I agree with every single thing you've said here.

I'm curious, though. In regards to the action scenarios that propell the gameplay of Half-Life or Half-Life 2, would you call them a story, or just a scenario?

It seems to me that Valve is taking an approach similar to what you describe: no cut scenes, player involved story progression, etc... However, I wonder if this is exactly what you're thinking? Or perhaps it is merely just a first step? If so, what do you think is the next step?

I also agree that programmers have been, up to this point, the main architects of "story." I think this is going to slowly change over the next decade, however, due to all the recent interest in exploring game design more thoroughly, not to mention training people specialized in game design and theory (both in academia and in the industry). I know that we were talking about these kinds of issues in one of my game development classes.

I think people are finally starting to ask the right questions about game design and, god willing, steer the industry in the right direction.

Thanks for the link to this article!

The connection between storytelling and gameplay have been shady in the past years in my opinion. Some adventure games used to tell us storys, with all the elements required for character development, etc, while the other generes didn't.
A year back, i've played a game called Beyond good and evil. It's an "action-adventure" game.
Basicaly you go around kicking monsters and searching for stuff, while taking photos, as your character's job is a photographing journalist.
I found that game to be both very good and entertaining from the game play point of view, and on the other hand had a nice rich story, with conflicts, dillemas, mystery, emotional evolution of the characters, and most of of, emotional influance on the player.
I belive that game actually DOES do a good story telling job, despite all that have been said against games not beign the good platform for storytelling.
I also like to state my opinion that cut-scenes in games aren't the "root of all evil" as i sometimes tend to hear grumped about here...
Sometimes they even contribute to the continuity and atmosphere of the game, even tough the player sits motionless while watching up to a miute or more worth of non-interactivity.
The most ansurd contrast i've seen between cutscenes and gameplay is Warcraft 3. That game truly had the most beutiful cutscnenes ever, but their relation to the game, gameplay, or anything else there is slim to non-existance. The game don't look anything like the cutscenes do, But unfortunanly, those cutscenes help sell the game, since they are the demo movies that are showen both to investors, and to the public before you buy the game: You see a nice cutscene movie, which have been made with a very high budget, and think to yourself  - WOW, this 5 minute movie looks so good ! probably the game does too.
and then you get to play it, and get some of these movies as a "reward" for finishing up missions in the single player game...
Let me tell you, that it does not work when you know how to view .divx files stored in the game's CD...

I recently made (well followed up someone else, really) this point on Scott Miller's blog, but not many seemed to agree. Perhaps the fact that it was a post about the Qualities of a Bad Game had sometihng to do with that, since, I guess, cutscenes don't always make a game instantly bad.

What annoys me most are games which, as you put it, "just lift that structure from a linear form like movies, cut it up into chucks interspersed between gun-play and call it good." I find this pretty stupid, because the cut-scenes are treated like a reward for playing. Why can't I interact with the interesting parts of the story? If this is supposed to be a game, why am I not involved in playing the whole thing?

Often cut-scenes are so different from gameplay - fancier graphics, detailed camera work etc. - that I'm sure they can't be good to keep the player immersed.

As I mentioned, I don't think every instance of a cut-scene ever added to a game is really bad. Far from it. But, I think it is probably a good rule of thumb to disallow cut-scene, unless they are really needed. When game developers are tempted to add a cut-scene, they should ask themselves, "Is there really no way the player could be more invloved with this?"


I do slightly disagree with a couple of your points though, Ron. I don't necessarily think that story-games should stop being called "games". Firstly, I think adults do, more and more, consider "games" to be a valid form of entertainment. Many people are "gamers" nowadays - even  if that does imply only sports games, FPSs, and GTA, to them.

Secondly, you are still "playing" a story-driven game. There may not be some of the more traditional win and lose events (dying, scoring points, etc.), but you are still trying to complete objectives - unless you're talking about moving away from a fixed narative structure, and letting players completely dictate the story.

The only games I can honestly say that I felt told a story that really awed me out of it, were Monkey Island 1 and 2, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango. Those games had something really special about them, about the story and the characters and the wonderful world they were set in. I only played Grim about two years ago, but it left me as amazed as it did when I completed Monkey Island 1 over ten years previous to that.

Did anybody here ever play Heart of Darkness? That game... was delicious. It was so... I don't know, there was something really awesome about it... except that it was shit. Man, it was a crap game. But the characters and the way the story was presented, and the weird world... if it had been a better and more fun game, I would have really loved it. I don't even think that makes sense.

Just another comment, or maybe a rant.

I really think we're getting to the point where we are discovering different ways of "telling stories" within games and this in and of itself is generating a certain sense of new "genres" from the new methods being invented.

For instance, some games are definitely very linear and have a defined story. In these games, the game designer is definitely a "storyteller," since they defined every story point of the game for the player.

However, another kind of game is being created lately that seems to be more of a "story matrix" which allows players to make choices that actually define the storyline themselves. Of course, we are just now dabbling in these new forms of storytelling, but I definitely see the industry slowly shifting in this direction. If this is the case, I think the term storyteller should be forgotten, as stories are no longer being directly told. Instead, the fundamental components of a "story" are being thrown into a bucket and then the players actually stick the storyline together like a giant digital pile of legos. These kinds of games, when properly designed - if there is such a thing - could perhaps create stories just as gripping as their linear cousins, but with complete interactivity. IF this is actually the case, designers are definitely not story tellers. Instead, they are more like story inducers, providing players with the means to form the storyline out of the primordial story ooze that they created.

Geez, I make it sound like we're playing God or something.

Or, is linear still the way to go? Are players ready for completely open ended games? Perhaps a mix of the two paradigms, such as GTA or Morrowind?

Which approach do you prefer, Ron? Do your preferences change at all, from the perspective of a gamer or designer?

I thought some guy called Ron Gilbert invented the video game cutscene. Or at least that's what those fanboys at the scummbar.com said.

It was all too easy to die in Maniac Mansion and Zak Mckraken, so were they games with bloated cut scenes or what?

There really aren't that many places you can die in MM, but unfortunately, there are a lot of opportunities to use up an important item and not know the game is un-winnable.

If I had the chance to do that game over, there is a lot I would do different.

I've still not beaten the first Monkey Island... I get so far, only to find that the business card I threw into a fireplace (yes, I'm an idiot, but still...) was needed, and that it was impossible to get another one.

le sigh.

Speaking of which (sort of), when are you ever going to get round to updating your "Why Adventure Games Suck" document, as promised in your very first Grumpy Gamer post. ;)

"The word game brings with it a lot of connotations, the worst being that they are for kids.  After all, kids play games.  Not adults."  Come on Ron, are you serious?  Scrabble, football, baseball, poker, roulette...Vegas isn't games?  Sports aren't games?  Dating isn't a game?  Well okay maybe not officially on that last one.  That's like saying that "only children play".

"You don’t win or lose Monkey Island, you just play it."  I think you've hit on it there.  The Sims 2 has been calling itself "more like a toy than a game", which I think is exactly your point.  But does calling it a "toy" mean it's just for kids?  I don't think so.

"We should also realize that there are several different types of games, some want stories, and others don’t."  Well I think there's a fundamental point that's being missed here.  I think it's more a question of what you call a "story", because to me a story is a sequence of events, and that is already incompatible with a game if you consider it pre-written.  For example, the Sims 2 tells many, many stories, but none of them are pre-written.  If you pre-write a story, and then expect it to be a really engaging game, the problem there is that you've already said how it will end, and you're just forcing the gamer to re-enact your little script like an automaton.

Here's a case in point.  Remember Elysium, Ron?  I sure do.  I was a level designer for it.  It was supposed to be all non-linear and whatnot, but all it really started resembling was a choose-your-own-adventure book (limited choices) with little "mini-games" thrown in.  It was a constant struggle to make our levels seem non-linear, and clearly we weren't extremely successful.  (I still think fondly back on those days though :)  )

I think the future of "stories" in games will fragment into two types:  "interactive movies" which are more like just being a fly on the wall in an immersive experience, and "simulations" which are amazingly intelligent, fully-adaptive stories that start with a scenario as a seed, and then go from there.  Think "Holodeck".

