Give me one good reason why videogames should have stories

Give me one good reason why videogames should have stories.

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I find that meat to be suspicious in character.

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They need context for what is going on

Imagine is Super Mario Bros had Mario going through worlds and after defeating Bowser the game suddenly ends

to compensate for the flaws in the gameplay, if we focused on technical aspects alone we would be playing the same games over and over

Because they're allowed to.

To give an excuse for progression.

because it's important as it melds into gameplay and any concept a game is trying to accomplish. it's strange really

planescape torment has at best slightly amusing gameplay but great dialogue and roleplay situations while games like serious sam are pure gameplay and though the story is "there" it really doesn't matter at all

It makes them more interesting.

Games are unique to traditional narrative mediums because of the interactivity. Too many story-heavy games rely on cutscenes to further the story instead of gameplay.

There's nothing inherently wrong with stories in video games. It's all about implementation.

meat = story
bone = gameplay

give weight to scenarios

polygon please leave

Has there ever really been a single player game without a story? If you go back far enough shit like Pong doesn't really have one, but it's a simple competitive game.

I want to BONE that bone!

tetris you mong

>should
may
It's okay if they don't, it's okay if they do.

any rhythm game

Patriot Dark, it has no story in any form whatsoever and I had a ton of fun with it.

ON THE MEAT BONE
ON THE BONE MEAT
MEAT THE BONE ON
THE BONE ON MEAT

Makes the game memorable along with good music.

Remember Tetris? Pong? The original Donkey Kong? You do now that I mentioned the games' names, and those were just pure gameplay.

But you do remember Mario, right? Plumber saves the princess? Doom, where you're a marine who has to save humanity from demons? Fucking metal gear solid? Yeah, you do.

>Imagine is Super Mario Bros had Mario going through worlds and after defeating Bowser the game suddenly ends

Still feels like a story to me, though more of one through interpretation really.

As long as the story doesn't interfere with or hurt the gameplay it's fine and can even add to the game a bit

The issue comes up when devs shove the story down the players throat at any cost

Originally, human's only form of entertainment were stories. As mankind evolved, men were no longer staring straight at stories anymore, so we evolved gameplay. Gameplay is merley a copy of stories! IF YOU ASKED ME IF I WANTED THE COPY OR THE ORIGINAL, I WOULD OBVIOUSLY PICK THE ORIGINAL!

Some people need a goal given to them which is easy through story
It really does depend on the game, street fighter and monster hunter doesn't really need a story behind it but some people like things a bit more fleshed out or a reason they are doing the things that they are or fighting a certain thing

You justify why they shouldn't have stories.

Elite Beat Agents says youre wrong

It gives the player more in the game.
It also lets you build things off the story, like game play mechanics and what not.
like Imagine a section where you have to save someone and it turns into a puzzle or a minigame.

Also the agency is important.
if a player wants to keep playing because the story is cool they'll keep playing. The gameplay then can compliment and the two seperate experiences can mesh and make and even better all around experience.

if we're going to use a food analogy

Meat is the gameplay
Story is the bone/spices

meat can be good, but just eating chunks of meat is boring. eating it off the bone or cooked with spices will make it better. The meat is very important but the additives will always improve the experience past any amazing tasting meat.

It provides a narrative structure and reason why you're shooting giant aliens and shit. Most players at least want to know who they are and what their goal is, even if it's as simple as "You're a space marine, now go blow shit up."

Granted, some games can do stories really well, but they usually have to tie it into the interactivity in some way to make something good. Most prefer to strap you to the cutscene chair and forcefeed you hour after hour of exposition, which is god fucking awful unless you have really excellent writing. And 99% of video games really can't afford that level, even ones that put an emphasis on their stories.

Tetris is a story about how communism sucks.

I like that analogy user, you could push it further too

If the meat itself is rotten or otherwise shit no spices will make it great, they can only cover the worst of the flaws

youtube.com/watch?v=PuCxDymdCDU

listen to this cuck.

nothing, it to help our shitty human brain remember. We can't remember gameplay but we can remember stories.

yep.

and story only games are fucking cancer.

VNs aren't games.

>plumber saves the princess
That's not what I remember mario for. I remember mario for solid platforming, and pleasant music and visuals.
>doom
I honestly don't remember a single one of those text walls at the end of episodes, but I remember E4M2 like it's my living room.
>metal gear solid
Honestly I try to forget that trainwreck of a story. I have to admit the stories of MGS1 and 2 have stuck with me. They were honestly more interesting to me than the games themselves. Kojima really should've made movies instead of games. The dude can write some cool characters, or he used to be able to at least.

