Games don't need stories.

[richardhutnik]

Hidalgo said:

Do we think as gamers that videogames are art? If the answer is NO, then (we as) the community have failed.

edit:

From other point of view:

You can write a book. A book is not more than a couple of glued pages. But I bet you love the way it's used to tell stories. You can also avoid pictures in the book, but they can become part of the story and be art too.

Videogames, books, cinema, music, picture... all of them are channels. You can fill them in many ways, and one that makes us human is art. To be able to produce strong (and sometimes unusual) feelings in others. That's a gift we must not let to pass us by.

Game creation is an art.  However, its focus historically has not been to provide a forced narrative on it that players ended up playing through (I would classify this as "interactive fiction").  The focus of game design historically had been to provide an environment that challenge players to use their skills to defeat others at them.  In this struggled a narrative would manifest itself that could be told in retrospect.  But it didn't have a forced narrative.

I would consider the direction high-cost videogames heading now to be one akin to simulating the experience on the Star Trek holodeck.  I would be pressed to considered the holodeck a game.  I would say it is a form of play though, but not a game.

The measure of a game as entertainment is how much it entertains people, and engages them.  A movie or book is measured by how well of a story narrative it put together.  On that note, I can give you my experience as a designer of board and cardgames.  The measure of a good design I have is how much players enjoy playing it and replaying it, and the depth of challenge they get out of it, and how much they are surprised.  It is an engaging experience that is meant to be played over and over.