The importance of video games to human development cannot be overstated. I believe there have been three major inventions that have radically shifted the creative horizons of the human species and the reality we continue to shape for ourselves. The first would be movable type and the advent of the printed word, the second would be motion pictures, and the latest revolutionary intellectual force would be interactivity. Video games and the internet that many of them run on have irreversibly transformed the human race and set our consciousness on an exciting new course of development.
I marvel at the advancements this medium has made in my lifetime. From photo realistic graphics to complex game mechanics to real world physics we are seeing video games mature and match sophistication with the other, older mediums in a relatively short period of time. However, I feel that in one particular area video games are stagnating, shockingly and perplexingly so.
Not nearly enough games tell us stories worth paying attention to.
These personal thoughts have coalesced into this essay over the past few months while I have played some of the most technically impressive games of my life, all the while having to suffer through some terribly ineffective stories. The magnum opus that is Grand Theft Auto IV is really just a thin tale of crime and retribution made even cheaper by how much material it shamelessly lifts from other sources such as The Wire. The latest Metal Gear Solid is even worse; a melodramatic abortion without subtlety or restraint.
To make my point I ask you to look over your own collection of games and take note of the many worthwhile titles where the narrative runs from poor to just plain awful. More often than not, story is the weakest part of any game. Resident Evil 4, Gears of War, Army of Two, Dark Sector, Devil May Cry 4, Halo 3, and Condemned 2 are titles I’ve recently played or replayed that spring to mind. I love the game play in each of these titles but the story in all of them is very poorly written. There were interesting concepts and imaginative scenes but the good writing needed to thread them all together was absent.
Good writing can and does take place, which is why the culture of narrative failure present in the video game industry is all the more mystifying. Epic, far-reaching stories have been effectively told in this medium. As recent examples I thought Mass Effect, Bioshock, and the Half-Life episodes did a fine job, at least fine enough given the overall ineptitude of their peers.
Small, contained and compelling stories have also been told. In Portal we see the simple arc of a malfunctioning A.I. who hopes to lure a test subject to their doom only to be outwitted and destroyed… that and cake. Portal exemplifies the idea that it’s not what story you’re telling but how you tell it that matters. Why do so few video game developers know how to tell their own stories?
Being an avid game consumer but admittedly looking from the outside — in, I have come to speculate on why effective storytelling seems so vexing to game development. Just as movie writing isn’t the same as book writing, is there some radical, yet to be discovered skill-set needed to create the video game equivalent of a page-turner? Has the industry not committed to the writing process as they have to coding or animation? Are video games inherently at cross purposes with story telling and only rare geniuses can occasionally skirt this inevitability? Perhaps each major development house has a different answer to my question but what I can say with absolute certainly is that we, the players, are somewhat to blame.
We accept these stories, you see. We pay, we play, we praise, and all the while we remain mostly silent on the quality of the narrative. We are silent because we have accepted that poor storytelling is the norm. We tell ourselves that the medium is still in its infancy, or that the luminary artists of literature have not yet embraced games as a career path, or that story is naturally going to take the back seat to a product that allows you to shoot people in the head for hours on end. We make excuses for the developers who in turn fail to consider story as a priority. They are not motivated to evolve.
We should demand they evolve!
If a story goes nowhere, falls flat, is uninteresting, has been told too many times, or is just preposterously stupid then it should be pointed out, emphatically. The enthusiast media’s ranking system leaves much to be desired and has been rightly vilified of late, yet it is the only system we have and it should be made to take the writing more into account. If a game comes with an idiotic or half-assed story it should be mentioned and a perfect or near perfect score should be out of reach.
Our personal criticisms should always be constructive of course, but they should be vocal enough that they are taken to heart by the game creators. By the same token, if a game tells a fine story it should be encouraged, even if the other aspects of the game are not up to snuff. After all, isn’t turnabout fair play? For too long we have accepted awful writing because the visuals and game play are excellent.
