[Editor's note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive with the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]
For years, the gaming industry considered itself the inferior, slightly retarded half-brother of the film industry and fought for validation for everything from musical scores to visuals, cut-scenes and yes, of course, stories. We're so used to traditional storytelling, in which we're given a beginning, middle, and an end, that to venture far from this millennia-old method seems nothing short of a bastardization of the entire concept of storytelling, or, on a more practical level, failing the user who can't seem to follow anything without a distinct line from points A to B to C, level up, boss battle, missions a la carte, and THE END -- PWNED.
But videogames, from the programmers who create them to the users that consume them, have finally diverted from the typical conventions of the big, bad film industry to develop into their own medium, their own glorified art form that basks in deserved praise of player immersion and technological innovation. Why, then, do we still cling so desperately to the tried, true, yet tired course of linear storytelling? Yes, it provides the structure of a game -- a path for both designer and gamer to follow. Yes, reaching a conclusion provide one would hope -- some manner of catharsis that makes the previous hours battling of one's way to the credits feel worthwhile. But let's grow the f**k up, shall we?
At risk of losing any reader that has stuck with me thus far, I refer to a classic of Western literature, the oft-named father of modern Realism, Gustave Flaubert's
Madame Bovary. Flaubert insisted he had written a novel "about nothing." This does not say that the novel has no content, for indeed text drips from each page in a drunken stupor of eloquent profundity, nor is it saying that nothing happens within the novel itself, but indeed, within the pages of
Madame Bovary there is no plot as such. There are characters. Things happen to these characters. The things that happen to them have results and consequences that lead to an inevitable end of the novel, just as one's life ultimately ends in the culmination of one's experiences. The "novel about nothing," therefore, refers to the idea that the story is not what one expects of a story, especially in that time and age. It is plotless as there is no aim, no fundamental goal or problem that must be solved in order to reach a conclusion. It is simply about people, about life, about nothing so spectacular as the human condition itself, and how each of us falls prey to its variously lackluster faults and abuses, leaving most bereft at having stumbled in a ditch during a thunderstorm, our souls muddied by the very decision to walk on that particular day rather than accept a ride.
Am I suggesting that videogames fashion themselves on this "about nothing" model? Yes and no. Videogames are entirely unique in their capacity to involve the player not just in the action provided by the game's designers, but in that they offer players the opportunity to affect the world in which they are playing; the environment, its other inhabitants, the course of the story itself. What does this level of immersion mimic? Life. While many people have an entitled perspective that they are stars of their respective stages, the reality is that each of us exists in this world with a bunch of other co-inhabitants. Events and intentions are in full swing from the moment we take our first breath, and we navigate the storm of activity with varying levels of interest and influence along the way.
And since life as we know it is more and more immersed in the digital and dependent on the map rather than the terrain, a transition from living-as-oneself to living-as-other in the form of a game is not only natural in its progression, but well on the way to maturity, perhaps in its adolescence, where the game continues to grapple with the birds-n-bees concept of linear storytelling, all the while knowing there are other ways of doing "it."
Two games of contrasting approaches immediately come to mind at the moment.
Batman: Arkham Asylum and
Fallout 3. I love both. My only complaint about
Batman, in fact, is that the story did not last longer. If I must follow a quite scripted mode of gameplay, this is the fashion in which I wish to do so. Events link inextricably from one to the next, leading the player along a path that feels natural and, indeed, vital -- not just to the story, but to one’s very survival. There were moments when I felt somewhat bullied by the nature of the linear, but for the most part, I suspended my disbelief with joy and allowed myself exploration of Arkham Island when, indeed, I felt a needed diversion from the course of events.
Fallout 3, on the other hand -- while a story is built into the game in a rather traditional fashion (one is presented with a problem to which one must follow certain paths to reach its solution) -- following the story is not required in order to play the game,
nor to thoroughly enjoy it. This is a distinct difference that is seldom found in open world games, “open world” though they claim to be. While I spent many an hour traversing the streets of Empire City to hunt down each and every blast shard in
inFamous, once I concluded the story and found every shard, there was little left for me to gain in exploring the terrain. In
Fallout, however, I seem to spend the majority of my time exploring, finding every single Raider outpost on (and off) the map to revisit after the requisite amount of time has passed to hit it again for additional carnage and munitions.
Fallout, and other similar open world RPGs, benefit, I believe, on the character build system.
inFamous, [Prototype], and other open world
stories lose some of their power in that the player is required to play a specific individual with specific, pre-loaded personalities that are inherently constraining. I am not even terribly interested in completing the story built into
Fallout as much as I enjoy creating different characters with differing motivations and skillsets, then setting them loose in the Wasteland to see what happens.
