Why do stories not matter anymore?

One thing that keeps on bothering me (and constantly has for the last couple of years), is why do game developers devote so little attention to a good story when they make a game?

I mean I know, that you cannot have much of a story, when you make another flappy bird clone, but I see tons of FPS games being made, that are all about one good guy and a lot of bad guys. Then there's like a 5 hour rampage at the end of which the bad guys are all dead and the good guy winning, with nothing happening in-between.

They all have good graphics and devote quite some time to gamplay and so on, but I don't feel the urge to play any of those games, cuz they're so pointless, but I feel I hardly have any choice on that, since there's so little games with a good story mode.

Do you guys think of a good story, when you develop a game?

 

Because a new generation of gamers want action, not stories. Same reason why so many movies have little story anymore.

Yes, I do think of good stories when I develop my games and like you, I have no interest in a game without a good narrative.

 

Journey told the story via gameplay so it's not always needed to be expressed in words.

 

The latest CoD won't even have a story on previous generation consoles. I can see not making the multiplayer the full experience due to technical reasons, but dropping the *campaign*? It's procedural and MOBA all the way down!

 

I think there is more narrative now than there was previously. Like what are the old games that had narrative and the modern counterparts that don't?

 

Totally agreed! the newer generation of gamers don't require it, many of them not even realising, that games can have narratives too - I feel like the 90s generation of players, that is still fairly large, is just being dismissed. Shame!

I understand that, it would absolutely make sense. Think of Portal or Half Life, games that get along without any cutscene and without the protagonist even say a word. But still, one is able to grasp the story aone moves along.
But a lot of games have nothing of that sort, it's really just the cheap "quest for revenge" at the beginning with the "bad guy dead" at the end - nothing in between.

 

Take the Resident Evil games for an example: 1&2 used to had a story that was being unfolded in the course of the game with background info on what was going on and so on. Today's zombie games are just about slaying zombies that get increasingly weird in appearance, that's it.

What I mean to say is that, games with great graphics and gameplay, but without stories, are pretty much like movies with overwhelming special effects, but without any plot - I can have that on YT, no need to go to the cinema for that - I think it's the same with games.

 

I have to disagree. Sure, there will always be games that focus on mechanics such as KSP and Cities: Skylines (and they're great fun in their own way), and the industry is still struggling with story in open world games. But many games nowadays feature deeper and more diverse stories than ever before, from space epics like Mass Effect to intimate little stories like Gone Home and Never Alone. That's one of the things I love about Unity. It really does "democratize game development," giving voice to new game stories that we've never seen before.

 

Nah that's a million light years off base, Witcher 3 came out and it won hundreds of awards and sold millions. W3 is a story heavy RPG, Mass Effect same, Fallout 4 will do amazingly well so will the next Elder Scrolls, GTA, Batman etc. etc.. There just a few examples of MANY successful story based games from indies to AAA..

There's just less of them today. Mainly because they're expensive to make / getting ridiculous in size and scope. It's far simpler to release a linear FPS with multi-player maps which going by chronological analysis sells well.

It is what it is..

 

Stories don't seem to matter, because you are playing games with little to no story to begin with.....
There are plenty of games around with great stories, arguably, more now than in the past.
Consider Doom, Quake, or nearly any mid to late 90s shooter... most of them had terrible stories.
Some indie games have great stories....and there are way more of those now than ever before.


Popular games?...perhaps not so much. @ShadowK Makes a great point.... the sheer number of AAA games for PC has decreased. They are incredibly expensive to make. RPGs in particular take a long amount of development time, and there are few remaining companies around willing to devote that much time/money toward games that large in scope.

 

I submit the counter proposal that the Virtual Novel from Japan, Muv-Luv, which like any VN is basically nothing BUT story, has raised nearly 500k on Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/muvluv/muv-luv-a-pretty-sweet-visual-novel-series/

Of course it is the most popular VN out there, but clearly some people love a good story and are willing to pay for it!

 

Over the years, casual gamers have become the most prolific type of gamer. Those willing to invest hours upon hours on a game are now grown up, have kids to raise, mortgages to pay, and a full time job. Not to say there won't always be those people who stop working for a month (if they can do that), ignore the kids and wife (if they have a family) and just play the latest release until it is done. I have met many people who live for games, not an uncommon scenario.

But the money is probably more on casual games these days. Stories are not as important. The young folks have phones and tablets and Facebook and so many distractions. The economy has not been kind to them and they are having problems finding jobs. It is a different world and while a good long story driven game is still coveted, they take time and money.

