Reasonable, it is easy to fall into the narrative trap in video game storytelling. There are and have been whole genres of games that live in the narrative world.

Heavy Rain is a poor example when talking about storytelling in games because it isn't really a game. Heavy Rain is, as they say, interactive fiction. Some people say this is new but it isn't. The precursors to this type of game are the text story games. For those of you that have never played a Zork "game", they were simply interactive fiction. You had limited control but essentially you were just unlocking a story by properly exploring, collecting items, and using them. Now, Heavy Rain is certainly not a dungeon exploration game, but it is a game with a ridged story that you explore though limited controls. The "gameplay" elements are just like the old "examine desk", "talk to man" of the old text games but now much of this is handled more real time with quicktime events taking the place of text decisions.

None of this is bad, in fact, I loved the old Infocomm games. If I stop thinking of Heavy Rain as a game, I'll probably enjoy it too (since I think quicktime events are the bane of gaming). But, to get back to the point here, as these interactive mediums evolve, be careful how you do your comparisons. ME2 and Heavy Rain comparisons fall apart quickly. ME2 is operating in game RPG space where game play elements are still very important and story must be worked in and Heavy Rain is a story with some limited choices to make the experience somewhat customized to the viewer.

When I look at Heavy Rain, I think, if I considered it as a game, it would be a very shitty game - crappy controls, quicktime events out the ass, etc. (kinda like being forced to play Simon Says in order for the DVD player to keep working). Now, if I take it as interactive fiction, like the old text games, then it might be very good. Taken that way, I am playing a story in which I can cause the actors to do a few things differently along the way and feel that I brought about one of the several ending options. Like Dragon's Lair with more options, and more endings or if Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books were a few hundred pages thicker to allow for 20 extra endings. Still not really a game, but an expanded form of an old concept.

So, when talking about storytelling in games, I think Heavy Rain should be left out.

I give this thread a 9.6.

Yup ever since this gen started, I noticed that Story telling in the most popular games isn't very good.

Uhm, I can't agree. The question of what really is a "game" is sort of tangential here, so let's agree to call a videogame what is sold in videogame stores and reviewed on videogame magazines, just for the sake of (temporary?) clarity.

The gist of what Jaffe was saying is not about the quality of the story or storytelling in a technical sense, but more about how much your gameplay builds a story per se, and how much it builds a story only as an artificial prop, a narrative equivalent of the sound effects. Some of what Reasonable said was about this too: in SH2, completely ignoring how good the plot or characters were, the way you played inconsciously determined the resolution of the story. As such, you built the narrative in this very limited sense indipendently from the immediacy of gameplay goals.

On the other hand, the example of Jaffe is that when you, say, slap someone in the face instead of answering them with line A or with line B you're just "trying the third option" more often than not. Your decision is not about building a narrative (you feel that you despise the guy, so you instintively slap him) but usually a self-conscious decision aiming for a game goal.

The fact that Heavy Rain is indulgent with some of your choices, that it can wrap a different story around minor changes of your behaviour, that you keep playing even if some character dies is in this sense a better integration than your typical binary karma options, where the result of your action is immediatly available in game terms, or at least the knowledge of their effect is.

At least that's how I read it: if story unfolding is cuffed too tightly to the urgency of gameplay perspective, then it's not true storytelling. It's only the sequence of your strictly game-rooted decisions under different clothes. In a way, it's like taking a chess match report and paraphrasing it into a tale (it can be done, of course... Carroll did it).

Again, this is totally independent from how good the plot or the narrative devices are, I'm only talking about interaction with the known vs discovery of the unknown.

I am worried that that an excess focus on trying to tell a story through a game, is going to end up causing the GAME side of things to get ignored. You know, the challenging and interactive part that motivates you to want to keep playing. I believe that a factor in game development costs shooting through the roof is an excessive focus to try to generate a movie-like experience and awesome storytelling. The moment the industry ends up, through an arms race mentality, to have to produce a game costing $300+ million (Avatar level) in order to be a monster hit, is the moment I believe we are heading for monster problems. Videogames do NOT have an outlike like movies to go to first. They no longer even have arcades to prove themselves in. The margins are way too tight here to have costs get that high. A game does NOT need to cost that much to develop.

