I know the games have stories, I'm saying games don't need them. Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had stories but neither needed them. I paid little to no attention to the stories in Zelda and HL but I still found them to be great games. The poster above says they played Fallout 3 whilst ignoring the plot.

By text adventures I mean the books from years ago that had 'turn to page 46 to take path A or turn to page 48 to take path B'. I never considered these books to be games and I don't consider their modern equivalents to be games either.

Valve does story well. It never/rarely gets in the way of the game.

Music/sound improves a game infinitely moreso than any B C-movie plot and we have over 30 years worth of top selling arcade games to show for it and not one successful game story to movie transition (except Super Mario Bros of course).

Sorry, but you can't just decide adventure games aren't games.  They are, period.  They may not appeal to you, but an adventure videogame, even one without graphic such as an old text based adventure game are games.

As for the other we'll need to disagree.  As I say Uncharted 2, Fallout 3, etc. I believe for the majority would be weaker without their stories, certainly that would appear to the general feeling from reviews and gamers in general.  Uncharted 2 has become one of the best critically recieved games and I don't see the majority of those who enjoy it arguing it would be better without the story that drives the SP element of the game - and that for me is the point.  Another example would be ICO, which simply wouldn't be the experience it is without the story.

There are today many, many different types of videogame, few appeal to everyone, but some by their very nature clearly need a story.  I really don't see any post in this thread refuting that.  You can state games don't need a story, but I then ask how can you ignore the games that clearly do?  Silent Hill 2 simply wouldn't work as well without the story.  In short, there are a small but definite number of games that are better for having their story, something accepted by critics and those who enjoy those games - I think you'll struggle to find someone who genuinely enjoyed Silent Hill 2 who wishes it didn't have the story and feels the game would have been better without one.  I know for a fact you have no chance of proving the majority of those who enjoyed that game wish it didn't have its story.  So to be blunt, so long as you have games which have a story, and which the majority of those who enjoy that type of game want the story, then you have definitive proof that some games do need a story.

A final example - one poster said he ignored the plot of Fallout 3 - to be honest, big deal.  I guarantee you the majority of those who really enjoyed the game didn't.  The story is a central element of a game like Fallout 3.  There will always be a few in the minority, but its the majority view that matters, and so far as I can see the evidence is that the majority of those who played Fallout 3 want an RPG with quests and tasks linked by by a story that progresses.

One thing I do agree with you on is that if the videogame is good, the story will never get in the way of the game.  But that's a different topic.

Videogames, imo, can only be done as videogames. Text adventures can be done as books, computers just make them more efficient and enjoyable. Solitaire or poker can be played with a deck of cards, computers can improve the experience but they are still card games. Same goes for board games.

I don't care what the reviewers say. Most of them have some ridiculous fascination with cutscenes and story that I do not share.

Sorry, while you can have your opinion it doesn't make it a fact.  In the industry and generally games you are trying to dismiss are classed as videogames and that's that.  When I played story based adventure games on my PC years ago those were videogames, the fact they could be a book is irrelevant.

You stated 'Videogames don't need stories'  - from a proof/disproof point of view all I need to disprove your statement, which was all inclusive, is to provide one example that negates it, which I did.  In fact I provided more than one.

Silent Hill 2 and ICO are both videogames, end of story, and in both cases those who enjoy them, certainly the vast majority of those who do, enjoy them more because of their stories and their critical success is dependent not only on their gameplay but their stories.  In short, those videogames can be definitively stated to need a story to work well - or to put it another way, if you removed the story and left only the gameplay the games would be weaker for it.  Therefore, so far as I am concerned I have proven my point "some videogames are better with a story" and disproven your point that no videogame needs a story.  Clearly, some do, otherwise they wouldn't be worse without their story.

This will be my last post on this, as TBH I know I am right and I simply won't get into any further back and forth because you cannot except that your opinion, based on the games you like and your own definition of videogames, doesn't mesh with the general definition of videogames nor the majority views of other gamers regarding certain games and genres.

Have a good Christmas though, if you celebrate it.

People dismiss certain games as not real games all the time. Wii Fit to some (including game 'journalists') isn't a game, to me it's a textbook example of a videogame.

I never intended to prove anything. Some people in this thread won't play a game if it doesn't have a story, I'm at the totally other end of the spectrum. I think story (cutscenes and endless dialog) pollutes a game most of the time and is unnecessary for the rest.

It's all good. Different strokes and all that.

Merry Christmas to you too.

^Tastes are just tastes, we all live happily with that.

It's just that when you state things like:
"By text adventures I mean the books from years ago that had 'turn to page 46 to take path A or turn to page 48 to take path B'. I never considered these books to be games and I don't consider their modern equivalents to be games either."
you're demonstrating that you are talking of things you don't know.

Have you ever played a textual adventure game? An Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls one, for example? Because that's not how they worked.

It's ok if you didn't and it's ok if you don't want to, and don't want to play RPGs as well. Or even follow the story in HL or Portal and play them as FPS/Adventure/puzzle games.

It's just that there's a big difference between "I don't need a story to enjoy my game and I don't like story-heavy games" and "no game ever needed a story because those that do aren't games". The first states your personal taste, the second defines games in your own opinion -and according to the limits of your experience- and doesn't further the discussion one bit with people that didn't redefine the common term "game" according to your own criteria -or with different gaming experiences.

It's not about reviewers or other gamers' taste being any more relevant that yours. It's about at least knowing what we're talking about, and your own personal definition of game is not what the thread was about. It was about the element of narration in what people generally accept to call a videogame.

Edit and PS: Merry Christmas to everybody, of course :)

I guess I'd like to see more story in games if 99.999% of them didn't suck ass. Games just need to tell the story through the world instead of craptacular cutscenes with horrible lines.

Until they get people who can write beyond the 3rd grade level, the less story in games the better. There's notable exceptions, but the fact that a passingly decent story is "notable" speaks about the unending mountain of shit that is video game "story"

It always bothers me to see people abusing the number 9.  Do you really think there are ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND (minus one) bad stories in video games for every one good story? 

Alright fine then Nitpicky Nancy let's just say the overwhelming majority of video game story and writing is utter shit. Worse than b-movie bad. And 100,000 to 1 sounds about like the right ratio of high school drop-out writing to moderately passable writing.

I hereby overwrite the OP: Some people do not need (or want) stories in their games.

The rest of us however, do.