My all-time favourite story is from The Longest Journey. I'm talking better than my favourite books (Good Omens, Asimov's The Foundation series, E. E. Doc Smith's Family D'Alembert series, Freak The Mighty...), and better than my favourite movies (Donnie Darko, The Producers, etc.). It just all worked so well, clicked so thoroughly. Yes, cutscenes were used. Yes, they were important. But the overall story, the meshing of the cut-scenes and playtime was successful. They were not two wholely separate elements.

Whereas in Syberia, the cut-scenes were the story, really. There, there was 'game' on one side, and 'cutscenes' on the other. I enjoyed the game, and I found the operatic cutscene amazing, but they were separate entities, and that did diminish my thoughts about the game.

However, if anyone can tell a good story in a game, I have some faith in Benoit Sokal. And since he's starting up a multiplicity of games, I have great hope for the future.

I do agree TLJ had a great story: when I played it, I developed strong feelings to the characters, sometimes positives, sometimes negatives. For instance, I felt depressed when the hacker guy was killed. But, Syberia? No way. I could not care less for the characters, the silly background and so on. It was not amusing, it was not interesting. I just endured the two games just to make happy a friend of mine that wholeheartedly asked me to do so.

I just would want to say that maybe story is not that important. One game I love is Morrowind.  There're too many things to discover in it, and to play with them... There's not only a main story: there's the history of Morrowind, and the Empire; there's the mistery of the dissapearance of an entire race, there're the questionable behaviour of the Gods...

In Morrowind you can interpret what the characters are after, what's all the story about, what's true and what's not... you can interpret the little clues you're given, but you cannot learn the Truth. So if I think Vivec killed Nerevar, someone can argue against. It's not like watching a sports match, it's more like reading an interesting book, because every time you read it, you find new things you didn't notice before.

Sorry for my poor English: I just wanted to make my 2 cents.

There's another, IMO grave, error in the Slate text: Katamary Damacy has lots of cut scenes. Go figure.

People say "HALO" got a great story.
They do say "HALO2" got a even better story.

For give the brown-nosing, but I agree with your article whole-hertedly.  I've seen some terrible cut-scenes in my time playing, and I think it's about d@_n*d time someone came up with a new and better way of taking the player form one part/level/whatever of the game to the next while taking you on a great story/adventure.

Don't get me wrong though.  I enjoy a good "blow $#!t up just for the h@!! of it" game just as much as the next person.

Anyone play Resident Evil 4? During the cut scenes in that game there is various things you need to do at times. (pushing buttons pretty much.) I would like to see some more cut scenes done like in Resident Evil 4

I liked the way cut scenes were done in star wars: knights of the new republic and deux ex.

The ultima games have did a good job with having a story without too many cut scenes at times.

I think final fantasy and the metal gear solid games do a good job with cut scenes. KOTOR too was good. I don't know if i liked final fantasy 10's in game cut scenes as much. I kind of would like to just keep reading the text like it's a book pretty much like in final fantasy 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

I liked wing commander 3/4's cut scenes and tex murphy's Under a killing moon and Pandora Directive. Most of the other games during that "interactive movie" video time period were terrible tho and i'm thankful that did not last.

I don't think i like it with movie based license games when they show various parts of the movie like in ea lord of the rings. They just basically kind of cut and paste scenes from the movie. I would rather have them render all the scenes in the in game engine

As they said before the cut scenes/story were done very well in all the lucasarts games pretty much. I want more adventure games done that way! They kept me wanting to continue on with the game pretty much.

basically i like cut scenes when they are used to tell a story and not basically rewarding the players by putting in a cut scene every once in a while. I would rather have the story stay in the same engine as the game and not go into some differant avi file.

I would like games to use the cut scenes to develop the characters a little bit more

I do like some type of story though just to keep me going through the game. I think it might be a good idea to have the story progress in a way like deus ex, kotor, or ultima.  Also storys for games should be somewhat fun like the way its done in monkey island and dott and make use of humor.

Ron Gilbert has been getting some pretty good ideas for the future of the video game industry lately. Hopefully he uses them and makes some great games.

Just some of my thoughts on cut scenes at the moment.

"Anyone play Resident Evil 4? During the cut scenes in that game there is various things you need to do at times. (pushing buttons pretty much.) I would like to see some more cut scenes done like in Resident Evil 4"

this was great. made you pay attention to the cutscenes.
but you could still skip the non-interactive ones! wooo!

Sorry, but don't you think that interaction is more about story-writing?
Shouldn't gamers feel like they are "writing" the story in the game?

Unfortunately most of the games I played didn't give me such impression...and certainly didn't cut-scenes...
I think that game-designers shouldn't focus too much on the story to tell but on how to give players the feeling of "writing" the story in the game.

Give players a princess to rescue from the clutches of a dragon and they'll be happy to do that.
But don't force them to solve silly puzzles to complete the quest...give them some choices!
If Dirk (well, yes I took my example from Dragon's Lair...) has to enter in the castle of the dragon, let the player decide if he'll make his way through the moat, or across the bridge or, way not, using a catapult... For the rest of the game show Dirk wet to the skin dripping water all around, or stinky and dirt because he slipped on a sh*t on the bridge, or shorter because the landing had crushed his armour... And why the wet Dirk shouldn't meet another stinky brave and has a conversation about the better way to get into the castle, and finally decided that any would be better than the catapult-way after a suspiciously short knight appeared?

Linear story with non-linear sub-stories that marginally affect the main plot, through well calibrated puzzles and a lot of imagination.

Half Life didn't have any cutscenes, it took you as the player into Gordan's life. It was very well told and Half Life 2 improves on that, but yes, cut scenes do seem to take the player away from the action, and I can't think of any really good storylines in games.

What do you think about cut-scenes like  in "Shenmue" where you have to push
a button at the right time to influence the events on screen?

I skip all cut scenes. If a game is cut scene and story heavy I dont buy it. Iain Banks is a better sci fi writer than 99% of games writers, ditto greg bear and neal stephenson, so why bother reading some hackneyed crap in a game?
I play games to interact, if I want plot I'll read a book.

Do you watch movies?

Yes, we are all different as players. This is fundamental. Many here concentrate on technicalities, few in being swept away by the story. We are on the brink of truly integrating film-like experience with interactive gaming, we have to find new ways to react. Games will be different soon, maybe sim's or not, but game-telling will be different from this crude matter as we now know as games. Just watch.

"Most programmers just aren’t good story tellers"

this is the important thing, and if all the new games design courses pushed a mix of programming and storytelling, like the way the old lucasarts games did, there would be more people with some of the neccessary skills.
the problem is that most people see them as two disparate skills. this doesn't have to be the case.

I wonder if any of the University programs that deal with game design require students to take some basic film-making and/or advance writing classes.  These would be as useful as programming classes if one is truly interesting in game design.

I am currently enrolled in Art Insitute Online's "Game Art & Design" bachelors degree program. Art Institute Online is a division of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

There are scriptwriting classes, storyboarding, digital audio/video classes, and various design/storytelling classes. Unfortunately, there aren't any film production classes but there are some things that appear to be relatively close. However, there are advanced writing courses, most of which center on writing for games.

I'm impressed, thus far, with the classes. Most of the time, anyway. But, I just transferred to this school, so I don't have the best perspective. I'm chronicling my progress on my blog, though. So, in a few years we'll have an arbitrary opinion of the school from good 'ol Alan "who the heck is this dude" Dennis. ;)

Michael Mateas has some great teaching ideas in this area (in Georgia Institute of Technology, but he started in CMU), incorporating Art as a programming concept and stuff like that. I'd love to see some more people thinking like this, instead of churning out programmer drones for EA.

Haven't read the Slate article, but ever hear of the Metal Gear series? Now they tell successful and proper stories [sometime OTT, but good]. And then there's the latest game, Resident Evil 4. It's attempted a storyline, somewhat cliched, but it's better than nothing.

I prefer a game with SOME reason for doing what you're doing [e.g. a story], than just playing it for the heck of it.

But then again, in the end, it's the gameplay that matters.

I understand this is a huge post, but if you read it, I think you'll find it worthwhile.  I made adventure games professionally for a long time.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is my studied belief that  stories converged with games now makes as much sense as interactivity merged with movies did in the '90s.

Cut-scenes are a vistigal tale, the result of inertia and hollywood envy.  But over-arching narrative is now the same: unneeded.

There is a lot of teeth gnashing at the demise of the adventure game.  "How do we revitalize the genre?" "How do we reinvent the genre?"  "What is the new paradigm?"  "How do we reinject story-telling into our games?"