By stark contrast, perhaps the most bullied I’ve felt by a game to date was the recent incarnation of
Ghostbusters, where not only was the player character decidedly uninteresting, undynamic, and utterly pointless, but unless one followed the scripted scenarios immediately and to the precise specifications ordered by the game, there was no play to be had. Not only were you unable to explore the environment whatsoever, but if you decided to go to
this room instead of
that, or say you wanted to approach a problem from another perspective, the other characters were there to constantly berate you for your fuck-upery. I’ve never encountered a game so insistent that the player follow each prolonged mission in such a precise order of action, to the point where watching a friend partake in one part left absolutely no desire in me to take it on myself. “What’s the point? I know what happens.” This is worse than most films, in that I often watch a movie again even after I know how it unfolds. When my participation in a space is reduced to little more than a formality, I may as well be standing amidst a throng of sweaty tourists trying to catch a glimpse of the fake “Mona Lisa” encased in bulletproof Plexiglas instead of exploring the labyrinth of the Louvre for an actual encounter with history. Buy me a freakin’ postcard.
Still, with the upcoming flux of open world RPGs (
Dragon Age: Origins) and long, sprawling stories with various outcomes and character possibilities (
Heavy Rain), I see videogames taking a more non-linear approach to storytelling that maximizes player immersion and reduces the emphasis on traditional story: beginning, middle, end. Games have their peculiar and remarkable technical qualifiers that set them as media in their own right, flashes of brilliance that have markets such as the film industry playing role reversal and turning to games for innovation and economy.
But it is the game’s ability to create new conceptualizations of
story in which lies its true potential for departure from standardized entertainment. This is what will birth the most meaningful and lasting stretch of development for designer and player alike, both in the sprawling pathways of the game and in the unfamiliar terrain of the future. “The End” belongs to history. The course of continuous and unlimited play paved by users concocting stories of their own within given environs -- with this Plato’s cave is awash in the light of XMBs and LEDs, plasma forms and digital ideals.
Oscar Wilde said that “life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Welcome to gamespace, Oscar. Your Dorian Gray is fading.
Contest:
6:20 PM on 10.21.2009
| 
Or maybe I'm off. Either way, very nice article.
Had to throw in the one (partial) Oscar Wilde quote I remember. An excellent read though. If I wasn't pressed for time, I'd craft a more well thought out response.
My biggest beef with games like Ghostbusters, some older adventure games, and even some of TellTale's recent episodic games, is they give you almost no room for doing things your own way. You either figure it out the way the designers intended, or you get nowhere. ':P
Excellent article, btw.
I just finished all of the DLC on PS3 (finally): as a total package, it's a pretty nice ride. Great article!
A game can have both, and heck, they don't even have to be balanced. I felt that Bioshock had more of a linear gameplay than exploration. But Bioshock also presented you with challenges. Should you not go to a certain area, perhaps you'd miss a Big Daddy, and never find that Little Sister you were searching for. Besides, you could totally face the challenges in many ways. If you wanted to face the big daddy directly, you could. You could also run the heck out of a room and lead him to a place where it was full of torrents on your side. Or just use those trap crossbow ammo.
Then again, I don't have as much time nowadays as I used to, and in my playthroughs of both games I used to find myself saying "come ooooooon, find something important to give you some sense of progression, dammit".
The Witcher and Risen's exploration levels are as far as I go nowadays, I guess. And Zelda's. But that's just because I love the franchise so much I get intoxicated just to be staring at the screen. Which is something I thought Fallout 3 would make me feel(I played the hell out of the first 2 games), but didn't.
Anyways, I think non-linear storytelling is important but shouldn't be the entire stone on which the video game industry is based off of. It is important for the artist to make a point- and with the gimmick of "choose your own adventure" you can't always have that. It works when Bioware does "you're in your own movie!" games- it works when Deus Ex says "you make up your mind about what ending is the GOOD GUY ending- and then think about why you made that choice!" but like Anthony said in his rev-rant about the video game industry only consisting of one genre- it can't be built entirely on one thing. There still needs to be the kind of game in which one can experience the artists point of view- otherwise nothing is learned.
I agree with your standpoint on how linear story should be done though (of course by linear I mean literally linear- not implying that the story can't be "eraser-headian open to interpretation" like Killer 7)- to me Half-Life 2 is the perfect example of how a linear story should be told. The player can navigate the world as they see fit- but they can't change anything about it.
