My initial impression of "story" was a forced narrative with game elements around, that used the game elements to tell the story. What you are seeing, from me, is a discussion of games with stories, and posting on here my thoughts. You are also seeing my considering things. My initial post wasn't meant for me to dogmatically argue anything, but to start a conversation. I happen to believe though that not all games have stories. However, I believe that there is working being done to improve the use of games as a narrative device, causing exactly how a story is told to be blurred further between it and what are traditionally called "games".
In regards to "games don't need stories", not all games do. Games that focus on trying to use games as a narrative device need games to tell a story. I will standby, as things are, that it isn't the story itself that makes the game good, but the fact that the story-game hybrid has good gameplay. If you, for example, took the same set up and environment from Portal, but didn't have a good physics based set of puzzles, how good would it be?
I was also saying how that if an environment is rich enough, players can create their own stories in it. There isn't anyone writing the story, but the players create it. One can debate whether or not players created stories is a game having stories in it. I was saying it wasn't.
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