I'm tired of people asking, "Why didn't the things we did before work now?  How can we shoe-horn them back in?"   It's like asking, "How can we get people to start buying 8 tracks again?"

A better question is: "Why don't people like adventure games anymore?"  Yeah, yeah.  Before the reactionary comments appear, of course people like adventure games.  Just, they like them in the same way people enjoy poetry or CB radios.

---------------------------------------------------------

Alright, enough hyperbole.  It's time to back up my assertions.
Let's back up to the start of modern interactive story-telling.  Arbitrarily, I'm going to choose the 1st text adventure game, "Adventure."  People loved the idea of a book where you got to take part.  Initially, due to lack of personal computers, not many people got to take part.

Later in the 70's came the 'Choose your own Adventure' series of books.  Very interesting and more accessible than 'Adventure,' but with limited long-term apppeal.  (Once you got past book #3 of the series, you didn't rush out to get book #4).

Then came the age of the Scott Adams Adventures unlimited and Infocomm.  The Golden Age of Text Adventures.  Lots of people now had computers.  They wanted to interact with magical lands.  A simulation, if you will, of different worlds.

They didn't even take meaningful notice when a little company called Sierra came out with a game called 'Mystery house.'  It was a text adventure with some bad line art.  Infocomm and Scott Adams kept making text adventures.  More and more complex text adventures, to deepen the simulation.

Sierra followed that up with "The Wizard and the Princess" this time in color.  Infocomm increased the complexity of their parser.  They increased the complexity of their points system.

Kings Quest I arrives, with a little character walking on the screen.  More text from Infocomm.  Next follows  Déjà Vu: A nightmare Comes True!!, a point and click adventure.  In 1987, the first point and click 3rd person game, Maniac Mansion.

Adventures Unlimited and Infocomm are soon no more.  They refused for too long to admit that new technology had undermined their paradigm.  There were better tools for their world simulation.

Next was the age of LucasArts and Sierra.  The two companies that owned the genre for the '90s.  

(Or did they?)

They owned the 3rd person genre, certainly.   However, domestically the target demographic did not grow.  You could expect a big hit adventure game to hit 500,000 units domestically in its first release (if you were lucky).  They did somewhat better abroad, as at the time European buyers were very concerned with game length and (with a few unfair puzzles) you could guarantee a very long game.

But Myst was an adventure game.  I laughed at it when I first saw it at the Mill Valley film festival.  A series of slides, some cheesy video.  Compared to Day of the Tentacle it was a technical non-entity.

But it sold better.  Hmmmph, we though.  Must be 'cause it's the only thing available on the mac.  Kept selling.  Hmmmph.  Must be 'cause there were only a couple of other games on CD-ROM.  Myst kept selling.  7th guest and Rebel Assault did not.  Hmmmmph.  It must be because the average consumer doesn't understand.  Some day they'll see that our technology is better than theirs.  They must, ours is a more complicated simulation.

Myst kept selling.  It kept selling because you could immediately go lots of places without worrying about story.  It kept selling because the graphics were clearing and there were no embarassing cartoon characters.  A business man could impress his date and say, "Look how cool my computer is."  There was a story in Myst, but no one cared.  The only reason we read the story is we were afraid we'd miss a puzzle hint.  Did anyone really care if you freed the brothers?  No.

And importantly, it acted like you would if you were walking around.  I want to look left, I turn left.  I want to walk forward, I click forward.

We in the adventure biz kept revising our world simulation.

Then there was Doom.  3D was a better world simulator than anything seen before.  Fortunately for us, there was easy money to be made going over the top on violence.   Still, the worlds were more interactive than our games, they just didn't appeal to our target audience.

Pandora Directive tried mixing the two genres, but they didn't mix well.  They assumed people would navigate and explore in 3D and do their adventuring point and click...the old way.

No one wanted the old way.  Meanwhile, Sierra was pushing the old way to the limit with big-budget video productions of Gabriel Knight the Beast Within and Phantasmagoria.  Production costs skyrocketed and it sold to the same target base of 500,000 units.  They probably expanded that target base to 1M.  It still wasn't enought.  Now only LucasArts remained in the graphic adventure arena.

But by now the Internet had come into its own.  LucasArts now had to pay good wages to keep its techy employees.  Big adventures had hit their limit, the end of the line.

AND...Valve had figured it out.  Just as in Myst, there was a story there if you cared.  If you didn't, there was a highly detailed, highly interactive world.  But it was still tunnels.

Technology moves on and now you have city simulators a'la GTAII, etc.  The simulation is better.  Who needs story.

But I've buried my lead.

Here is the point:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The necessity of narrative is inversely proportional to the interactivity of the experience.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm hoping someone, someday refers to this as Ackley's Law, but if they don't, I guess I'll live.

Technology moves on.  We don't need people telling us stories if there are technologies that let us tell our own stories.

You ever replay a scenario you've already mastered in a RTS game because you asked yourself, "What if the elves were delayed in Rivendell and could only ride in on turn 33?"

That's what I'm talking about.  

Much as I loved the autuer model, it's time to pass the story-telling torch to the people who vote with their pocketbooks.

Let's stop fine-tuning our simulation.

Good post Jonathan, you bring up a lot of great points.   I do have a quick rebuttal on one:


The problem with this is that most people are really bad at telling stories, it’s why we pay people like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese to tell them for us.  As someone else mentioned, you tell your own stories when playing the Sims, but 99% of the time, you’re telling really boring stories, more a series of events that a story.  

It’s a lot like watching Baseball.  Once in a while, an amazing game develops with all the drama of an incredible novel:  A great battle of good and evil, the underdog triumphing, a great first, second and third act, actors that come and go from the stage at just the right times.  That is the game we talk about for years.  But for the other 162 games of the year, it’s just a game.  It’s got some moments of excitement, but it lacks the tide of real drama.

This is not to take anything away from games like the Sims, I don’t want anyone to think I believe that this type of game is bad or wrong.  One if my favorite games is Animal Crossing and it is very much a “tell your own story” game, but most of the time I play it, there isn’t much of a story going on, but it’s still fun.  

Your point about Half-Life is a really good one.  I do believe that any “story game” being done today has to be a lot more than an old-style adventure game, they need a more free-form complexity that games like GTA and Animal Crossing have.  But, I don’t think that you just kick the kids in the sandbox and let them play.  What I find interesting is taking the play mechanics of a GTA and wrapping it with a truly interesting story to help drive everything.  

I also think that looking at the current gaming audience can be very misleading.  Despite what everyone thinks, games are not mainstream among adults.  Of all the friends I have that are not in the game business, none of them play games.  It's a small sample, but I find it very interesting.  They used to play games when they were in their 20’s, but stopped.  They don’t have the time, and are not interested in “fighting” and failing.

I am a strong believer that good narrative is very necessary to grow the audience for games, but it needs to take a very different form from what is going on today.

By the way Ron, thanks for having such a great sight and bringing up such good questions.  It's nice to have a forum to talk about these things.  I haven't run accross a site like yours before.  (And those, 'what i'm surfing' links are hysterical!)

Yeah, you're probably right, Ron, about how mainstream gamers mainly aren't adults.  I play a reasonable number of games, and I'm 30 and no longer work in the games industry...but since I used to that probably disqualifies me.

My wife has never worked in the games industry though...and she's still a "mainstream gamer".  The people in the house next door to me, I think they are too, since I hear Need for Speed: Underground and something that sounds like a Star Wars game blasting out of their window a lot.  Had to call the cops once.

Of course we live in Boondocks, Australia too, so maybe it's a weird sample.

I can honestly say I have started to decrease the amount I play games, due to a few very specific factors:

You make it sound like we're looking for the one right answer here, and that it needs to be the most popular/profitable solution to making games.  That's like saying that all artists should make cartoons, because Dilbert is more popular than the fine artists in your local gallery.  If you can make the economics work for your production (admittedly, a big if), then it's not necessary to build the form of interactive product that will make the most money.  There is still an audience that likes games with narratives, and...the other important part of the equation...is that I like making games with narratives.  Not that I want to make a bunch of strange interactive stories that nobody buys and then go nuts and cut off my ear or anything, but you get my point.