We should be holding writing up to the same kind of scrutiny we give screenshots and trailers. Dedicated game players no longer accept poor quality graphics and surprise: the vast majority of games these days look beautiful. We the players can and have affected the culture of gaming on many fronts – for good or ill, depending on who you ask. Now we need to begin a new groundswell to bring writing proficiency in step with the other, more advanced aspects of game design.
“By the same token, if a game tells a fine story it should be encouraged, even if the other aspects of the game are not up to snuff. After all, isn’t turnabout fair play? For too long we have accepted awful writing because the visuals and game play are excellent”
Should a movie with terrible dialogue, pacing, and acting be given a free pass just because it has a great soundtrack?
the way i would analogize that would be: if a movie with a touching story doesnt really have great special effects or had to be filmed in black and white we can still laud the story, no?
i agree with this completely. too long have plots been the special ed kids of otherwise great videogames. if we need to handle games with legit storylines with kid gloves just to encourage them (as wesley suggests we avoid) i would even be for that.
I think you’re making things black and white, Wesley. When a mediocre game has original ideas I give it a little extra credit. It makes sense for someone who values plot to do similarly. Actually giving free passes is probably a bad idea, though.
And I have heard of people saying a move should be seen for a specific reason other than “it was good” such as “see it just for the shots,” “soundtrack,” “special effects,” etc.
The idea of giving something a free pass is somewhat rooted in the reviewers imaginary beliefs that he is somehow objectively analyzing a game. If scores as a whole are tossed out we are simply discussing what is worth experiencing and what isn’t and it then becomes much easier in my mind to justify playing a game for a specific aspect, such as plot.
We need the entire industry to be held up to an higher standard. For example, it bothers me that Mass Effect is a shining example of game storytelling. ME’s story is one we have seen before in countless Sci-fi yarns, and is presented like a cheesy 80’s sci-fi film. Regardless of what people playing it or making claim, the game itself doesn’t have illusions of grandeur, and it works because of that. But so much more can be done in the genre, and I won’t stop until I see it.
Also, a good point I read is that games are closer to the performing arts (like interpretive dance or ballet)than they are film and book and music. Perhaps this is where they should draw their story inspirations.
i agree with christian about mass effect. if a movie tried to get away with some of the storytelling used in that game we would accuse the screenwriters of hackery. even bioshock completely dodged making the most interesting points it could have with its sell out of an ending.
The problem with the game storylines is that yes, they’re mediocre, but moreso that they’re a complete disconnect from the “game” part of the game.
For example, GTA’s stories suck not because they’re poorly told, in fact they’re fairly above average crime dramas. The stories suck because when I’m playing the game, which is most of the time, the story’s not about a war veteran who’s trying to redeem himself and exorcise his personal demons, it’s about blowing up cars with rocket launchers and leaping out of helicopters. This is almost a polar opposite of the short vignettes the “director” wants me to see.
With Metal Gear Solid, the movie clips included in the game show all sorts of daring acrobatics and crazy choreographed fights, but the true story of the game while I’m playing is that of a man crawling around on his stomach shooting people with tranquilizer darts.
In Bioshock, the “story” is about the fall of Rapture and politics and objectivist ramblings, but the story while I’m playing is some nameless superman gunning down hordes of people with shotguns and lightning bolts (that, ironically, the audio recordings were apparently supposed to make me sympathize with them). Because I’m so game-minded, I harvested all the little sisters because it gave me more adam, which in turn made the storyline I was writing more entertaining.
Do you skip cutscenes in repeat (or original) playthroughs of games? If so, then the cutscenes fail. You don’t skip chapters in a movie or book. Do you replay games, or just play them once to see the cutscenes? If so, why are you playing games instead of watching movies or reading books if you want a linear, pre-planned narrative. I turn on my game consoles because I want things to happen when I press buttons, to boil it down to the most basic statement I can.
