Not only are story and dialogue not necessary, they're probably not advisable. Non-interactivity in interactive art not only weakens its strength, but could probably be done better elsewhere.

I mean this in the traditional sense of cut scenes and text boxes. If you want the former, make a movie. If you want the latter, write a book.  Flipping the user back and forth between interactive and passive segments is counter-productive. If there's great play (for lack of a better word), I'm supremely annoyed  by the constant story interruptions, which disrupt the flow and jerk me right out of whatever immersion I've managed to achieve. And it's a two-way street - if I'm hooked by someone's dialogue, prose or cinema, the last thing I want to do is stop reading or watching it. By forcing the two tgether, you detract from each. So if you're capable of producing good dialogue or cinema, why make a video game instead of writing or filming?

If a great story can be told seemlessly without sacrificing interactivity, a la Half-Life or Bioshock, I'm all for that. My two problems with those examples are

1. While the presentation is excellent, the stories themselves aren't very good. I agree with you that video game makers suck at story.

2. They're not truly seemless. A pretty egregious example is when you arrive at Black Mesa East in Half-Life 2, and have to sit through what seems like a half-hour of conversations. You can move, technically but you're not truly free. It's a cut scene in all but the most technical definition.

Edit: The one trailblazer that keeps coming to mind is Team Ico. They manage to strike a balance of play and story better than anyone else I can think of, and they did it with relentless minimalism. They didn't limit the passivity as much as I would have liked, but they managed to tell a story without a deluge of bloated cut scenes or text boxes.

I believe a game holds incredible potential as a storytelling medium, though most of the time the medium does not even begin to take advantage of this vast potential. This is actually why I am happy with Nintendo's expansion of the gaming industry - it helps games become a more popular and natural medium, so that more people and demographics play games. This in turn will allow for a larger group of gamers to appear who are actually interested in excellent storytelling, which will push the industry in that direction far more than any number of excellent stories can alone.

Believe me, there are still plenty of people who are interested in excellent storytelling, but have no interest in the currently immature gaming industry. These people need to be brought into gaming, and it won't happen just because a good story arose in an obscure medium. Nintendo is just shaping the industry into what it should look like - concentrated on entertainment and constantly changing and innovating, and thanks to this able to sustain things like classics which may have less appeal but more value in its story. Therefore, I am extremely pleased right now that the industry is taking its time to expand.

I don't know who is saying that the wii games are more fun because that is subjective. As far as more family friendly and accesible then I think the wii is that. Like you say fun is in the eye of the beholder.

Its not an argument on what medium is better at doing a certain thing. Its up to the user whatever medium he/she wants to use to enjoy certain things. I rarely ever watch movies because I can rarely stand them for over 30 minutes yet I watched every last one of mgs4's cutscenes and loved very minute of it.

Good post all around.

Ay ya ya... I disappeared for a little while and from a five-post thread, it became a 50 post debate on what fun means...sigh..

I'm not going to try to debate with you guys on mediums of storytelling, visuals and such...I don't know much about cinema and I don't want to try to pretend that I do. But what I do understand what the term "fun" is and that is what I am trying to discuss.

I brought this article up to try to quell the argument about what the Wii was for. Lately I have been lurking around lately (in my spare time) and I have noticed that a lot of people have just recently been bringing up about the Wii and how it is a fad (again), how the games are just for casuals (again), the clear cut line between what a hardcore game and a casual game is (again) and how the hardcore game is always better than a casual game (...you get the idea).

My question to you is: says who?

Obviously the answer is simple: You.

But...who are you?

Most likely a person who has played many, many games over the course of his/her short life. Which means you have developed a taste or expectation of what a good game is and what a bad game is. Over the course of playing these games, you have figured out what kind of games you like or dislike. For example, I love the MGS series because I like stealth games, but I hate Silent Hill and even RE games because I hate horror games. But does that mean that now I should tell people that RE games suck because I personally hate the horror genre? Of course not. I understand that there are quite a few of you (in fact, millions of gamers) who love the RE games and can't wait for RE5 to come out.

The same thing can be said about casual games in general. Even though the disparity and this example is quite different than the one I gave about RE and survival horror games, the same rule applies. Just because you don't like that style of gaming, the quality of gaming, or how Ubisoft sucks (I know it prolly doesn't fit in this sentence, but I had to throw in my opinion about Ubisoft somewhere....), doesn't mean others feel the same way you do.

This opinion of mine was probably expressed by many before I do, but it seems that everyone has forgotten to realize that there is many different ways to have fun with video games, from the epic story-telling of MGS4, to the star collecting of SMG, to the puppy rearing of Nintendogs. Yes, there are many casual games out there right now that have sub-par graphics, bad framerates, horrible storytelling, etc. etc. (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft), but time and sales will tell us if casuals really do like these games or not. We have no right to tell them that their choices are wrong.

And this especially goes out to all of us here on these forums. Nobody can say what is the right way to have fun when it comes to gaming....only us individually can decide what is fun for us individually. This goes to those who favor the HD games and those who favor the Wii games (also PC elitists as well). If you say that a game must be a technological marvel in order to know that you are having fun, then that is great for you. You enjoy art. If you believe that primal fun, ie. feeling like a kid, is the only way to have fun, then great for you too. That doesn't mean, however, that one is better than the other. Even if hardware sales say otherwise, for us gamers it doesn't matter at the end of the day.

That is why I posted this article; to show you all that even though the author would really enjoy his "mature" games like Ninja Gaiden, he understands that you can also have fun with a 3 year old when playing Mario Party. I think in order for this gaming industry to grow, we must understand this concept and display it fully.

Good post, with the finishing paragraph really nailing the situation. There's not really much I can add to that.

Although I will say you shouldn't be surprised at the drift, seeing as how you left. While the cat's away...

i have to say that most of the complaints about the casual stuff isnt directed at nintendo games, but third parties and the environment that nintendo has fostered.

i agree that ninty games have a charm to them, always have, but i cant agree that the wii is completely healthy for gaming. its splitting the pie in very bad ways, which might hurt more in the long run than it seems.