However, I also happen to believe that as games evolve, the most popular ones will still include narratives.  I think right now the public just doesn't know what they want, so in their confusion they buy the games with the biggest guns.  These are the same people who get hungry and go to the kitchen but nothing looks good, so they grab the cookies.  They won't be satisfied later, but it seems like a good idea at the time.  Meanwhile, stories in games to this crowd have become the vegetables they need, but won't eat.  What's a mother to do?  Well, I think it's all in the presentation.  Make the game seem like an open sandbox while secretly triggering events that funnel them down a path with a satisfying conclusion.  In other words, hide the veggies in some cheese sauce and next thing you know, they've gotten their recommended daily allowance of vitamins and fiber!  I'm thinking someone someday will refer to this as Betty Crocker's Law of Gaming, but if they don't... (sorry, Jonathan, I couldn't resist).

If I'm wrong, heck, I like poetry and CB radios--especially poetry recited over the CB radio (hmmm, game idea: trucker poetry).

lahern...lahern...why does that sound familliar?  

I hate to burst your bubble, but there's already a Betty Crocker's Law of Gaming which states that, if you bake your game by holding it close to a light-bulb then you'll soon run out of the mix they included with the box and you'll end up wasting your mother's full box of cake mix and wind up with a first-person shooter.  Betty loves her FPS's.

I would like to see a list of the top 20 games of all time and see how many were story driven rather than interaction driven (gameplay wise).  I'm guessing you'll see Myst and then nothing else.  The numbers will be even more grim if you include consoles.

All I'm saying is that the economics no longer support the adventure game in terms of capturing meaningful market share.  Interaction is more powerful than story.  You sit down in a movie to be told a story.  You sit down at a computer to interact.  As soon as there is a more interactive mechanic the older technology is abandoned to enthusiasts and hobbyists.

An entertainment technology (or any technology for that matter) only survives if it has a niche where it has an advantage over the previous technology.  For linear storytelling, books and movies aint been beat.  For interaction, free-form play aint been beat.  The most popular job in Ultima Online was fisherman.  The SIMS is the #1 computer game of all time.  I'm sure Sim City is up there as well.

Side by side in a taste-test situation, ask the majority of people which genre is more fun: driving, fps, 3ps, rts, rpg, simulation or classic LucasArts-style adventure.  I think the genre that comes in last is the adventure, the reason being that it is the least interactive of the genres.

If anyone out there can find a list of the top selling games of all time, I'd love to see it.

-Jonathan, you ignorant sl-  Again, it sounds like you're saying there's only room for the top-selling form.  I'm not so strict; I think there will be a successful form of interactive entertainment that features story.  Besides, the example you give casts doubt on your point...both books and movies successfully coexist in linear storytelling, although your argument might suggest that books should have disappeared long ago given the success of film (I know, publishing doesn't do a fraction of the business of film, but it's still a popular medium).

So...how's the wife and kids?  Great site, by the way, Ron (I've been lurking for awhile).

Don't be so sure of that.  Book publishing is a huge and very diverse business.  Hardback books cost $30, and a best selling book sells millions.  I have no figures one way or another, but I would be suprised is movies are bigger than books.

Don't think I don't know what this is about, Larry.  Yes, it was a great week in St. Tropez, but that's all it was, one week.  it's over now.  Move on.  I know it hurts, but you'll find someone...someone really great.  You'll feel empty for a while, like your life is a pointless sham of a mockery of a sham of a pantomime of a Comedia del Arte of a community theater production of Fallstaff, but eventually the hurt will lessen (though it will never go away).

Books and movies coexist because each has an advantage as a platform.  I don't think adding narrative to an interactive experience necessarily provides an advantage over a strong interactive design.  Context can be useful, but I think narrative can be dropped.

what? you did curse of mi, didn't you?

not as good as the first 2, imho, but still lotsa larfs.

I don't rightly recall.  I was pretty hopped up on the goofballs for most of the '90s.

Oh, and the wife and kids and myself are all sick.  Nasty cough.

Larry!  Send me your e-mail, I'm up your way tomorrow and thought you might want to do lunch.  I can't find yours.

As long as this has turned into a personal chat board, send me your email...

Good, now you guys can get together and patch things up. After all, you ruined Ron's vision for the third Monkey Island game.

Oh, SNAP!

And we would've ruined Maniac Mansion 3 if it hadn't been for those meddling kids and their dog!  We had it all planned out...instead of a Looney-Tunes inspired game, we were going to base it on Woody Woodpecker.   Mwuhahahahahaha!

Just for the record, and I've said this before, I thought MI3 was pretty damn good.

Thanks, Ron.  Although I still sometimes wake up screaming in the night at the thought of the 4 fans we let down by not going with the old EGA graphics again.  But I don't think anybody will wrestle with that dilemma for awhile, since it seems like George has locked the license away alongside the Ark of the Covenant in order to focus on filling that void in the Star Wars game niche.

JMAckley, I wonder what is your opinion on those independent companies like Bad Brain Entertainment and Telltale Games who are still trying to bring the same classic adventure of the 90's? I'm sure you know some of the guys who work there. From the point you were trying to make in your post, it seems that these guys are repeating the same mistakes. Or maybe that' s what I think...

Those are some talented guys.  If anybody can make it work, it's they.

Hmmm, that's an interesting point of view. Some of these points are also discussed in this recent article at Adventure Developers.com.

can i have gtaiii3 peate

I heartily agree that it should be possible to make good interactive stories, that cut scenes are a very limited, tired approach, and that the term "storytelling" will need to be updated.  In fact we had a similar debate, "Making, Not Telling", about a year ago on that last point.
http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/2004/01/22/making-not-telling/

I cannot wait to see Facade in action, soon right? :)

-Reid

That article certainly wasn't an interesting read, and the person who wrote it doesn't have a clue about what he's talking about.

Seriously, stating Grand Theft Auto as an example of story-driven game?
Final Fantasy X's cutscenes as an exception to the rule?
and most of all - no mention of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, or even Half Life 2, which while light on plot creates a living world in it's unique (first-)personal way of story telling.

All games don't have to work the same way, in fact they SHOULDN'T.
Just like with thing with movies, while some would suffer from forcing a story down your throat other are driven by it. And imagine this - some succeed at telling a story.

While it would break a Super Mario platformer, a game like Metal Gear Solid just wouldn't be the same experience without cutscenes.
Especially Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater provides an involving story (even though it sometimes goes "bat-shit crazy", but hey, it's meant to entertain) and unlike his prime example of story telling - Final Fantasy X (that you have to "throw away" after finishing), it also provides enjoyable gameplay.

The story doesn't have to be told through cutscenes, Half Life 2 shows that well (even though a bit shyly).
In the game you learn everything about it's world through observation of the environment and since the camera never leaves "your head" the whole experience feels more personal.
It's a good concept and in a game with more plot it could really shine, but the author of the article just states "keep the story out of my games" and continues to ramble on about the story in Grand Theft Auto.

You wrote:
"Games also imply a whole structure of winning and losing that should be removed from story-based games. "

That's also not necessairly true.
While it broke many Sierra adventure games (but those had more losing than winning), the winning-or-losing element is what makes the games replayable.
I never want to start a Monkey Island again right after finishing it - there's just no point, but I played "MGS3:Snake Eater" again next morning even though I played it mostly for the story the first time around.

If I didn't love the humor in Monkey Island so much (and if it wasn't so nostalgic) the games would probably end up in the trash can, just like the article suggests.

Why do people buy "Harry Potter" or "Lord of the Rings" Videogames?
I mean, they already know the story and the rest is nothing special.

Games are the one of the few mediums that allows us to become someone else. I can become a spy and take on dangerous missions or I can be a young man who wants to be a pirate. This is an incredibly powerful device game designers have at their disposal to attract gamers. The movie Total Recall was about the lure of jumping into an exciting life, escaping the day-to-day blah blahs we all can relate to.

Stories are very necessary, just as Ron said, because most people are terrible storytellers. Also, often times through someone else his or her story can offer a perspective I would never thought of before. I welcome someone else's perspective because it broadens my mind and helps me grow. Games today also lack the in game tools to allow me to create my own stories. How many games let you create your own desires and show you struggling to achieve them? Maybe a game like GTA can let me create my own desires, but limited to prostitutes, weapons and cars, etc. In a GTA world I can't create the story that I want to be a spy. I'd have to go play the 'spy' game to let me achieve my desires. Maybe one day, in year 2042 we'll have a game that emulates life as we know it and we won't need other games to play, because we'll be creating our own stories or even having other players create the stories for us.