A story puts a beggining and an end in a videogame, because all good things end.

Without a story, all you'd have is gameplay. If gameplay is all you have is unending gameplay, you'll eventually get bored of it, because it never ends, especially because it's a singleplayer game. Without a beggining or end, gameplay has no choice but to repeat itself over and over until you get bored of said repetition.

Would you play tetris forever and ever?

Same reason porns have context,to make user's dick hard

Geometry wars comes to mind

The story is your actions not the end goal or the small bits of dialogue.

You saving the princess by going left to right is the story. If mario just went left to right for no reason it wouldn't actually feel the same. You'd get to the end and then play the next level.

It would just be a mini game like flappy birds.

I honestly think porn stories improve the porn dramatically.

People that skip to the porn are stupid unless the (story) is cringy as fuck.

>Should
There is none.
>Could
Same reason stories should exist in general.

As a food analogy, it would be infinite meat. You'd have a never ending supply of "gameplay", but you would eventually get bored of just meat every single meal every single day, someday just vomit it all out after eating too much and look for something else.

>food analogy
right

Tetris has a lot more replay value than most story-based games
I think the best games have healthy balance between the two, but you can have a game without a story; you can't have a game without gameplay cue the ps4/telltale memes

there is no "good reason". they're tacked on by shitty writers. If every game from now on had no spoken dialogue or story, I'd be more than fine.

food is like the most basic thing for humans that everyone can relate to.

it's also very simple to boil down.
Get X to survive.
Add to X for delicacy

so really food analogies just make sense to use.

>Replay value
>Tetris
What replay value? You just stack shapes.

Points don't give any replay value either. It's the simplest game you could think of, like stacking rocks all day and then topple them down to do it all over again.

you're shit and you don't understand story in games.

enjoy your android bargain bin of cool ideas.

When I first played mario I couldn't even read. Furthermore I've played games without stories recently and it never felt like a minigame.

Explain why food analogies are invalid.

Come on.

I know you're just kidding, it's okay. Try another angle to get more outraged replies, maybe about how it's 30 years old so it's garbage or you don't know your motivation

Cho Ren Sha 68k
There's no explanation as to where you are, why you're shooting all these robots, why all these robots are attacking you, who you are, nothing. And when you beat the game all it tells you is MISSION COMPLETE and then boots you back to the beginning of the game, but with a harder difficulty.

>Furthermore I've played games without stories recently and it never felt like a minigame.

could yo name one?
I'm willing to bet I can find a story in it, and I'm not just trying to prove a point.

meat = story
bone = gameplay

not a food analogy

>grumble, grumble...

I believe you mean "enjoy your super mario bros." because the first three were bare minimum. All you had to do was get to the end and they're classic. The entire story was kept to the manual.
SMW is a little worse, starting out with a dumb story setting, and after each castle the tedious dialogue screens, but the levels themselves are fun

Still waiting for your counterargument, if you have one.

I'm just saying that if I had to choose between pure story or pure gameplay I'd choose gameplay every time.
I have yet to see a video game with a story good enough to enjoy several times. If I was stuck with one game for a year I would pick terraria, not the wolf among us

No, because as soon as I reply to you seriously, you'll think you have won, it will legitimize your attempt.
You being ignorant isn't the same as winning an argument. You completely misunderstanding the point of video games doesn't make you correct and it doesn't mean you have a point, it just means you're ignorant. Being ignorant means you won't accept fact or truth solely because your ego is too big and you were wrong.

Some people like stories

story isn't fluff like princess peach, you going to the end of the level is the story.

A level in a game is a story user.
if a game ends for a reason thats a story.
Any goal is a story.

It makes them interesting.
That's it.

then some people need to pick up a fucking book

you're being petty and arguing something completely different than what you're displaying it as
you and everybody else understand what a "story" is in a game, and trying to be poetic about "each level is like a journey, man, just read into it" isn't the point of this

Give me one good reason you should be allowed to waste oxygen and valuable non renewable resources? Most fucking retarded thread i've seen today

>I have yet to see a video game with a story good enough to enjoy several times
>Bastion
>Metro 2033
>S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
>Gradius
>Megaman X
>Command & Conquer
>Ace Combat

Thanks for telling me you have the shittiest taste in vidya. You can go to sleep now.