For me, the best stories are those that are completely emergent. Mass Effect is second-rate scifi, but it’s entertaining because I’m writing alot of what happens as I play. Halo and Half Life 2 are entertaining because my approach to the battles changes every time I play, making it a new, interesting adventure every time. Stuff like GTA & Crackdown have entertaining “stories” to me, because the stories are about chaotic humorous physics reactions and unplanned (on the developer’s part) mayhem. Half Life 2’s “cutscenes” even fail in my eyes, for as much as I love the game, because it’s the story of a mute repeatedly firing filing cabinets at people’s heads while they give him mission objectives. The entertaining parts of that story are when Gordon was out of crossbow ammo and had the awesome idea of killing someone by launching a dresser at them.
I know this is long, but it’s all leading up to something. The interactivity of games is what makes it unique as a storytelling medium, and that’s hardly embraced. Cutscenes, in alot of ways, are a form of cheating. Having newpapers and graffiti in Half Life 2 that the player voluntarily looks at to tell of earth’s fall is extremely engaging, and something that is unique to gaming. Watching the way flood parasites latch onto corpses and become the full grown enemies if far more effective than having Cortana pop in and say “hey look, this is how the flood do that”.
The problem is that this kind of storytelling requires vision, and lots of it. When you have 200+ people all working on a project, it becomes tougher to come up with these kind of things, so generic ideas like supersoldier saves galaxy or whiny teen stops evil mastermind are prevalent, because once you have that on paper all the seperate departments can do their thing.
It’s evident in a game like Shadow of the Colossus or Half Life 2 that there is a rich lore behind the world, and the world has been built around that lore. What the player gets out of it (in the form of narrative) is all based around what they choose to observe and the conclusions they draw from it. This is the kind of storytelling that’s 100% unique to the gaming medium, and the one that will be embraced more as soon as the lowest common denominator stops hailing a completely non-interactive fight scene with Raiden as “great storytelling in games”.
This all ties in with my soundtracks comment, because alot of movies work perfectly fine without traditional soundtracks (No country for old men), just like games work perfectly fine without traditional stories. Playing a game for its cutscenes seems, to me, like the wrong reason to play games. You reward for beating level one should be playing level two. Watching some martial arts fight scene or a chase sequence just makes me wish I was playing it instead. Watching some dialogue makes me wish I could pick the responses from a tree, and tell Otacon to shut the fuck up because I’m trying to save the world.
Sorry, I know that’s quite a rambling comment. You know, stream of conciousness and all that.
I think you’re deconstructing too far, Wes. Crawling around on your stomach may be a lot of what you actually do when you’re whatever Solid Snake is supposed to be. My job title becomes comical when you break things down to such a degree as well – I type and read and sometimes write.
I don’t mean to defend any specific game’s plot, but every game can be made trite by closely breaking it down into its components. If you zoom out far enough the story of all life is “these animals that ate, slept, fucked and died.”
I think you’re missing the point. I’m not trying to break down a game into gameplay components to say running or jumping or shooting is good or bad, my point I’m raising is that the story in a game is everything that happens from when you press start on NEW GAME to the end credits, and in alot of games, the cutscenes are very different, almost polar opposites of the interactive part. The interactive part is what’s important, because that’s what’s unique to games. The poorly written, poorly animated, poorly voice-acted short stories that take place between levels detract from the rest of the “story” as a result.
“The interactivity of games is what makes it unique as a storytelling medium, and that’s hardly embraced.”
Wes has hit upon the way I feel about stories in games. I think a lot of developers just want to make movies with gameplay segments jammed in somewhere and that viewpoint fails to realize the potential of the medium. Add to that the fact that videogames are still largely serving the peurile fantasies of young men and it’s not a great formula for generating Henry V. I’m NOT saying that we can’t have good games with good stories in them with interesting and compelling cutscenes, we can and I think we should demand them as the post states.
But I’m ready for developers to think about how they will make something that is distinctly different from a movie, where the intent is to do more than just to tell a story with a pre-written beginning middle and end. It may be that we need more technological and conceptual development to get there. It may be that we can’t get there. It may be that single player games will never really create compelling stories that aren’t completely written before it’s booted up by the player, and maybe multiplayer development is the only way to go in that regard (some devs have tried, see A Tale in the Desert). But I play Shadow of the Colossus and I’m struck by how the game makes me ~feel~ about the world and about myself, and I’m thinking there’s something more developers can do that they’re not currently doing.