Until that time there's a lot of experimentation that needs to done to figure out the best way to tell stories in games. Cinematics (or cut-scenes) can be over used. There's a time and place to activate a cinematic. The worst is when the player is the middle of action, the best time is when they need a breather from the action and the story cannot be told without taking control away from the player, such as a "meanwhile, in the evil lair..."

Cinematics are a tool for story telling and designers definitely need to improve on when and where to use that tool.

-Reid

I guess I'm a purist in this discussion.  I think that games and stories are two very different activities, and that trying to mate them results in something that is one disguised as the other (and is usually a failure.)

We all know that a story's about watching characters resolve conflict.  Or, as the old definition goes, put your character up a tree, throw some rocks at him, and see how he gets down.

A game, on the other hand, is about objectives and rules, and trying to achieve the objectives within the rules.  

We tend to get confused by videogames...we see increasingly impressive visuals, and connect them to movies.

The medium doesn't change the nature of the activity.  Stories didn't change their nature just because film was invented; the basic experience is the same, with an added visual vocabulary that we learn has certain meanings.  And games don't fundamentally change, even though the pieces on the board can animate and blow up.

Successful videogame genres are derived from a type of game we can play in real life.  Real time strategy is army men, FPS is cops & robbers (or war, take your choice), and you can figure out the rest.

(As a side note, anyone remember the interactive theater fad in the '90's?  I went to almost every one of those I could, and all of them were murder mysteries.  Some were pretty entertaining, but fundamentally, the story was second place to the game.  If you figured it out, you "won" and you beat the other people in the audience.  The least satisfying one was "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" where the audience got to vote on the outcome.  i.e., "Who should be the killer?  Put up your hands if you want character A to be guilty!")

The big surprise to me is that so many people STILL want to play with dolls!  I just don't get The Sims.  I guess if your virtual Barbie is a crack whore it's better.  I dunno.

Jeff

Hi. I've posted this comment yesterday, but it didn't get to your page, so I'm posting it again.

At first I wanted to agree with you, since the topic touches deeper levels of game mechanics and mechanics of story telling which interests me. But then I stumbled upon the "ancient" clichees of "linear" vs "non-linear" and "active" vs "passive" media, which I think is not only wrong concerning actual theory, computer or narrative, but also leads into a dead end of the debate. My first point is, that reading or watching a movie has been (re-)considered as a reader/viewer (inter-)activity neccessary for producing the text since the late 80s. Secondly, taking your argument of "non-linearity" to the ultimate point would mean that even computer games are always linear if you look at their deep and technical level, namely algorithms.

In my opinion, the debate is not whether the story is based on the user making the right "interactive" clicks to continue the story telling or a cut scene rewarding the achievement of a goal. It's rather like Marc Laidlaw says in an interview on gamasutra: "What's lacking is the emotional impact that usually accompanies structural highpoints or turning points in more traditional narratives. In most games, the feeling of finally achieving your goal is one of relief rather than elation or insight; the climax often merely marks a break from increasing frustration. "
And this "emotional impact", at the moment, is seldomly achieved by in-game scripting - no matter how many polygons your Ati or Nvidia card can count, the characters still look and move awkward - but in rendered cut-scenes which can emphasize a certain emotional or other aspect of a story scene.
I'm not sure if the Half-Life2 engine is the first step in an effort to bridge this gap, since either you wander aroung missing some of what NPCs say or you have a hard time deciding whom or whose monologue to follow. And still character expression is often ambiguous or sometimes like that:  :) or :(  - this is to say boringly straight-forward. We're not used to "reading" computer games like books or films, I think.

Thanks for reading - curtains, please or cutscene -
dennis

"There's a time and place to activate a cinematic. The worst is when the player is the middle of action" < This is crucial for a FPS-game featuring FMV. Best example I know is Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. Excellent cut-scenes, always at the right time in the gameplay. These vids really deepen the protagonist, which can not really happen when you just look thru his eyes or over-the-shoulder. Timing - and duration - thats verry verry important!

Well, Ron and I have a pretty similar outlook on this, but I come at it from the point of view of evolution.  I think that the reason why humans are hard-wired to like stories AND interactivity as entertainment is that they have some survival value, or at least that they feel like they do.  We may not ever get to use knowledge about how to swing a light saber in real life (unless of course you shout "Jedis are sissies" in a science fiction convention) but it FEELS like we're learning something useful.  But if you're learning to do it by actually practicing yourself (interactivity) then it's frustrating to be interrupted by someone talking to you.  And likewise if you're learning to do it by observing a master (cinematic) then it's frustrating to have the movie stop and someone say, "what do you think happens next?" - if they are asking you, then it undermines their validity as an expert.  But of course there are plenty of ways the two can work synergistically, story and character adding to the emotional impact of interactivity, and likewise interactivity making you CARE about characters because you identify with them more fully by making choices for them.  It's just damn hard!  As long as we realize that it is difficult, and particularly if we can understand why it is difficult, we can move ahead and come up with novel and effective ways to blend the two.

Hello Noah, I've ready many of your articles in Game Developer Magazine, great work. So why is it hard to get player more emotionally involved in games, to care about the NPCs they interact with and force them to make tough decisions later on? I say it has to do with writing. David Freeman's book, Creating Emotion in Games has countless examples on how to improve such a thing. The industry at large lacks the kind of forward thinking writers we need. I see a gap that needs to be filled and I'm currently practicing to improve my writing skills but it will take time before I am ready to see my work in a game.

-Reid

GTA. When I first installed GTA (original) I just drove around for hours, ran over hare krishnas and pissed off police. I still do the same thing in Vice city. It's just so much fun that I don't care about the missions and story (even if it's not bad). Gameplay is king, story, cut scenes and all the other shit isn't important. Just put some funny oneliners in it and copy classic movies and it's gonna fly.

I have two further comments.

First, I want to reiterate a bit on my earlier comment, which contains a spoiler for Beyond good and
evil. For those who don't know the game, or didn't play it, i HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU DO.
Especially if you like the combination between loveablt cartoon characters, adventureing, action games, free environment 3d exploring, and GREAT storytelling.
All through the game, you play Jade,  A reporter on a missin to uncover evil, and there's a secondary character, Paige, which you don't exactly controll, but he aids you at the beginning of the game. There's a point in the story, when Paige is kidnapped and then presumed dead.
This doesn't happend to me so often, but i was actually crying when that happend.
I felt geunine emotions towards that character, and when he died, i felt so bad.
That event, happened during a cut-scene. That game has a very good sense of where a cut-scene aids the true evolution of the story. Plus it's a great game in overall.

Next, I want to comment about story telling, and the lack of, in recent games. I've recently played too many "bad" games. Both newly created adventure games (like Syberia 2) and some non-adventure games. I really felt i was missing something when i've been playing recently. Some sense of "wanting to play the game again" at some later time. None of the new games i've played recently made me feel that way, BUT, i took out my copies of Maniac mension and Day of the tentacle, and played them both.
Now, those games are filled with both cut-scenes, and story, and yet, they manage became "classical" games. At least in my book of classical games, and frankly i wish they'd still be making games like that today.
So, i don't agree with Jonathan on the fact that people needs to play game without story like Myst. I actually rather hated Myst. I still have a copy, and ever since i've finished it the first time years ago, i never bothered to try it again, and morover i got so bored of trying many of the Myst sequals, after playing for a while,  that i didn't bother to finish any of them, which is something i always do, no matter how much the game sucks, i need to finish it to get it over with.
I don't know why you think Myst is superiour or old-style good adventure games, just because something sells, doesn't automatically means it's good.
A lot of people buy crap. It's somewhat a matter of marketing too.
My point (which got lost somewhere), is that IMHO, stories in games and cut-scenes aren't bad, but the Myst series, IS.

I didn't like Myst either...but I recognize it as a great design.

Do you really think Myst sold for ten years straight because it had good marketing?  

(Broderbund by the way had no confidence in the title when it was released, which is why they didn't own the rights to the sequel).

DOTT works because the interactive design is incredible (Damn, Tim and Dave are good) and because it's so damn funny (Damn, Tim and Dave and Larry are good).