However, as mentioned above, there are plenty of good stories and those are probably the ones that people take a week off of work to play. They are just diluted by all the casual games, action games, zombie survival games, etc. The market is huge now and way over saturated so when the numbers rise, each genre is going to seem smaller in comparison.

I miss the old Adventure games. Those were my favorites. They still exist but are not like they used to be.

 

Not all games should be story games. Chess, Pac-Man, Tetris, SimCity, etc.

Also, sometimes story is underdeveloped because writing good story isn't easy. It takes talent.

And sometimes a story that is gripping to one person is pointless to another. The crowd that likes action is more likely to turn to games for recreation, while the crowd that likes literature is more likely to turn to a book.

 

I don't think there is any more of a lack of story based games now versus years ago. Maybe you have just narrowed your game selection down recently?

I find myself playing a lot less story based games because of the time involved in them. When I was younger I had more free time, as an adult I do not... So I typically play games that don't require as much attention to detail with the story. Story based games typically hook well from stage to stage so I have a hard time breaking away, and when I do I tend to forget what I was doing when I return.

 

There really aren't fewer story-based games now than before. The number of story-free games has increased

 

I think this is probably more the case along with the total number of games overall. I know of the few games I have played lately, they all do have stories but the amount of lore and immersion factors seem to have decreased. Seems that everything seems to be more about pleasing players that push for end game and a lot of the details in the middle for the small crowd that enjoys the lore and immersion has been a little more neglected. No complaints here though. The boredom from that is what drove me to discover Unity a couple of years ago.. lol

 

Consider narrative with games, as opposed to story.

Story is an old concept from static media. Applying old concepts of story directly to games isn't bad, but its a long way off of the most engaging experience. It typically leaves you in situations were you do some stuff. Then a cut scene plays (which often breaks the rules of the game) then you do some more stuff. How often do you play as a super warrior that gets captured during a cut scene? How often have you seen characters die in a cut scene, despite your healing power that kept them alive in every other combat? The inclusion of explicit story in these cases harms the narrative.

KSP, and mine craft and the like often have better narrative, even though they have no explicit story. There was this time when Jed piloted a new experimental craft to Mun. He managed to land on Mun, but the engineers underestimated the strength of Mun's gravity, leaving him with not enough fuel to escape. To make matters worse he completed an EVA and the engineers had neglected to include a ladder on his ship. Jed spent several tense minutes attempting to find a way to jump and climb back onto the lander. Once he was safely aboard he transmitted data on his sample back to earth, where Valantina used the science to develop a new type of vessel and returned to the surface of Mun to rescue Jed.

That's a story that's mine and mine alone. It involved no cut scenes. It wasn't carefully thought out by the developers of the game. It will be different from every other players experience. But my concern for Jed, and the possibility that he might die stranded on Mun if I couldn't get to him on time, was more engaging then the most hand crafted mission in any other game I have played.

 

I don't think you have more games with better stories and/or narratives today, than you had in the 90s, on the contrary. I mean sure there are games now, that I enjoy in terms of story and lore, like Mass Effect and GTA5 but they are a) fewer and b) very expensive in production. I don't think, a game has to be expensive, to tell me a good tale.

Let's just wind the clocks back to the 90s then, shall we? I'll just pick 1998 and look through a couple of games that came out in that one year:

- Resident Evil 2
- StarCraft
- Unreal
- Metal Gear Solid
- Fallout 2
- Half Life
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- Thief
- Baldur's gate
- Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

Now I'm sure not everyone will like every of those games (game developers though will know all of them, or at least should), but the above are very much what I would consider gems in gaming. And they all were published within one year. Every single one of them has a story, be it simple of vast. The games have different ways of storytelling, many of them have written a good piece of gaming history and - I would submit - all of them combined were cheaper to make than GTA5. Back then they were side by side in the storage rack, where as today I have to shovel through a big pile of junk to find a game that is even remotely as well written as any of the above - and then it usually has to be one 80 million AAA production.

I could imagine, that many younger players today just don't know, what games used to be like.

 

Might as well finish this off by doing a direct comparison with the stories from this list.

I would, but its your party.

 

Feel free to! I didn't create the thread for some ranting, I'm curious to see if I'm the only one frustrated with the situation?

Two things, I notice, when I go through the 2015s list:

1) It's vast and contains incredible amouts of randomly exchangable games without recognition values, refurbished originals and plain junk, hidden in which is a small number of good (but mostly very expensive) titles.