I understand the points being made and they sound theoretically sound but something still doesn’t click for me. Maybe I just like books with some minor interactivity. Imagine games that are 90% as good as books but let you play a little, how awesome would that be?
I’d rather that cutscene & scriptwriting dev time and budget was spent on balancing weapons, more levels, better multiplayer maps, improving user interfaces, framerate, set pieces, draw distances, textures, load streaming, physics, AI routines, etc etc etc.
The same way presentation budgets can be overblown and that money would have been better spent making the gameplay better, too much effort can be spent on writing and cut scenes. This doesn’t mean all games should only have the bare minimum graphics and sound necessary to allow for their gameplay.
The idea that games should sharply focus on interactivity will become one espoused by professors only one day, much like “show me, don’t tell me” has for movies. Maybe when moving pictures were new they were so exciting that people thought they needed to focus on the image part alone but by now there are hundreds if not thousands of amazing movies that have much more dialog than impressive cinematography.
…and those people should have just made books instead. :D
My favorite story by Hemmingway is also his shortest. It is only six words long and reads as follows:
“For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”
These six words when string together suggest a tragic and moving story in its entirety. The hope, preparations, tragedy, despair, and resolution form a very well defined arc. I had not thought of this until Christian suggested it, but in both ballet and games the story must be presented in a minimalist way, because otherwise it interferes with the immediacy of the physical performance.
Think of Passage crafting a meaningful and touching story out of very few elements and the ideas suggested by their interaction. Portal, Thief, Shadow of the Colossus, and Homeworld are others that spring to mind. Homeworld, for instance, told an incredibly moving tale with only about 10 or 12 black and white hand-drawn cutscenes, none of which contained dialog. They didn’t so much tell the story as suggest it, and they provided the proper atmosphere and backdrop for the level that was about to occur. Then in playing the level, the story was advanced through immediate interaction.
There is an opposite approach, taken by JRPGs and Adventure Games. Sam and max, for instance, tells a great comedic story. The problem is that the story doesn’t really need the game. As a test, I went and watched a full playthrough of one of the telltale episodes on youtube, and found it to be almost exactly as rewarding as playing through the game. These games can certainly offer great stories, but I now believe it is through minimalism that stories will be crafted that will make people say “This could _only_ have been told as a game.”
Sam and Max is perhaps even better when as a perfect playthrough where each line and scene is in place. I’m not really sure what that means. On one hand, it means that the game is at its best when paced like a tv show. But its a game – modeled after TV episodes. And yet the only way to achieve it is via solid play. Hmmmmm…
What of your favorite series, Stef? How do you feel about a game that both tells a heavy story somewhat through passive scenes but then also uses the gameplay to enforce its themes and elicit emotion from the player?
Isn’t this the best of many worlds? Like a movie that has copious amounts of great dialog and awesome camera shots and beautiful action?
Guessing that you’re referring to Shenmue Jay, I probably have to put it into the same category as Sam and Max.
With the disclaimer that I absolutely adore both of those series, I’ve found that the story doesn’t suffer significantly when separated from the gameplay. They released a well-timed playthrough of Shenmue in theaters and on DVD in japan. I own a copy, and I actually tend to watch the DVD more often than I play the game at this point.
It’s a great story, and an amazing game. It’s very much worth playing, many times over. I’m not sure if it’s an example of the ideal way to tell a story through a game, however. If every story we tell could be just as effectively conveyed via film or in a book, then we aren’t using the medium to its full extent, and aren’t taking advantage of its unique properties.
i can speak for jay (to a degree) and myself when i say that i really do enjoy games that are pure gameplay, which is what wesley seems to be advocating. for example, i just bought castle shikigami 3. my contention regarding plots is that just as there is a place for independence day and transformers:the movie, there is a place for my dinner with andre. the fact that people do buy plot-focused games (phoenix wright has been mentioned)implies there is a parallel in games.
i agree with the sentiment that where there is plot in games telling the story by using the medium’s strength is optimal (though probably not required). this is why ueda is an auteur. sotc and especially ico are the best examples i have played of games that tell tales through gameplay. i disagree with stefan because i think there may be a genius out there who can tell less minimalist stories while still taking full advantage of the interactivity offered by games. or maybe im being selfish and optimistic.