I dunno, I'm sick and rather tired. I'll give the article a re-read in the morning and see if I can offer up an opinion that's not based off of my half-assed comprehension skills right now.
"My only complaint about Batman, in fact, is that the story did not last longer. If I must follow a quite scripted mode of gameplay, this is the fashion in which I wish to do so. Events link inextricably from one to the next, leading the player along a path that feels natural and, indeed, vital -- not just to the story, but to one’s very survival. There were moments when I felt somewhat bullied by the nature of the linear, but for the most part, I suspended my disbelief with joy and allowed myself exploration of Arkham Island when, indeed, I felt a needed diversion from the course of events."
I loved the hell out of that game, and it was indeed a linear story. In fact my least favorite part of the game are the challenge rooms, which are storyless. Part of this may be due to the fact that I suck at them--to quite epic proportions--but I also find no real purpose other than stressing out from abject failure.
I do not think gaming should rid itself of the story as such--not on a whole. I'm a certified bookaholic, a lover of literature, myth, a former film student and screenwriter, and at present a writer of stories and other literary forms that mostly contain strong threads of traditional narrative structure.
But the overarching social implications of gamespace as a whole--another article altogether, or, as is my present endeavor, one's doctoral dissertation--and the distinction borne by video games, their designers and their players, is far from that of following traditional models of, but rather that of forging new paths and inventing as much as dreaming the world's way into the future.
In graphics, hardware, components, in characters and technological research and level design, in reimagined senses of community and a bottom-up hierarchy of critical theory, and--of course--of story, the games industry cannot sit passive on its bottom line and rely on the currency of today for the monetary and innovative laurels of the future, but must--as it's always done--risk itself and everything to which it stakes its claims of greatness for greatnesses yet un-or-under-realized in entertainment, media, and the nebulous web of social constructs through which our world navigates.
That was, quite possibly, one of the longest sentences I've ever written.
In any case, I do not say the linear or traditional story has no place in games, but rather gaming not only ought but need to embark on their own trajectories, take full advantage of every pixel, SPU, immersible capacity, and sheer ingenuity, even at the prospect of temporary failures, else wager failing not just capital and support, but the epochal horizon of our mythic human legacy.
I merely suggest there is far more interest--much worth to be found beyond the boundaries inside which we most often find ourselves, and of all the media capable of pushing through this limit experience, games may quite possibly be the most adept, not to mention fun as all hell.
If exploration and thinking as such does a "hypocrit" make, brand me an H and drop me an e. Strong Bad would be proud today.
So I take it you aren't one to view Wii Fit as the future of gaming.
I think the title is probably the most innovate game in the past 10 years, so much so as to redefine what makes a videogame a videogame. But it seems like you limit the need for creativity to a need for creative storytelling rather than the more expanded sense of genre invention.
If that is not an accurate understanding of the direction your believe gaming should go in, please feel free to correct me.
Uh, that's a story.
It starts, you experience what happens and it wraps up.
To take this out of the nosebleed seats of college educated overthinking and self importance, which intentional or not this article comes off stinking of, the whole thing reminds me of Seinfeld, of all things.
Seinfeld was proud to claim the show was about nothing. And yet...every episode I can see as clearly as any TV show exactly what the plot is.
Every story will always have a beginning and an ending. Even life, if you wrote what you've lived so far it would have a beginning, go along in plot and end with when you die. So even real life follows the structure of storytelling.
Sounds more like you're demanding there be more to do outside of the main experience the game already gave you because you liked it and don't want it to end.
But there's that "just like life" for you. Everything ends. Just go play another game and wait for a sequel. Only thing "deeper" about games like Dragon Age and Heavy Rain are they are still stories, just better writers than average.
Whole thing sounds more like you've played so many games without a break, one after another, you're losing the fun they offer from being burned out and jaded because, just like movies, you see too many too fast you realize how much the same they really are.
Structure IS life. You sleep so many hours a day, you eat certain times a day, you go to a job with certain shifts....even your entertainment comes out on certain days. Life is structure, so I guess games were farther along to that degree than you think.
The reason I think it's hypocritical to have your view about what gaimng should be and not think the Sims falls into that view is because the Sims is simply the best game I have ever seen when it comes to creating a natural story. Sure your god in the game, but the premise - making people go to work, putting them in relationships, having to nag them because they don't want to learn no skill or go to work, havingg to nag them so that they don't miss their car, etc. strikes me as one of if not the most extensive examples of a natural plot-line ever created. What could be a more natural story than living life?
