense if porn still had a story.
He never made a good game
Depends on the game. For JRPG, having a decent story is important, because JRPGs are a time sink. And I'm not sinking in the time without something for me to get invested in.
Of course it's a bullshit, hate that quote. A game is an immersive piece of art that can only benefit from a good story. In a porn the only thing that matters is how hot the girl is, a story to it isn't just not expected, but also awkward and obsolete.
Yes 100%. Literally all video game stories are either pulpy action (like those airport spy novels for dads), fantasy or science fiction. All three are considered low brow genres in literature. Tolstoy's War and Peace... now that's a story. Video games are incapable of providing the depth of a great work of literature. If you've never read high brow lit then of course Final Fantasy IV can seem like a great story, but literally every single video game story is basically Hollywood tier pulp.
A game is more than the sum of its parts. Story, music, art direction are all important to different degrees but they don't have to be the peak of any of these things, just good enough to enhance the final product rather than detract from it. Of course a story needs to be very good in a fricking book, that's the only thing it has. You're not impressing anyone by pretending you read books or namedropping famous books, you moronic Black person.
>Of course a story needs to be very good in a fricking book, that's the only thing it has.
This is so stupid, there is so much more to lit than just story, like the quality of the prose for example. I agreed with everything until you suddenly turned moron.
>You're not impressing anyone by pretending you read books or namedropping famous books, you moronic Black person.
It's literally one of the most famous books of all time, it's not obscure or inaccessible, stupid lard bag.
>It's literally one of the most famous books of all time, it's not obscure or inaccessible
He literally said “namedropping famous books” in the exact sentence you quoted you illiterate fricking moron
Tell me you’re a zoomed without telling me you’re a zoomer lol. Guess how I know. You gave it away. Really, guess how I know.
>they don't have to be the peak of any of these things, just good enough to enhance the final product rather than detract from it
says who
>Literally all video game stories are either pulpy action (like those airport spy novels for dads), fantasy or science fiction. All three are considered low brow genres in literature. Tolstoy's War and Peace... now that's a story.
Got I can smell you through the screen
I just had a shower because I had sex with my 9/10 Asian gf
Seethe and cope harder incel. You'll never be as good as me.
hey congrats on the massage parlor visit
Does your mom work there?
Lol at thinking the guy well adjusted enough to not give a frick about game stories smells worse than you.
Didn’t have time to think about this so here is the thinking done for me
Depends on the game.
Either way, Carmack is a autist, so anything he says about story, writing, human emotion or otherwise should he taken with a grain of salt.
I would listen to his advice on programming, not storytelling.
Many of the early games that could be played were literally only text so no, I don't agree.
To be fair to Carmack, something like Doom or Quake don’t require deep or interesting stories.
Doom didn't need it, but Quake was boring as shit and was quickly made irrelevant by games with a story like Half-Life, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex.
Frick them, Quake is more fun than any immersive simulator horseshit.
Nobody cares what you think
>conflating story with plot
fricking midwits
Carmack isn't saying story shouldn't exist, but isn't front and center. People are a lot more forgiving towards video game stories because the game comes first. Look at any game series with any continuity. How can someone continually lose their powers when they not only have their powers, but also have the experience they have? You often just have to turn your brain off and accept what the story presents you. Or if the story is incongruent with game play like in a RPG and a party member dies due to story related reasons but it would make sense to use a revival item on them, or that the author has to make an asspull as to why for that one person they cannot be revived. The story of a game tends to shine the most when it is represented through the setting and the player playing through it rather than up front text dumps and cut scenes.
Not everything needs a story, sometimes context is sufficient, sometimes it's just pure arcade gameplay and that's enough. I always thought the point of a game was to play, not watch cutscenes.
porn still has a "narrative". without ANY story it would just be a locked closeup of penetration happening. which I guess someone might be into, but generally most people would appreciate some context at least. a half-hour exposition dump would be a bit out of place though.
similarly, in a game, visuals and story context where it concerns gameplay is welcome. but a canned wall of text, or a static cutscene, or dialogue choice between "yes" and "later" are all an entirely 100% worthless waste of time, both players' and devs'.
also it was Sandy Petersen who said that - a guy who is all about creating worlds and writing descriptions for tabletop stuff. unless he's misremembering things, but obviously he agrees with it regardless.
Is it weird that I need a finely crafted narrative to get off? Pictures and out of context videos do very little for me.