2) If one makes a list like the above of only the very best of games in 2015 my guess is, it wouldn't come close to the 1998 pendant - at least for the 90s generation of gamers - not even remotely.

 

I couldn't agree more, but still that's not a reason to dismiss an entire generation of gamers as irrelevant for the industry.

I've heard it from quite a lot of the older generation gamers with a wife and a family, who say:
"I'd really enjoy joining my kids in the games they play, but they're so pointlessly hollow. It's all about FARMING, LEVELING, COLLECTING ITEMS, TROLLING and ACHIEVEMENTS. Games used to draw you into their own world, telling you a story, today they draw you straight to the DLC-shop..."

P.S.: I really miss the old P&C adventures too, that's why I have ScummVM installed on my Android. Today's adventures are uninspired and even more: The makers seem to seriously lack a sense of humor...

 

/Start of soap box post

I dunno. I'm honestly in the "I think it's mostly nostalgia" camp. There are several old timers on the forum, and I'm on the cusp of it myself.

I don't think that today's games are any more or less engaging. I think we have moved on to a state of life where we can no longer be immersed and engaged in a game. The pressures of life and kids and stuff has changed what we value. If you don't believe me, try go play an old game that you heard great things about but never got into. You'll find immersion and engagement just as difficult.

And looking at the kids these days, they find the games they play just as immersive and engaging as we found games in our day. We don't miss the games from our youth. We miss our youth.

Objectively speaking if you go through any logical progression of games, I just don't see the story degradation. Pick any game and run through it's 'spiritual successors' to today and I think you'll find the story quality line is essentially flat. There are good stories and bad ones. But there are no general trends.

/End of soap box

 

Now that you mention it, I did indeed have such an encounter in the past. Flash back to 2001 when my Computer was not all that good, and I didn't have the money to get a new one, so there were some games, that I missed and later totally forgot.

Fast forward to 2014: It was when I played Max Payne 3 (which I liked btw.), that I realised, I haven't played the first one in the Series. So I went ahead, bought it and to my surprise, I liked it even more than the latest one. Gameplay was great, story was amazing, and I'd guess you could make 10 such games from the money, Max Payne 3 has swallowed.

So no, I don't think, it's just nostalgia, I'm pretty sure, the game actually had something that made it very special, even for today's standards.

 

hey ! you forgot "Returtn to Castle Wolfenstein" !! that is one epic FPS that is story driven .
Mafia, Max Payne

and on a more actual note ... Wolfenstein "new order" is a nice piece of narration with tons of cutscenes.... and ..it is 43 gigs ! (if i'm not wrong)

 

I hope you realise, those 43 gigs are mostly because of cheaply or even non-compressed textures, and have virtually nothing to do with the game's narrative or length.
The PS3 has long been the role model for wasting space like that...

 

I agree with the points you make and if it were not for two things I would go through that list and pick some story-rich games from this year. But a) it seems like a waste of time to me to argue much about this in this thread, and b) there are so many game releases and I haven't had the years to catch up on the classics like I had for the 1998 games of which I've played about half.

 

That's why I haven't done it either. Its just a gut feel. Doing a proper analysis seems to be more work then its worth.

 

IMO, when you push a story line too much, you are forcing the player to see things in the perspective of the developer, when really maybe you should let the player see things in their own perspective. Let the player use their imagination.
Like looking at a painting: The painting is not explained to the viewer, the viewer can then use their own interpretation.

Because even nowdays, human face animation is still poor and unrealistic in almost 90% of games.
So many games are judged too for poor dialogue. For me it tends to ruin the game, I tend to skip through the cutscenes.
I play games for graphics, I take my time and notice all of the little things like 3d models and textures.
That's just my opinion.

 

Is a story required for a game? A few years back, I was challenged, "Curtiss, I've heard you speak about games. How come you never talk about Story?" To which I paused for a long time. And, then I paused some more, before answering, "It's a fair point. I suppose, it's because I'm not really sure if stories are required for games." Since then, I've spent thousands of hours, studying, practicing, and learning to tell stories. I tell stories about stories in games, in Ep4.

Gigi

 

Graphics, gameplay, design, mechanics, that's just the body - story is the game's soul and life, without it it's just a hollow carcass - a time comsuming one it can be, by all means - but still a hollow carcass.