Actually, when I think about "great games" from throughout my life, they are ones that existed beyond their storylines. Pokemon Red, Diablo II, and The World Ends With You (DIVERSE) all have storylines, but are benefited by being able to explore the world on your own terms to various levels of linear constraint.
I'd say more, but you said it better. Thank you for sharing.
Again, I don't know how what I've written has been so vastly misconstrued as anti-story, aside from the title, by which I meant story in its most typical and traditional sense, which, by the way, is what Flaubert meant by writing a "novel about nothing" in regards to Madame Bovary--I was quoting him and attempting to extrapolate and partially explain the meaning behind his statement, which is precisely what you said, and precisely what I said as well.
It isn't about "nothing"; it IS a story; it is just not what was considered worthy or expected of a story in the time when it was written, and many people still regard it as such...not "storied" enough to be worth the bother. In fact, its ambiguity from story to narrator to characters and their actions are all major contributors that criminalized Flaubert and the novel, taking them both to trial for indecency, immorality, and religious offense.
Seinfeld is an excellent example, and its creators were in fact inspired by Flaubert's intentions. The sitcom, as we know it, was actually born by a form of ancient Greek theater in the same sense that Pong was born of table tennis.
Furthermore and again, I don't believe story should be banished from games, but my idea of what "story" is and has the potential to be may simply vary from what some may consider to be of enough interest and/or traditional narrative structure. I find stories in everything, everywhere, and I'm wholly fascinated by the lot of them.
The blanket assumptions being tossed about are also quite puzzling, as many of the arguments against my argument are actually in agreement with much of said argument, but perhaps I assume too much in composing a piece devoid of fapping cocks, though I'd hoped a couple boobs would satisfy this seemingly arbitrary requirement.
Mr. Truth, I also agree that everyday life is itself a form of story, that every life tells its tale, as I just mentioned finding fascination with story everywhere I look...and listen. But there is a difference between structure, story, and the very specific formula of traditional mythic storytelling structures we've inherited, from many thousand year-old tragedies to virtually every movie in theaters.
It is really--simply--that I feel games have the dynamic capacity to break this mold, not only by their inherently innovative nature, but because of the immersible experience the player has in his hands when delving into the world of a game. Much as I love the novel and film, the imaginative rendering of detail and omitted experience, games offer the unique perspective of active versus passive; immediate involvement and investment in the characters, the environment, and THE STORY therein.
How else may I make myself more clear?
...cocks?
Not that Lenore did, but those are my thoughts.
She isn't claiming that Madame Bovary isn't a story. Nor is Seinfeld trying to claim that it doesn't have one either. They're both saying, these stories are about nothing really important to anyone else outside of these characters. They really don't have no over arching thing to teach us in the traditional sense. They're still stories in the idea that they have to fit in some sort of structure, but everything has to fit inside the structure of the world in some way. Beginnings and ends apply to everything. So to say that by having those suddenly makes something a story is an obvious statement. One day I was born and one day I will die. Yeah, I guess my life is a story, but its not probably going to be an interesting one and to sum it up my life with be about almost nothing.
So what is this article about? Well, Lenore is saying that video games are trying way too hard to fit the bill of traditional story telling. Where as movies have to be very interesting and try to be profound for anyone to really care, video games can be like Madame Bovary or even my life. They don't have to be this great teacher of profundity. Games involve interaction and thus even if something has no real absolute lesson to teach or some grand plot of human suffering and redemption, the player can still enjoy just a game 'about nothing' since they have control to do whatever they want, to progress through a story that while it has things happening but their overall effect is little if anything at all on the world and only purpose is to just entertain us in whatever manner it decides to give us its somewhat pointless story.
@ Hcapt
The Sims is close, but as she said. Its too low stake. I've barely played the Sims myself. But does that game have an end? No, it has a beginning and then you just play God for as long as you desire, or so I imagine. The problem is that The Sims really is about nothing and Madame Bovary and Seinfeld are metaphorically about nothing... Now, that's not me saying that The Sims is a bad game. It just doesn't have a story at all. Its just a simulator for you to play God which is something entirely different than Lenore is getting at. Yeah, the game is technically about nothing and you craft and entertain yourself with it, but your effect on what happens is huge, which breaks the idea of something ordinary and just amusing.
Wii Fit is also essentially about nothing as well. But I won't bore you my dissection of that game.
The whole point, again, of this article is just to say that games shouldn't limit themselves with their ability to tell a story. Games have so many advantages over movies simply because a person can interact with them and enjoy them even if they're absolutely pointless, not much unlike me playing with a Yo-yo at the age of 13. Pointless but it was fun for a while. Didn't teach me anything profound. Didn't really have a point. It was just ordinary pointless entertainment devoid of the absurdity that seems to plague other fun game titles these days.