A story is very important, but that doesn't mean noninteractive storytelling like text or cinematics. Good games tell great stories via gameplay.
He's sort of right, even if he's coming from the 90s, a good story enhances a game a bit, but a bad story can make an otherwise good game into a piece of shit. There are a lot of games that have little to no story (or no story whatsoever) and pretty well regarded (Doom, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Sonic, quake, etc).
No argument that uses porn is a valid.
That's not true, I can say that your mom is a prostitute because she's frequently featured on PornHub, and if she is, that argument would be true and valid.
A good thing about videogames it's that they cna work with or without storyline. You can make a game in which there's no story or a very basic story and the focus is the gameplay, but having a complex story can also work really well.
Looking to limit videogames just to one of these is moronic
It depends on both the genre and the consumer. The game because certain genres benefit more from story than others (e.g a story can make a big difference in an RPG), and the consumer because some get hooked in by the story whilst others skip every single cutscene and avoid interacting with the world beyond what's required.
I'd say porn is the same way. The bits before and after the actual fricking are the equivalent of cutscenes, so some consumers will skip them or opt for videos that don't have them at all, whilst others find themselves way more turned on if they can be immersed into a believable story and likeable "characters" before and after the actual fricking. Also like a game the importance varies by genre - For POV, VR, GFE, Taboo etc that makes a bigger difference.
Also I'd like to add that a lot of people who say "gameplay is all that matters" are guilty of creating a catch-22 scenario. As they don't care about story that much, or even find stories to be a hindrance, when there is a game where the story matters more than the gameplay, they'll either say it's a bad game, or they'll even say it doesn't count as a game at all. It's kind of ignorant imo because there'll be other people who love that stuff and consider it their favourite type of game. I think ideally there should be room for both extremes and everything inbetween.
Nope. Not all games are built the same.
It's a hill I will fricking die on. Games that take control away from the player and force you to watch a bunch of cutscenes are fricking cancer.
Sadly many children with ADHD will tell you they don’t like a good story in their game
>good story
Please give examples.
Why? So you can call them all shit? You already made up your mind before I made my post so I’m just going to go enjoy them
see
i actually have adhd, and it isn't that i don't "like good stories" in games. i just don't have the attention span to bullshit myself that mediocre stories are good.
holy fricking copium infinity I can't believe I share a board with dogshit morons like you both. get off the net
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd
https://www.apa.org/topics/adhd
Are these wrong?
adhd is where you hyperfocus on something, not can't focus on something, you assburgers tardknocker
didn't know wikipedia and fricking wikihow(?) are reliable sources now
OH NO NO NO
100% agree
No.
also Carmack doesn't play games or design them. He's a programmer. I don't really care about his takes on video game story.
a better comparison is lyrics in a song: can add a bit of purpose, can often turn the song full cringe.
but if someone only cares about lyrics, you can safely dismiss them as philistine plebs, no matter how deep or meaningful said lyrics are claimed to be.
This is especially true for something like metal
I don't fully agree, personally I find metal with audible lyrics is mostly more enjoyable than ones with incomprehensible lyrics.
Saying story doesn't matter is hilarious because 99% of games (Doom included) have some sort of lore that gives you a reason to do what you're doing.
Yeah but how many people actually care about the lore of Doom as opposed to getting to kill demons and shit? Not to mention level design, gunplay and other aspects.
Most players used to buy GTA games, load up cheats and rampage for hours without touching the story. Your point? Just because people ignore it doesnt mean it's there, or unnecessary.
There's some difference though in that as the games went, Grand Theft Auto put increasing focus on characters, writing, and story. You could just frick around with cheats and have a good time, but you would also miss out on missions with their various special setups, character interactions, and jokes.
Was the writing highly intellectual? No, but it was very entertaining.
Hmm.
>expecting most of /vr/ to not have neurodevelopmental issues
But I actually like good stories in porn. Bad ones kill my immersion.
Yes. I write for a living. The chances of me caring about your half assed game story are slim to none. It better be fun.
the passage of time has proven him wrong I think. Would max payne be remembered nearly as well if it were just a series of disconnect mob hovels with the gunplay? Would deus ex if you were just an urban infiltration training simulation? It's not a high bar but a compelling narrative even if it's not much more than acting out an adventure is going to give a game separation.
>Would deus ex if you were just an urban infiltration training simulation?
deus ex makes story part of the gameplay
Atmosphere
.
What sentiment? That his stage 4 terminal premature ejaculation caused him to make games that had less story than the opening credits to a porno?