There is no place for Transformers: The Movie outside of film school courses on “examples of what any self-respecting filmmaker should never, ever do”. :P
I get what you’re saying, though.
“If every story we tell could be just as effectively conveyed via film or in a book, then we aren’t using the medium to its full extent, and aren’t taking advantage of its unique properties.”
The above statement is not true.
As far as narrative is concerned there is nothing unique about videogames. Nothing. At all. There is nothing special about videogames as a storytelling medium. there is also nothing unique about paining, film, sculpture, literature or Mongolian throat singing when it comes to narrative. There is nothing that can be done is terms of a narrative in any form that can not be done in another.
I love videogames as much as any writer on VL but i get a little peeved when anyone claims that their preferred medium has unique characteristics (when it comes to storytelling)
As an example I offer the volumes of writing from the early 20th century about the revolutionary nature of film and its narrative capacity, most notable of which is Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 1. Time and experience has shown us that while these theories seemed sound in their historical context of excited first time moviegoers with hopes of revolutionizing storytelling as a concept in the end not one of them was able to authoritatively prove how the narratives in film are different or unique from all the other mediums.
I hate to go all Joseph Campbell here but narrative is narrative across time and medium.
I think I just decided the topic of my comeback article: why my beloved videogames are in no way special.
So you mean to say that interactivity has no bearing on game narratives at all? That it doesn’t in any way seperate games from film and literature? So dialogue trees and letting the viewer choose what they pan the camera around to look at can just as easily be done in film & literature?
The above implications are not true.
Yes, that is exactly what I mean to say. Interactivity does not make storytelling in videogames any different from any other art form that utilizes a narrative. Interactivity in no way revolutionizes, changes or modifies the principles of narrative structure.
also, as per your question Wesley, “so dialogue trees and letting the viewer choose what they pan the camera around to look at can just as easily be done in film & literature?”
why of course. The effect of the ‘choice’ which you are describing can easily be achieved in any medium.
Ok, so how does a director give the audience in a movie the option to look at the environment 360 degrees? Do they put little joysticks in the back of movie theater seats?
What about in books? If an author describes a chair in great detail, but the reader wants to know what the window of the same room looks like, how does that information get conveyed?
The only way what you are saying would make sense is if a button prompt came up on screen that said “Press A to make Indiana Jones shoot the swordsman”, which, now that I think about it, would make it a video game and not a movie.
If you’re talking about user interpretation of presented information being interactivity, I agree, but it’s a whole different end of the spectrum when the stimulus/response interactivity of button press = action is introduced.
i think you two are arguing at cross purposes. there is something timeless and constant (the joseph cambell effect shota describes) about storytelling across different media (themes, characterization, the ability to reveal aspects of the human condition), but there are strengths and weaknesses to each. the different media play to their strengths in different ways and occasionally attempt clever ways to overcome them.
choose your own adventure books (to take a simple and familiar example) are a literary novelty, while interactivity is a hallmark of games. a strength, if you will.
Well, there’s obviously a linearity to narrative as it’s traditionally defined, with stories having a beginning, middle, and end. That’s no different in games than movies and books. But something like an open-ended sandbox game has a narrative that is perpetual, adding a new chapter every time the player boots it up. That’s something that’s still relatively new to the game medium, just as movies and books aren’t the same as they were a decade a go, let alone a century.
I’m just a bit confused by what Shota’s trying to say. I would like to see some of his reasoning for saying there is no difference in the storytelling abilities of film, literature, and games, especially when speaking in such absolutes as “in no way”.
I think my position may be that things happening is not narrative. Sand box games may be full of stuff happening but that’s narrative as much as Pacman eating pellets is narrative.
The original article says it well – “Not nearly enough games tell us stories worth paying attention to.”
But that’s relevant to the discussion at hand. “Pacman eats pellets” IS the story of Pacman.