There's no hero with a thousand faces, no oedipal story, no three-act structure, no character's progress...though there is a denoument.

Unless you are playing HL2. No denouement what so ever. Yes, people really do buy a lot of crap. Although, I'm not saying Myst is crap. Certain aspects of it are beautiful (graphics, duh), but I never played enough of them to comment on the story design. However, if Myst is so great, how come we don't see any Myst clones? All I see are Myst sequels. Same goes for HL and HL2. People praise their use of story telling without the use of cut-scenes, yet I don't see many games copying that design philosophy, why? If it's so great, wouldn't you see some form of immitation?

-Reid

Technology moved on.  Myst is old news.

Myst, like Doom, both released 1993, set standards that gave birth to a legion of games. Myst clones did not have the backstory/appeal therefrom and vanished. Myst singlehandedly brought 60-year old ladies to play with a pc and gasp in wonderment. Now that I call a great concept. Not all of us want to drive around in gta, most of us have a life.

And yet here you are on the web at 5:15 AM.

Riven had even more backstory than Myst.  Broderbund bet the farm on the old paradigm and Riven quickly disappeared and so did Broderbund.  It was the interaction, not the story that mattered.

However, you do make a good point about target audience.  GTA (or better) technology with content that wasn't embarassing would be a sure-fire hit.

Hi Everybody.

This is a great discussion, thanks to all for having it. As a liker-of, and also worker-of/on cutscenes, I can't help but chime in.

First, as someone who spent two hot weeks in Van Nuys and then 6 months working on the cutscenes to JK2, I wanted to thank the person who mentioned them. Its nice to know someone actually watched them and liked them! (you might be the only one though!) Just kidding ...

Are cutscenes important to games? Of course they are! How else would you rest your hands?! I don't know about the rest of you, but my paws need a rest after trying to keep up with some of the action games out there today!

Now having said that, I totally agree with Ron and others that there is a better way to create, or should I say, intermesh gameplay and story than a cutscene - but I dont think that it will ever fully replace the "cutscene" (that is, non-interactive bursts of storytelling). And I agree it's very tough to do.

I think the examples of GTA and HL2 are interesting, as from my perspective, these games could not be more different. GTA essentially invented the sandbox approach, and I have always said I would love to know how many people who play those games even play the missions? Even though a story was there, very few seemed to care about it because you really had to work to go out and find it.

Now we have Half-Life. HL is known for putting story back into the FPS genre. And having just completed the 2nd one, I dont see how anyone could say story is not a huge part of that game. I also dont see how you can say there are not cutscenes in it - there are. You just can control the camera while they are playing. On the positive, this deepens the illusion of the experience - making the player feel they are really there. But on the negative, it throws out hundreds of years of tried and true cinematic know-how. This is powerful stuff to toss away, as filmmakers today understand what any given shot or angle does to a scene emotionally - and it does a lot. HL really is the exact opposite of GTA. It puts you basically on a rail, and you go along for the ride. I think the success of this game proves you can actually tell a linear story in a great game, and people will appreciate it. This is important.

I think the same discussion that is being held here is also similar to the one always happening in film where people discuss "special effects vs. Story". Clearly both LOTR and the new SW films both had great special effects - but which ones will be remembered and why? Do I even need to go on?

I agree with Larry that games are many things, and there are and will be many, many types. But to predict a world that sounds like it is only inhabited by Tetris games is a scary place to me. I guess it all boils down to a definition of what a game is, and what a story is. And I gladly will leave that subject to you all. I just think storytelling is something as old as humans. Its not going to go away and as Jonathan clearly pointed out in his history of story in games, it will continue to evolve. Its natural for us as humans to want to see what we can do with a story, with these computer thingies we get to play with.

Mike

I'm glad the story/cutscene issue has become a topic of discussion of late.  It's been a sore spot with me for years.

I will go ahead and say that story is the most overrated and overused element in the gaming industry.  This includes adventure games and RPGs.  Why is the Monkey Island series so great?  Because you get to explore, interact with, and solve puzzles in a quirky, Pirates of the Caribbean-esque world.  It has little or nothing to do with the actual story.  As "they" always say, it's in the telling.  And the way a game "tells" is through the playing.

Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 are horrendous.  I don't understand how any self-respecting gamer can possibly let Konami get away with the utter tripe and cheese that they try to feed us in those games - and then praise them to the moon for it.  The gameplay, what there is of it, is decent.  But there are way too many cutscenes and radio conversations, and the story is terrible in and of itself.  "Love can bloom at any time, even on the battlefield" is a quote from MGS1.  Yea.  That about sums it up.

The GTAs get a little bit too much credit as far as being open-ended.  They're really not - you can often pick between several missions to attempt next, and then there's side-missions, but that's nothing that hasn't been done before.  I was never much of a fan of driving around and doing random things in the games.  Don't get me wrong though - I consider Vice City to be probably the best game I've ever played.  There are still cutscenes in these games, but for me, in this rare case, they're actually something to look forward to.  They're short and I find them to be a nice reward.

I remember having a similar debate a few years ago, about in-game engine cutscenes as opposed to beautifully rendered ones.  It was in the adventure games newsgroup, and some people were arguing that in fact games MUST have beautiful, pre-rendered movies to be any good.  I think we've evolved to the point where hardly anybody believes that anymore.  Hopefully the misconception about the importance of story will evolve away next.

Woo, thanks everybody for making it tolerable to lurk again.

I dont really agree with any of this. Knights of the Old Republic has a more intense, exciting and emotionally challenging story that any of the Star Wars films that spawned it, so it's obviously possible to tell a great stroy through a game.

And as for cut scenes in first person shooters, I consider them a well earned reward for my hard work ploughing through level's of identical bad guys. Not to mention a welcome break from the action.

It's interesting that a few people have mentioned liking cut scenes because they give them a break from the action. If that's the case, why not use a simple "Intermission" card like Python did in Holy Grail? Better yet, the pause button might be there for a reason too.

That might save a few million bucks in development costs.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Planescape: Torment.  In that game (for those of you who haven't played it) the story was used as a frame for the real point of the game, which seemed to be a sort of self-psychoanalysis.  In many ways it played out like a choose your own adventure book, but it was much more interactive than a book like that could ever be.  Dialog choices often included several options that were factually correct, but each one evoked a very different ethical or philosophical viewpoint.  It was a game that really made you think about the thematic elements presented, and what your viewpoint really was.  Did you play as a truth-seeker, following the law to the letter?  Did you play a bit chaotically, lying and speaking in riddles?  Did you attack people that insulted you?  How did you treat your companions?  The graphics certainly weren't anything to write home about, and there was combat but the game didn't really revolve around it; you could die and it didn't really matter.

As I remember it, there were a couple short cutscenes, but they were all short enough that they didn't really interrupt the pacing.

Hi.  Firstly, I just want to say how refreshing it is to read an impassioned and informed debate on the state of computers games today. Then on the subject of storytelling in games my view is that cut-scenes can work, but only when they coherently link with the characters and story established in game play.  In a first person shooters, where the protagonist essential has no character, you become the protagonist, you are the soldier down to your last few rounds of ammo, desperately to hold off another enemy attack.  Then a cut-scene is dropped in telling you that no in fact, the soldiers in named Bud, he has a rather silly moustache and is over fond of cheesy one-liners.  When cut-scenes work, such as Final Fantasy 7-9 they continue the characters established via ingame dialogue and action.  They then do not feel like such a jarring break in the story of the game.  Surely the question worth asking tough is where massive multiplayer online games leave storytelling in computer games?  They work but the game world is very difficult to change.  No matter how many time you kill the bandit leader, next time you go into the dark woods the bandits will still be marauding like there’s no tomorrow.  Is it the interaction with other live humans beings that overcome this limitation?  The way you can play any kind of character you want, as defined by how you treat other players, that make them so immersing?

I am surprised that no one mentioned pen'n'paper RPGs. For me this is the ultimate storytelling or "being told a story" experience.  A good DM will have a grand story in mind while shaping the world as a seemingly open "playground", guiding the players subletely to their ultimate goal. If it works, it's the ultimate union of storytelling art and sandbox play.

I've been DMing for years now (I'm thirty) and my players are to the point where they are trying to bribe me into giving away what'll happen in out next meeting ;-).

