EA Dev: 'Game STORIES Are CRAP'! - (So he NEVER played MGS)?

[Onyxmeth]

Helios said:

Onyxmeth said:

Of course videogames don't tell great linear stories. Give me your best examples, and then think where they would fit within the cinema. MGS4, that's a shallow summer blockbuster waiting to happen. Gameplay is always going to limit the kind of story that can be told so we'll never get a boxing game with the narrative of Raging Bull, or a boring walkathon with the narrative of Sideways. In fact, odds are we'll never get even remotely close to the range and scope cinema has had for decades. Gameplay will always limit it, and because of the action oriented nature of most games, the stories will have to reflect something akin to a Michael Bay flick every time...at best. It doesn't help either that we haven't come to the point where games have been able to turn the character models into legit actors that can put on anything but a hollow performance.

A bit presumptuous, aren't we? Games are limited, that is true, but so are all media. A film is limited in many ways, not the least of which is it's length. Literature is no different. You speak of actors? Then what of the novel?

Answer me, what is it about gameplay that limits the kind of stories that can be told so dramatically? I can't see it. In fact, I know many games that express themselves through gameplay - much like films express themselves and enriches the experience through the art of cinematography - and that fact itself is what separates games from other forms of media and allows them to offer unique experiences.

As for why there are only action stories in games... Well that's just not true.

Edit: Or, just, you know, what Khuutra said...

Films are not limited by length. They create stories that fit within a typical time frame for a film. If they don't then sometimes we get sequels. There's also TV, which are able to be as varied as movies and can last quite long.

What games express themselves through gameplay? Remember also this article was about linear storytelling, so giving me cases like Fallout or Civilization where you can have unique experiences don't really count. I can think of one game that has actually told a story through gameplay itself, and it's an 8-bit indy PC game with no action and just the idea of exploration as a metaphor for life. The name escapes me now, but it's a brilliant little gamein storytelling, but is brutally boring in gameplay.

The thing is, games will be limited in storytelling by many factors. One is they can't tell dramatic storylines that have no physical conflict without sacrificing gameplay. Two, is that people want violence in their games, whether it's the E rated stomping in Mario Galaxy to the M rated car violence of Grand Theft Auto. Gaming will be gaming first and storytelling second, because games don't require a storyline.

How many games have really not had stories revolving around action also? Are you going to give me the few handpicked examples that may exist to prove some point?