If people want to go the game as story route, there are factors that end up needing to be kept in mind when trying to develop a story through a videogame:
* Making sure ALL actions of the player are accounted for, and get closure when players play through.
* Making sure the world's physics are credible, particularly when you want to go realism in your game for immersion.
* Ramp up the level of difficulty properly.
* Have captivating gameplay.
* Develop backstory for the lead character played by the player, and also the minor characters.
* Develop a backstory for the game world that is credible
* Hire quality voice acting
* Have a quality script with a good plot, pacing and solid narrative.
* Have quality direction.

Congrats! You have created a monster which no only has to have the costs of developing a fun game, it also has to factor in the costs of a small movie, without having a movie theater outlet to recover production costs. Well, I guess the videogame industry can lead itself to believe it can have a product that can compete with the likes of Avatar, with a production budget of a straight to DVD movie release.

Now excuse me as I go play some of my boardgames, or go see the latest release in the theater. The former costs more, but I get greater replayability out of it. The later costs me a lot less.

Storytelling is a linear activity that forces the listener/viewer/reader to stay with the storyteller/story telling device and be passive.  Games are the opposite in nature, where players create their own stories.   You would need to hire a professional storyteller who understands gaming as a medium.  And that is a particular challenge actually, because not too many exist.

No, lets not agree on that definition of a game.  Several workout aids are sold in video game stores also, but we don't call them games.  Just because a videogame magazine says something, doesn't mean we shouldn't take a moment to consider the nature of the product in question.  Classifiying simply by virtue of venue is inappropriate.  The developer terms it "interactive drama" and that is a better description of Heavy Rain than "game".  Videogame mags review what their audience is interested in for the platforms that they cover, but they are not peer reviewed journals that deeply examine the nature of games.  They are advertisments and purchasing tools with some editorials.  The danger in missclassifying is that you begin to make poor comparisons and analogies.  My issue was not with what Jaffe said, just with Reasonable's mention of Heavy Rain.  It truely is an apples to oranges comparison.

Maybe Heavy Rain will open the door for more exploration into the old concept of stories that are interacted with simple controls.  I wouldn't mind seeing more of it.  But what does this mean for games?  Very little.  The danger of bringing Heavy Rain into the argument is that you start asking that games include more elements that make Heavy Rain what it is and you just can't.  It is certainly possible to have games have choice, but that is nothing new at all.  Think of Fable or most WRPGs with multiple endings.  Choice is there.  You can't tell story like Heavy Rain though in those games just because story is all Heavy Rain is.  Story with some direction choices from the viewer.  For the purposes of comparison of storytelling in games, it isn't one.

I give that post a 9.3.

This is very true, but I think that as more people grow up playing story based games like Mass Effect, Uncharted 2 and MGS that more people will go into writing whilst having a basic understanding of gameplay mechanics. As the industry evolves so too will the storytelling and the writers. Certain developers are already pushing this in games like The Witcher which is based on a world written by a popular Polish fantasy author. They had direct input from him (and according to the Making of DVDs he was pretty harsh on them!) but the game itself is pretty broad and the decisions you make effect the world and story around you. Progress is slow, but it is happening.

I think we are onto something once you can have dynamically run worlds that generate their own events, without coding everything, and it is able to be engaging for the player, and encourage replayability.  If developers, in the attempt to create story-focused games, have to code EVERY SINGLE possible outcome directly, look for development costs to continue to shoot through the roof.  You will then have a bunch of decent games hitting the bargain bin, as developers go under trying to chance this path that is increasingly becoming one of folly.

Jaffe was just pissed that people weren't kissing his ass and were kissing Biowares ass for their dominant storytelling this gen. Jaffe much like Molyneux should just shut up about the art of storytelling and focus on gameplay where he is much stronger.

This has got to be the most civil and engaging discussion i've ever seen on vgc.