>as soon as I reply to you seriously, you'll think you have won, it will legitimize your attempt.
So you're scared of inevitably proving my point. It's okay, user.

If you think anybody still played tetris after being presented a better game with more content, you're more than just delusional. Stop being ignorant.

Why having story, if the game doesn't benefit from it?
Why not having one when it does?

A fighting game doesn't need a story just good mechanics, but a role playing game would negatively impacted from not having an adventure to experience.

>then some people need to pick up a fucking book

A story is more engaging in a videogame because you're not just a spectator or a reader. You're part of it. It's not hard to understand.

ah yes, the gripping tales of megaman and gradius, truly epics.

>you're being petty and arguing something completely different than what you're displaying it as
>you and everybody else understand what a "story" is in a game, and trying to be poetic about "each level is like a journey, man, just read into it" isn't the point of this

that's LITTERALLY what video game stories are.
Like you need to understand that different mediums have different stories.
Like movies tell a story using movie tools like cutting and visual cinematography.
Music can have notes and themes for certain points mesh together or counter eachother to tell a story.

A video games story is the win state or the lose state. and how you build from that.
saying games don't need stories is fucking STUPID.
Just because you've seen too many pretentious games with a "wow so deep" and thought that stories were killing games. But they're not, they're extremely vital to your enjoyment of them.

Tetris

>no one has ever played played tetris after playing another game
fucking genius

I'll take that as an "I admit defeat". Thank you.

>You're part of it.
only applies to games built around theyre story. 99% of games have one tacked on in between gameplay.

Tetris doesn't feel like a minigame?

terraria

>99% of games have one tacked on in between gameplay.
Then play the good ones. They exist, you know.

There are good games with story in the pile of games with shit story, much like there are (very) few games with good gameplay in the pile of games with shit gameplay.

>They exist, you know.
but as I said they make up less then one percent, making your "you're a part of vidyo stories" invalid for most games and genres.

you're making your own story in that game, setting your own goals and what not.

It probably sounds stupid, but without that you wouldn't enjoy terraria.
Same thing with minecraft, surviving wasn't fun building and surviving was. I honestly don't think anyone plays minecraft for the survival aspects

>but as I said they make up less then one percent
Good. It's even easier to save money to buy the good ones.

>making your "you're a part of vidyo stories" invalid for most games and genres.
Incorrect. It holds true for any game with a story. Wether it's a good game or not is a different case.

I've been playing TGM for years. I can't even remember a game released in the past 5 years or so that interests me as much. There's an extreme satisfaction in improving in that game, and the pleasure of that heavily outweighs anything a videogame story has caused me to feel in quite a while.

because some of them aren't fun to play

some are neither though like gone homo

>It holds true for any game with a story
How? Most of the time you have no effect on the story whatsoever unless you count a gameover as an alternate ending or some shit, that would really be reaching.

>How?
Like I said, being good or bad, the game's story makes you, the player, part of it. Its quality is not a factor. If you play a game with a story, you're an agent in said story.

Context.

Give me one good reason why no video game should ever include any sort of plot, lore, or characterization ever again. Not just the "hardcore" multiplayer games you play, all of them.

Honestly, the kind of people that "don't have time for that shit" are the same kind of casual that only plays mobile shovelware or the latest triple-A shooter. Don't care 'bout none o' dis, jus' let me play mah GAME.

Video games is a really shitty catch-all term for interactive entertainment. There can be different kinds of interactive entertainment so the problem isn't story in video games it's interactive stories being lumped in the same category as digital games so people assume something needs the traits of both despite something being more gamelike tells a worse story and better story telling makes for worse gameplay.

I'd go as far as to say that "video games" is a harmful term that doesn't inform the consumer about the content of of the medium and can make devs make bad decisions about their software because they can justify sub-par design choices in their software because "it's a video game so it's gotta have x".

More succinctly, we're living in a world where the words "car", "plane", "vehicle" and "boat" either don't exist or are seldom used. Cars, boats and planes are all just refereed to as cars so engineers have to work with assumptions like boats have to have really good gas mileage on the road, planes need to be sea worthy and cars need to deal with turbulence well.


