Comments on: The New Story-Time

By: Molly Sauter

Molly Sauter — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:08:55 +0000

Gyro: Yep, yep, totally agree with you that the prevading mainstream attitude has been towards Sexy and Shiny. I am angry at this attitude. And overjoyed at the awesome stuff that’s been coming out the indie sector recently! Esquire magazine recently published an excellent profile of the indie art-designer Jason Rohrer, who creates brilliant emotional gems of games. They are all story, no plot and I encourage everyone to go play them immediately.
Sexy plot is somewhat easier to sell when it comes with a sexy screenwriter name attached, but I’ll leave the Hollywood-writers question for another article…

By: Molly Sauter

Molly Sauter — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:05:50 +0000

Jonathan: I love going back and finding alternate paths through levels, seeing how much I can change from play-through to play-through. It lends a sense of individuality to each game “incarnation”.

What’s great to me is when discovering how to play a game is part of the game. Stand-alone tutorial levels, which are not integrated with the story, really bug me. Having an integrated learning curve helps me ground myself in the game. I thought “Portal” did this really well, as well as the new “Fallout III”.

By: Gyro

Gyro — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:10:36 +0000

Of course, there’s also the problem with tons of work going into allowing the player choice, which is often why we haven’t seen many examples of it. As I’m sure you in particular are acutely aware, games cost $$$ to make, and sexy graphics are currently the driving force behind big budgets. Sexy graphics are also easy to to sell: Look. It’s Pretty. Let Us Love It. Sexy plot requires a commitment of time to sell to financiers and the public, even if you get a whole lot more bang for your buck. Hmm, sounds like the movies….

But! Indy games seem to be an up and coming field that is thriving relatively well. Sword of the Stars isn’t cutting edge by any measure, but it’s the best space 4X game currently out by far.

And we see baby steps in the mainstream as well. Starcraft 2’s missions are supposed to be non-linear, WoW’s WotLK is messing with ‘phasing’ and if we’re lucky, others will be trying to imitate Bioware’s success in experimenting with the choose-your-own adventure style of gaming.

Speaking of which, I’ll bet you money that’s why recently-ish Bioware muttered something about “Doing our best” to incorporate the saved files in the next Mass Effect, when at release they were shouting for us to keep our saved games. Things get exponentially more complicated if you’re doing a series as you have to calculate what different various decisions will do to your plot.

Often I find myself making up my own stories as to what my character is up to as he goes along in an otherwise-barren game. For the majority of games, I doubt that will change for some time, despite the obvious benefits to everyone.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:24:51 +0000

I think that’s a big part of why the Wing Commander series was such a best seller, and still has a large fan-base. While they were, under the hood, really plot-driven with a sequence of events mostly set in stone, they enriched themselves with side plots focused on interpersonal reactions that while not affecting the ultimate win/lose, did affect the reactions of other characters to you and create a sense of life in the environment.

One of the things I find captures my attention with a First Person Shooter is when I find myself replaying a mission that I’ve beaten, purely in order to see if I can save more of my companions this time.