 

Interesting thread.
i am exactly dueling with this dillema.
i must choose between, let's say 3 concepts that i like ... one is fun but controversial, one has a story but surely would end being a fps/adventure.
the last one, my favourite, is precisely story-driven with several chapters that will lead successively to more action.
i have been trying to figure, when, where and how action would take place to be semless with the story.
and how to tell the story in it's most scary, spectacular and immersive aspects without being too boring.
i often ended imagining it would be a concept for a tv show or a movie, and friends also imagined this as well.
why ?
because you must offer the player a minimum of action/ interaction quite quickly and frequently.
he's expecting some kind of action.
in the first part of the story, my player will be a newcommer in an old village and has to make a living to discover the beginning of the scenario.
I cannot ask the player to play 1/3 of the game quite passively or just playing gentle things such as cutting wood, crafting, making social interactions, purchasing various stuff bla bla bla..
i'm affraid the the player will not be patient enough to wait for the scenario to unroll.
the player will need a frequent interaction/action and a frequent reward. i think he will not wait time for the scenario to take him really into the heart of the story and into real "action".
Willa player accept to not begin shooting everyone everywhere in five minutes ? how long can he accept before real action ?

i Wonder if some studies have been made about "the time in videogames", but i feel time unit in videogame is not the time of a story, it's the time of a sandwich.

 

Is Tetris a hollow carcass? As the 'world's most successful game', millions of players might disagree.

Gigi

 

Ok, there you have a point, but shall we agree at least now, that I wasn't talking about minigames to begin with?

 

For the types of games I like to play, often I find in AAA games that if anything, there's too much narrative.

One of my recent favorites is Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. It's the most "open world" of that series. You can sail the seas as a pirate, go on diving challenges, explore islands, take over forts, and what seems like a million other things. But it also has "story" missions which I felt got in the way of the freeform gameplay.

Similarly, Far Cry 3 has an open world structure where you generally could go where you wanted to and do what you wanted to at any time. Except when the story missions kicked in, and restricted you from all that. It felt like it halted the main strength of the game just to shoehorn a story in.

On the flip side, I thought that The Last of Us did a superb job of weaving the narrative in. The cutscenes were rarely very long, but gave enough context and character development to make you care about what was happening. There was a good deal of dialog during gameplay too. It didn't hurt that the writing and voice acting was well above average. It also didn't hurt that the gameplay was completely linear, so a linear narrative was a perfect fit.

I do think for most action/adventure type of games, a story can be helpful in terms of enhancing the context and pulling the player in emotionally. But I don't think that it should be intrusive to gameplay and I don't think stories are the "point" of gaming. If you want a deep linear narrative, a book will often be more rewarding than clicking through endless dialog trees, waiting for cut scenes to end, or those "walk with me" dialog dumps.

 

I agree, but we might have felt differently if the Far Cry 3 story had been good. I'd rather have focused gameplay with a barebones story to give context, than a mediocre and lengthy story shoved in for the sake of having one.

 

I still catch myself. Game development is such a big topic, that even after 12 years, I still find myself making overly broad statements. I researched the power of story extensively. I really did spend a thousand hours on it. I am TOTALLY a believer in the impact of Story. And, I am pretty confident that stories are not absolutely required for games.

Gigi

 

Mind me if I'm wrong, but I do think in most games you can skip both, dialogs and cutscenes. In Mass Effect 3 where you have to make decisions during dialogs you even have the option to pass those decisions over to the computer, so you can skip conversations entirely. I care to have it all however, yet I don't see how that is limiting YOUR game experience...

But then if I don't have any of it, where's the difference between Tetris and an AAA title? The gameplay? - The graphics? - Trolls in the chat? Seriously without a story, where's the point in spending an 8-9 figure budget on a game, except for maybe binding players to some addicting yet futile repetition? Admittedly, I must be missing it.

 

Agreed - not required yet easily dispensed with.

I'm not holding up plackards stating, that every game should have a story. I just feel that we get less and less story and narrative, than we used to. I remember when the campaign mode of a game used to be around 20 hours in length. Today's average is somewhere between 5 and 10.

It strikes me as somewhat odd to get the feeling that the developers thought, "ok, we have good graphics and mechanics are decent aswell - now let's make up a story, justify a game, that is just like any other game in the same genre/engine-combination." - Result: Junk...

 

That's because the goal of alot of campaigns now is to get you through the story as quick as possible so you can start playing the multiplayer and buy more DLC as soon as possible.
I remember in GTA V there was a television show clip making fun of the COD tactic: "Buy more DLC, it makes you a better shooter".

 

Like I said earlier: Games used to draw you into their very own fantasy world - now they draw you straight to the DLC-store...

 

Ha, so true!

BTW, my kids, 15, 17 and 25, all play old games. My 17 year old daughter recently started the Assassin's Creed games and she writes her own stories to fill in what isn't in the game. She loves the story in AC. I guess she takes after me.