I have a few rules that I try to follow:
1. Tailor the story to the characters. Let a mage do things that only he can do, let a fighter do his. Furthermore take into account the background of the characters, their dislikes and loves, their friends and foes. Create more background - things to like or to dislike, people to make friends with or fight within the game and let them reoccur.

2. Let a lot of things happen that may or not may be connected to the main story - leave it uncertain until the puzzle parts fall into their places. Let the players make educated guesses and let them run down the wrong road for a while if they are mistaken.

3. Let things happen "offroad". A few of the most interesting and entertaining evenings occured when my players were far off shot and everything was improvised on the spot. I must say that I can hold a whole town with it's affairs in my head (except for names) so logic isn't much of a problem for me in these cases.

4. Super Heroes are boring. It's far more satisfying for the players when their characters help blocking a breach in the wall of a besieged city and later create a plan to supply the starving inhabitants through underground tunnels than to just go and bash the enemy army. Don't put the PCs in the center but slightly off - so that their actions have a noticable impact but do not decide the war.

5. Set the pacing according to story and player needs. When the "plot thickens" give clearer hits and less hinder the progress. When the players are really furious about a vile murderer let them run after him - don't let the hate cool down by diverting. Let them think it out when they are making camp in the gloomy forest after running on the bad guy's tracks for a day.

Of course pen'n'paper is real time telling while computer games are 'precooked and canned'. No game can be as flexible as a creative DM. But I think games should at least try to go a bit in this directions. There already are games with "random quests" - problem is, they are a bit too random to be fun. Make these quests deeper and more complex. Let the game take notes about characters met and places discovered in a random quests and use them in future random events. If some wizard orders the player to find a certain plant - make note 'wizard's name, plant'. Generate another quest where the elixir created from the plant is put to use - and poisoned someone. Hunt the murderer? Find the antidote? Find the holy family jewels for a fitting funeral? Endless possibilities. I'm actually working on a system (Virtual DM) that can do this in my spare time. But since the latter is very scarce and my c++ skills are rather undeveloped I'm not much beyond the theory and concept.

Wow!  Great discussion.  I posted the following entry on my blog, after reading the Slate article and  Damoin's post over at Zen of Design (http://booboo.phpwebhosting.com/~ubiq/index.php?p=211).

Rather than copy my entire post here, here's the permalink: (http://rendergaming.blogspot.com/2005/02/gaming-storytelling.html).

Anyway, great stuff.   Love the comics, Ron, keep them coming.

Games should never be plot-based.  To say otherwise is ridiculous.  It's a game, folks.  Almost by definition, gameplay is first.  Nintendo's design philosophy is to create the type of world and gameplay they want, and only after all that to put a story around it.  The plot is there to serve the gameplay, and it should never be the other way around.

Let's look at some adventure game examples.  The Longest Journey is praised to the moon by adventure gamers.  I think the game is terrible, because most of the game is dialogue, while actual puzzles are few and far between.  Monkey Island 2, for example, is a much better game.  MI2 is packed with puzzles (gameplay), and the story is only there to give us a setting, characters, and a reason to solve more puzzles.  The best part of that game isn't the shocking ending cutscene - it's the large "middle" section when you're free to roam all around with tons of different things to figure out before moving on.

Agree with you Ron.
Do your comments apply to "interactive fiction" too?
Rob

Well in his article he mentions "you dont win or loose Monkey Island, you play it". LooooL? what bad example, same thing with movies, u watch them! You dont win or loose those either.
When we sit down to see a movie or play a game with more or less meaning, it is to be told a story, AND to be entertained (importent factor).
I might just as well play HL2 or MI and I find both fun, in each their way. There are story in both, they just tell them in different ways.
If the game gets boring ( exaple: I got at least tierd of Doom 3 after just some hours of playing, why? because the sorroundings were too one-sided in it's texturus modelling. Graphics werent bad, just all the walls made me feel tight.) it's not a good game, this is of course up to the game-designers to design and make a good game.

Interesting article, and I mostly agree.  As a game player, I really dislike cut scenes for two reasons.  

1 – They usually give information that the character I am playing would not have.  For instance, while the player character is standing in the village looking for some new armor, the cut scene shows the amazingly powerful bad guy in some far off tower having a discussion with someone about how much of a threat I am, and what to do about me.  This is dumb for so many reasons!

2 – The game designer takes momentary control and makes decisions for me during the cut scene that I might not want to make.  Did I really want to challenge that guy right now?  Or why didn’t I get to kiss that person as a reward for all the hard work I just did?  The cut scene is too often a way to tear the rewards and decisions out of the hands of the players.

I think we have to look at storytelling in games as more of an interactive myth.  The “scenario” you mentioned fits in that the player can be given a series of choices, tasks and outcomes, and let them move the blocks around as they want to.  A “win” could be saving the kingdom, helping someone regain a lost thing, whatever.  A “loss” results in more of a cautionary tale, of which there are plenty in myth.  This is not a linear story, it is a micro-mythos in which to learn and experiment, and it can be fun over and over.  I think Neverwinter Nights is the first game to really get this right, especially because it’s toolset makes game building/storytelling available to anyone, not just programmers and artists.  And let’s face it, there is a real need to flush out most of the old blood and get some new thinking in game design.

Story telling is clearly powerful in games, but we have to expand our definition of what a “story” really is before we can be effective.  Hollywood is not a good place to use for reference because most of the movies and tv shows are not any better stories than most first person shooters are.  As you pointed out, “A great story reaches inside us and we leave a different person than we started”.  How often does a movie or television show really do that for you?  For me, almost never.  It’s far more common for me to find this in good literature.  “Interactivity” is also not the key, because in reality a gas pump is “interactive”, but not fun.  There must be some kind of reward through interaction, and that is the key to story telling in games.

Gilbert is right, I think; cut-scenes are not the way forward. But
purely open-ended games - with no plot - lose their interest value in
the end. Tetris, chess, sports games all have a breaking point where
the player says "Great... now what?". The best plots in gaming history
- as Thompson points out - are the ones that the player creates
themselves, but that the game itself sets up initially. Elite and the
Sims are probably the best two examples of this.

The Sims is obvious - the Sims themselves (particularly in the sequel)
have their own personalities, and thus no two plots are identical.
Elite was fantastic in that you never saw the main character - you
just had a ship - yet you felt at all times like you were developing
as a player. You could literally be what you wanted to be - if you
wanted to be a pirate, you just went and shot other ships. Subsequent
games ruined this (Frontier II, Privateer) ruined this feeling by
making it too complicated or by putting in a story mode. David Braben
is meant to be making a new version, but whether this will turn out to
be any good is another matter.

GTA would be the way forward, if they could figure out a way to make
the character and plot totally customisable (Sims meets GTA?). But I
think the real way out is to rid ourselves of the human element
entirely - like the original Elite - so that publishers don't get
caught up with plots, voice-overs and the like.

Both The Sims and Elite get boring after a while - for the lack of purpose. That is why Sims addons (Sims-fan: "At last something new!") sell like sliced bread and almost nobody made the Elite rank in the game. Creating a plot in First Encounters (Elite 3) was the right thing to do - imposing a time limit on it was wrong. The choice should have been up to the player if he wanted to follow the story for a while or to roam freely. Problem was the story progressed regardless if the player took part or not. The "exploring player" would miss a great deal or even everything at all.

But as you mentioned The Sims - Alter Ego anyone?

While I don't believe that story should be a big feature of a videogame, I also do not believe that the plots have to be totally customizable.  Non-linearity has nothing to do with a game's greatness or lack thereof - look at all the phenomenal sidescrollers.  

For me, the actual gameplay is what's important.  I don't care about "making my own story".  Mario 64 and Zelda 64 might be the two best games ever created, and their plots are completely linear - but the other side of that coin is that the plots have very little or nothing to do with your enjoyment of the game.

"Mario 64 and Zelda 64 might be the two best games ever created, and their plots are completely linear."

hmm. You can say the plot is totally linear (which dosen't really mean anything, IMO), but the story is very open to player input in both of these games.  I could give examples, but instead I'll just say that I don't see the story in these games as being confined to cut-scenes.

Yes, I know that you have plenty of freedom in those games.  However, I would not call "I [Mario] ran to the far end of the island and climbed a tree, then ran around and collected a few coins, then punched some goombas" a story, which is what I think you're implying.