My beef is that a modern rendition of that would have Pacman eating pellets in the part that you play, and then a cutscene in between levels about his love story with Ms. Pacman, and epic chase sequences and shootouts.
I would argue that choice, which is what wes alludes to in his initial response to my last comment, is illusory in videogames. At least as far a narratives are concerned. The greater the choice given to the player the lesser the narrative. Which is why sandbox games suffer from poor narratives. The best they can do with those games is to let you make those choices that ultimately do not comprise a narrative (because as jay said, stuff happening, i.e. pacman eating pallets, is not narrative) and then insert some mandatory structure in the form of cut scenes. I don’t think this will ever change. Sandbox games are inherently, conceptually at odds with a narrative. I would also say that to some degree all interactivity (if we define interactivity as watching effects of button pressing) is at odds with narrative.
Plot is not the same as story.
Narrative requires structure, and the form and particularities of that structure spans media. and this i do mean as a universal statement.
I get you now. I think we hold two vastly different definitions of narrative, and you’re looking at it from a very traditional angle.
In that case, consider my usage of the word “narrative” with “everything that happens in a game from start to finish”, because that’s the context in which I was using it.
I contest what you say about sandbox games though, because the story that a player crafts as they play it is what the main draw to those games is. When people are telling each other about the game of GTA they played the night before, they’re not saying “and then Niko said this awesome line to Dmitri”, they’re saying “and then I drove a car into the ocean and it blew up!” That’s the kind of “story” I refer to when I say narrative, the kind that can only be created with user interaction in a game. I don’t know the exact semantics you would use to define that, but that’s what I’m referring to here.
I’m done though, I’m gonna spare Jay further ranting in his website comments on my part because I don’t think I have any new points to make at this point.
I’m depressed to realize Ms. Packman DID contained the cutscenes Wesley described when it came out 27 years ago (minus the shooting part). Regardless, I’d say there’s still some value to using cutscenes as waypoints to juxtapose the game play with the developer’s intentions. It’s been discussed on this sight before whether what an artist’s intended message should count for anything anyway, but I’m inclined to believe that a potential strength for games to get a story across (beyond their ability to communicate the simple stories we create ourselves through game play) lies with developers consciously choosing to manipulate the player through guidance via cutscene. Coming to the realization at the end of Silent Hill 2 wouldn’t be possible without both the player’s input throughout the game and the cutscenes that anchored the context of that input.
This doesn’t solve the problem that game makers (and buyers) don’t place a high enough priority on story to utilize the possibilities it suggests, of course. Does anyone know of a game review resource that puts an emphasis on holding story-telling accountable when giving recommendations? I’d like to try being a more responsible consumer, particularly since I’m always telling myself that an engaging story is a quality I value in games…
Let’s not forget the old AD&D’s like Baldur’s Gate and NWN which had great, multifaceted storylines as well as excellent characters, writing and plotlines. Sure, the story doesn’t deviate from the norm of player-made modules for D&D, but both of the afore-mentioned were games I played over and over until I had the backstory on every companion and company. Games with established backgrounds might be easy to make with a decent plotline, I wouldn’t know (installed Vampire: Bloodlines, and spent more time on the net reading the background than playing the game)but the outcome is often enthralling and entertaining.
I forgot to make a point. I’m saying that people don’t have to be Hemmingway to make a good plotline, but having original characters and challenges is what makes any game, even those set in a famous event (WW2, for instance(SPOILER: Allies won)) actually story-driven.
Baldur’s Gate is one of the best examples of game writing gone right. Check out Shota’s tribute here – http://videolamer.com/3115
Thanks for your comments PK, did you by chance find us on Fark? Could my poorly written ad actually be working?
Is it that obvious? I thought I had washed my sins clean enough. I feel ashamed. By the way, couldn’t agree more with the pyre/burning/pick one up description, although I’d have to rummage for the edition with the expansion and all.
[…] His points look very similar to what some of us were saying during the long comment war after this videolamer article. He goes further than we did, though, and into territory I asked one writer to avoid despite his […]