 

Well as opposed to spending all my time researching it, I actually DO it and let the user base holistically dictate what works in a modern concept of a "game"..

Feedback I get is interesting and in a lot of cases thought provoking, in others err not so much.

@Steve Tack

I agree with TLOU being a perfect balance from a design perspective. But the crux of the matter is, there's hundreds of intensely story induced games that have sold millions of copies.

I'm sensing something here, some of it sounds like I'm not a fan of linear narrative in games so nobody else should be. Well Mass Effect across it's life span sold 10.2 Million copies, it's not an opinion that these type of games work.

Personally do I believe there's a better way of doing things? Yes and TLOU showed that it can, I also believe games are becoming more of a statistic than an evolution. Who's got the biggest world, or who can shove the most lines of dialogue and pants into a game. Witcher 3 is way to long and Fallout 4 being "400" hours of gameplay is silly..

Actually movies are following suite at the moment, it's like they missed the phrase "less is more". They might catch on to it at some point..

 

If less were really more we wouldn't have so many darn sequels! I'm looking at YOU Disney Star Wars!

 

sequels and prequels are just a different type of DLC

 

Yes, but in a lot of titles it's all or nothing. I don't often skip cut scenes, as I *do* want some context. I guess I think they should be of a reasonable length and let players get back to playing.

There are also the games like Red Dead Redemption and GTA V with characters that have a conversation while you're in transit to an objective. You can sometimes tell that the length of the journey has been set based on how long the conversation is going to be. It's not a terrible way to handle it really, but it can be intrusive and distracting. It can also be grating when you need to replay those missions.

True, and I do think that's an example of a good way of catering to a wide spectrum of gamers.

If you're reducing all gameplay into "addicting yet futile repetition", yeah, I'd say you're missing it. People inherently like to learn new things, apply that knowledge, and progress to the next thing or just explore and interact with cool environments. It's fun. It's gameplay. A lot of modern games take place in expansive environments packed with bustling NPC's; I'm sure you could spend 8-9 figures on that alone. You're in luck though, as I don't think stories in games are going away any time soon.

 

I think this is an important point. Gaming has become so broad and so deep, that focusing on any one aspect of it can be quite limiting. Some games are barely interactive, some are insanely interactive. Some are theme/story oriented, while others are just abstract mechanics. It's all good.

 

That's why I said "for the types of games I like to play." I tend to gravitate toward the open world titles. I think that linear narrative in non-linear games is often done poorly Nothing too controversial there.

I do occasionally enjoy very linear games too. I think the Uncharted series and especially TLOU are good examples of how to mix gameplay with story.

Mass Effect did annoy me some, as it's not *quite* my cup of tea. Obviously story-heavy games sell and people love them. You even have those Telltale games that are 95% narrative.

 

Go back far enough & the games either had no story or just the bare bones, few sentences at the start, the odd 'cut scene' of word balloons between levels, & then the player made the story up themselves & it was slightly different for each player as they all played slightly differently.
Fast forward a bit & people could start adding more content so they needed more story to hook the gameplay,scenario, scene changes on but it was still fairly linear like playing out a novel. You couldn't proceed through the story until you had done everything needed in the order needed.
Further forward open worlds start to come into play. This gives the player more freedom but breaks the linear link to story which starts to cause some design issues with, in my opinion, the weak option of just scaling the difficulty of enemies as you progress. Why should npc enemies be just as hard to defeat when you meet them near the start of the game as when you meet them after you have levelled up a few times? What did those npcs go & do to level up? Stories start to be broken down into disjointed chapters that are sort of standalone so the player can do them when they want after wandering around & doing other things.
These days I agree with a lot of the posts above. I don't have time to devote an hour to a game in a sitting & neither do others in my household. I'm looking for a quick escape, either without a story or with a simple 'story' like the old style games. Ones that can be made up as I go along & are more personal because of it.

 

I rather like both open world and linear story games, sort of the same as liking historical fiction and science fiction novels. When I have time, I want a nice story driven game, although I am not really into really heavy violence so not much to choose from. As for open world, I prefer playing with other people.

I think most people are like me....different sorts of games, different sorts of books, and different sorts of TV/Movies.

Of course, I have no time now to play any sort of game.

 

Anyone played 'a dark room'? Purely a text driven game, no tutorial to speak of so a bit of a steep learning curve but it's a bit like one of the old style games but a lot more depth of play. It sort of fits with the idea of giving a player all the mechanics & they work out their own story as they play.