Games don't need stories.

[Reasonable]

The whole genre is blurring, that's the issue. Sure a 'pure' game doesn't have a story or need one, do Tennis or Chess have stories explaining them? Of course not, they are pure games.

So Tetris etc. are pure videogames, as are games like Mario. Also, I'd argue, online MP is a pure game - really playing MW2 online deathmatch is no different than playing Pong in principle, just more complex and with the appearance of a setting.

But of course, certain experiences and scenarios require some context, particularly say SP FPS, RPG, etc. plus your classic point and click adventure. And so story crept in.

Now, with literature, Theater, TV, radio and cinema, we already have something to compare against, so of course poor stories started to stand out after a while, particularly as graphics enhanced.

For example it's one thing to have Mario leaping around jumping on mushrooms with no real explanation, but when you put a character like Nathan Drake into a classic action adventure romp it's different.

In that scenario, with a realistic setting bad narrative and an expressive, well animated character, bad dialogue and bad voice over starts to grate, because if you've got any exposure and appreciation for story from other mediums your response is to note its bad.

So of course more and more effort is going into this, and with titles like Heavy Rain we're seeing titles that perhaps shouldn't be termed videogames at all - Heavy Rain for sure looks to me more interested in the character and narrative than any traditional gameplay.

So today, for sure, certain games do need stories - absolutely, and the better written, more original and better voiced the better. More, as the medium expands, blurs and new approaches emerge, the term videogame may become far too limiting to remain in general use.