For an adventure example, I'll use Maniac Mansion.  Its greatness does not come from story.  If you want to say "you create your own story" you can, but that's just semantics.  That kind of "story" is a far different animal from the Longest Journey's story, for example.  And MM is far superior.

Fair enough about getting bored with such games - it's the same 'breaking point' as I cited in my first post. However, Sims 2 has added a soap opera feel, which gives mini-tasks to perform. Many people who played the Sims game on the consoles - with their added mission structure - felt that the game had become too constrictive.

Plots are, as JuntMonkey points out below, non-essential for games. However, plots are not the same thing as story. Plots are by their nature linear, whilst a story can grow with the player. Look at the popularity of online role-playing - Star Wars Galaxies and City Of Heroes, for example, and the upcoming Matrix game. Here, the stories are created entirely by players - specifically, by groups of players.

Just a thought!

I like to think that there's a purpose to what i'm doing. If That comes from someone telling me something i know isn't true (i.e, a story) then so be it, but at least I feel there's a point to me doing this. That's why I prefer decent stories in all computer games, even those with mindless violence in them.

Having read the article above and the article mentioned inside it, I am sickened to my core.  At least the writers both agree (unlike some in the discussion afterward) that storytelling is important.

First of all, lets go all the way back to the beginning and realize that videogames are entertainment.  We play them to get out of our daily lives and either feel the thrill of the moment, or immerse ourselves in the life of someone else.  On point, cutscenes definitely have a place (when done well of course) to both make us feel a momentary thrill and push us deeper into the immersion of a character.  

I have to note that my opinions are heavily RPG-based since that is the type of game that I prefer.

Especially in RPGs, there are points where the culmination of your actions yields a result. That result is the perfect "stopping place" to explain in further detail and with better tools what has happened...one tool being a cutscene.  

Lets say that you have defeated the main boss of some underground dungeon that has been coming out at night and terrorizing a village.

Option A:  The camera is used in full effect to portray the dramatic death of the creature with extra effects, lights, explosions and other means that just arent part of the gameplay. Then it swoops out and shows mothers kissing their children and the town throwing a celebration.

Option B: Merely what the game is capable of is shown for the death of the creature. Then as you walk your character out, you see the in game ncps running around screen with little individual actions that arent coordinated nor do are they really able to portray the larger meaning for the town.

Face it, scenematics can do things that the actual gameplay cant or the developers wont take the time to add.  Hell even if they did, so much MORE could be portrayed through camera angles and editing, that it wouldnt be worth it to code it. Thats the point.

But I will admit there are times that interactivity is taken away too early or at an inopportune time.

Can software have fully interactive, 100% human-level AI NPCs that do the most exciting thing at the right time? Of course not. But the purpose of cutscenes (one of them anyway) besides pushing the story forward (is there a true RPG fan that doesnt care about their character....and then by extention the story's effect on that character?) is to script moments, be they sparse, that are as immersive and tailored to the action of the moment as possible.

Each gamer has to decide for themselves, am I seeking a) a simple see the mole, whack the mole experience or am I looking for b) a game with a character whose progression is tied to some larger meaning?

Its fine to just want to whack your mole...but most of us are looking for more than that. I am at least.

That is an important point. I've been to a conference at IMAGINA about cinematics vs game play. In the end, everybody had more questions that answers. One o fthe most aspects of games (as in storytelling) is the illusion of purpose; stories have begginings, middles and endings. it makes us confortable to have this kind of organization, somewhere, since everyday life can be somewhat chaotic and objectives tend to fade away, change or simply be qualified as unachieveable.

This need for a goal is clear in The Sims 2, when they made the GOAL stuff, even though you can choose what you want, you have a bussole in your charachter that indicates where to go. So, the goal or goals, should be made clear for the players, otherwise they would be lost. There are many ways to do it, and the easiest is cinematics.

Anotehr one is a reward system; GTA SA has both: you have cinematics that show your charachter's motivations and goals, but also you have reaward systems for doing stuff like jumping on bikes or wrecking cars.

And good stories have their place: Alice McGee's would be just a strange FPS if ot wasn't for teh great dialogues and story. The cinematics themselves become also a reward system, watching the ending sequence is almost a religious experience for some players, after 50+ hours of play.

We get, then into what may be called "art" in video game design: lubitsch did it in movies, with subtle scenes he would say more then being explicit: cinematics are an explicit way to give the player goals and motivations, we should find subtler ones.

Hi Ron! Nice page!

What we call a "story" is the description of a set of events. But this definition is not enough, since a set of randomly chosen newspaper pieces will also fill it. A few elements more defines a "story": there  is a sender (storyteller, moviemaker,...) which goal is to transmit the story information to a receiver (reader, movie spectator). There is also a structure in the information (presentation, development, conclusion).

In a simple environment (dad tells tale to kid), this process is also quite simple: dad (sender) speaks, kid (receiver) listens and tale (story) is told. If you change this, story telling becomes far more complicated (kid only listens some parts while he is playing at the same time with a toy) or even impossible (kid does not care, toy is attracting all his atention).

Games are by nature, experience trainers. That is the way our specie uses them mainly early in our lifes. So, it is an interactive process: you try, you fail/succeed, you learn. Computer games are just a very sophisticated version of the "game" concept. As techology evolved from the first PC, games have become an artifical very complex simulation environment, a high-tech sandbox. The problem with games is that once you know the enviroment, once you have learnt, you do not gain experience and then you become bored and so something else

So somebody came up with the idea that telling you a story, keeping you pending on it (remember the basic pasive actitude is required from a story receiver) will keep you busy in the sandbox and not look for another playground...  Well is not a bad idea, since is a source of new information and could enrich the basic you-alone-in-the-sandbox experience.

Problems is that some players, simply enjoy more experimenting that listening pasively (take any previous comment here about "exploring worlds" or "blowing-up nasty monsters" if you need an image). Well, a battle is lost but not the war you might think. Anyway, stories are meant to last a time and not forever, so even if you succeed entertaining, sooner o later the kid will go back to the sandbox or just away looking for new playgrounds. The worse the story is, that faster the kid goes away.

So computer gamemakers are meant to draw a line between somewhere between pasive storytelling and open experimenting sandbox to keep their users entertained. Notice that keeping users entertained means money (which is the target of developing such complex programs): more sales now (ear-to-mouth and other promotion methods to spread interest) and later (people queuing to buy part 2, not to mention if you are talking of "DeathSpank part IV"...).

How do you mix both methods? Mmmm... You can stop the kid playing to tell a bit of the story (cut-scenes) and then let him play rather free or you can try to somehow mix the storytelling with the playing in the sandbox. Both methods have good and bad points.

If you stop the game to provide story (cut scenes) you capture all atention of the kid/player since, for a while, the sandbox is simply not available. This is the easy way. While this allows a deeper story telling, you are splitting the game in two: now you play, now you stop, now you play, now you stop.... That can upset a lot of players that are just interested in the sandbox or just simply discover they do not like what you are telling and cannot go away. To make a comparison: what would you think if while watching a video movie (=story) it will stop and force you to play some short game so once you win, you can continue your watching? (replace here game by TV advertisements and the efect is still the same...). Soon after you will abandon the movie... A piece of advice: if you use cut-scenes, make them short and give the player the option to skip them.

If you try to tell the story without interrupting the kid play, you have a serious problem. How do you atract the kid atention without making him stopping his satisfactory playing? Well, there are several levels here. If (case a) both things happen at the same time (say some npc play a scene despite of what player does,  there is a high risk of player  losing it . If he loses it and you do not replay, the story is incomplete and then useless (though quite realistic). You can (case b) profit special moments when kid's attention is focused on potential storytellers: make the plastic toy in the sand box talk, make the npc in Monkey Island talk.... Of course some player will not care, but you are not disturbing their playing. Anyway, the price of blending storytelling with the sandbox is that the lack of attention of the player may lost part of the story or make it meaningless (story pieces not told in the right order). A clever storytelling is required to adapt to users behavior while not breaking the game

The summary for me is that while storytelling enriches certain game types (a pure skill-reflex as ping pong provides fun without any story), unless blended in a clever way may upset some pure sandbox players. So even some game cut scenes are gorgeous and worth to be seen, there will be always somebody feeling you spoiled the fun. As we say in my country, "rain never pleases everybody" and so do games. So, if the kid does not care about your atempts of story telling, leave him alone in the sandbox.