In this carplaneboat world what's typically sold could be barely serviceable cars that can barely corner but they're also buyout enough to ford a river and can glide off of a cliff KIND OF but only fucking insane carplanefags will actually try to fly your typical carplaneboat. If someone produced something like a normal-ass Ford Fiesta some reviewers would go nuts while others will write thinkpieces about the Ford Fiesta completely failing as a car and shitposters on car forums would make posts about how it's casual shit with no air game and can't even float.

How? You have no effect on the story. You have an effect on the gameplay, you're apart of the game but not the story, the plot, the dialog, the cutscenes, the characters, anything to do with the story whatsoever.

What about people that play Roguelikes? Do you think I really care about the name of the magical item at the bottom of the dungeon or the guy that's standing in the way of it?

Hey, lets be honest here.
If we lived in carplaneboat world we would all be buying whatever works most like a plane that can land on water. No one would care about getting a ford fiesta.

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>How? You have no effect on the story.

user.

You control the main character which in turn acts in the story. You're making it all happen. I didn't mean they have to break the fourth wall and address you directly to make you part of it( even though games like OFF do.)

Take for example Point Man from F.E.A.R. You're not him, but you're controlling him directly as the player. You're moving the story forward by playing a part in it; the way he kills REPLICA soldiers, the paths he takes, and so on and so fourth.

Marked One from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is another example. You lead him throughout the story yourself, making your own path to the CNPP as the story progresses, determining which faction he joins, which enemies he makes, and consequently moving the plot forward. It all culminates in an ending you yourself choose, depending on your actions throughout the course of the game.

Speaking of OFF, it has pretty barebones gameplay and a fuckload of people love its story. Goes to show how a good story can save a shitty videogame.

You know, I thought of roguelikes but in the end didn't mention them by name, probably should have.

No, you're not more hardcore for playing an RNG simulator and not every game needs to be some procedurally generated mess. It's on the same level as mobile garbage, just with pure "replayability" in its random chance instead of offering pay-to-win options (or "pay for another chance to win" in a lot of cases)

Because a few games can do stories well. Most TV shows suck. Doesn't mean you should destroy all of TV.

All of those have excellent gameplay as well, reinforcing my initial point that the best games have both

They shouldn't unless it makes the game better????

ONCE AGAIN RICH FLYFAGS THINK THAT FLYING IS ALL A CAR NEEDS TO DO

We all can't use mommy's credit card to buy a car with good airtime or afford Sony's proprietary car fuel that you have to use to even fucking move on land. Not everyone has daddy's landing strip to come home to, some of us live in apartments that only have universal car ports to drive into. Literally the only good thing about sky driving is if you're in a clan because sky driving in groups is way more fun due to land driving being so limited by lanes and water driving limited by location

I mean sure, if it's buoyancy is decent and someone lives near a a cost or river parking in your sea car port is fine but not everyone lives on the coast.

Land based drivingis what cars are all about fag the other shit is for richfags and children

Story helps to increase player immersion in the game, and it serves a similar purpose as improving game graphics served. Why have story? Why have anything more than 8-bit graphics while we're at it (FUCKING HIPSTER INDIE DEVS THAT WAS SARCASM FUCK OFF WITH YOUR GODDAMN 8-BIT LOLSORETRO SHIT)

Not everyone is an e-sport autist like Carmack who still thinks Quake was the best game to ever be made in the history of the industry.

There isn't a single RPG outside of the genre that can stand up to adom, or even nethack. No amount of worldbuilding, character development, FMVs, and flashy animations can make up for lacking speed of play and less than tight design. The procedural generation isn't what makes roguelikes good, roguelikes are good in spite of it. It only improves them by giving them more unique content. Imagine literally any turn based RPG outside of the genre being stripped down to its gameplay, ascii graphics, and randomized dungeons. There isn't a single one with good enough gameplay to actually hold up under those conditions, they get carried by the previously mentioned things that appeal to losers like you.

Because TES lore is truly magical.

>adom, or even nethack

These games raped the rogue formula and ruined roguelikes forever. Bloated, grindy messes needing a huge time investment via spoilers or trial & error are a fucking thousand times worse than your typical RPG turned ascii. I would much rather play a new ascii Dragon Quest than a new nethack clone because speed of gameplay wouldn't get broken up by looking up spoilers or deaths purely out of ignorance. Not to mention grinding having way, way less impact on my success due to the lack of permadeath.

It keeps the user engaged, and gives value to their actions even if that value is fictitious. Its the reason why you put down a platformer flash game after 12 minutes but play though all super mario world despite them having identical mechancis.