I mean, yeah, Dynasty Warriors is pretty much mindless fun as I take my character and slaughter hundred and perhaps thousands of enemies, but I'm still living out a Chinese Historical Fiction novel which is really about a lot more than nothing at all. And its absurd how my character is so Godly. Hardly ordinary in any sense and still limited in the traditional sense of telling a story.
1. To a reasonable degree, events unimportant to the particular incident or string of incidents being related are filtered out of the immediate telling.
2. There will be a setup, action, and result (sometimes, the setup is omitted if it's "generally understood," like "Guess what? I'm pregnant!")
It may be a case where storytelling has shaped how we perceive a story should be told, but I'm more of the mind that stories are told in the way they are - with the beginning, middle, and end - because that's the way in which stories make sense to us. Because video games have the ability to be freeform like no other medium before them, I think it's wrong to say that "beginning, middle, and end" has been eclipsed.
If you move the slider all the way over to the other side, you get games that are purely about choice and gameplay. You get something like Tetris, where each piece placed is a free choice, and you're building your own experience. Yet, if you video-capture one round of Tetris from first block to "oh shit the screen's full!", I could probably locate a story-like beginning, middle, and end out of it - places where the tides turn, so to speak.
Additional control over the scenario isn't the same thing as moving away from traditional plot structure. The trouble is putting in enough choices where a player could really feel that they're playing the game the way they want to - and then, having the character interaction and plot points stemming from all those choices mesh well, tell a story that's gripping, and perhaps have some cathartic character development. For my part, I don't think we're there yet.
I can see the validity of the idea that, in telling linear stories, games are just aping movies and books (and coming out the lesser from the juxtaposition), and I can also say that I think the nature of having to drive a "game" strongly encourages certain types of stories (combative). But at the same time, I don't see "breaking down the narrative" as an advance in storytelling. In the same way that a string of journal entries could be regarded as a "story," regardless of whether or not they all touched on some similar theme, an open-ended game could be a story, but in the same way that collection of miscellaneous journal entries would be inferior as gripping entertainment to a well-penned novel, I think that game that gave you free reign would be less affecting and less memorable than a game with a strong, creative narrative vision behind it.
I'm sorry to post something useless to the discussion, but how about trying to not be offensive? Phrasing itself can turn an interesting discussion into verbal brawl. HCapt, as much as I like your points, you already did the same towards myself in another post, in a completely uncalled for manner. The "hypocrite" in this post was, also, a shitty way to get your point across.
Of course the Sims has an end. It ends the same way everything ends; when you family dies out.
See; I actually consider the Sims to be the logical conclusion to the path Lenore challenges games to take; it tells the story of daily living without any definitive storyline, leaving the story in a completely open and natural fashion unlike any game before it. In fact, one could argue that the Sims is the game that forms the archtype of open-ended storytelling that adheres to human nature; thus I assumed that if Lenore really believes in what she said, then the logical conclusion is that she really believes games should strive to perfect the natural, open-ended style the Sims presents us with.
DQVIII is a good example, you've got people going "OMG! The world is ending", yet I can still wander around looking for things I missed. Fallout and Oblivion are much the same. And even with that side exploring, especially in Oblivion, there's still something driving it with the side quests, it's not just about the loot or XP.
ico and shadow of the colossus are two games right off the dome that both have a unique approach to the linear storyline.
after finally having finished demon's souls i can say there are few games that tell a story like that one. i've heard a lot of people criticize the story, but the environments in that game speak for themselves.
I think a big problem with video game storytelling is a lack of ending. Even apart from sequel mania (every game being "left open for a sequel!") there seems to be a severe lack of closure. You defeat the bad guy- and the world is happy- but what happens to the characters?
I don't mean that in the sense of contemporary stories that work with ambiguous endings or something like 12 Monkeys. I mean things like- okay, compare Bioware's NeverWinter Nights to J.R.R. Tolkien's (I say Tolkien's because I HATED HATED HATED Peter Jackson's adaptations) Lord of the Rings. I think part of the power of TLotR was in fact what happened to the characters after- Frodo is wounded for the rest of his life- Sam's wife dies and eventually he leaves his children to go off to the Undying Lands after Frodo. I think the only time a video game has ever really tried to do this extensively is with Link- both in Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker specifically.
I dunno, if that was too irrelevant you can tell me to gtfo and I'll rant on about it in a blog later on.
Secondly let me say Fallout 3 changed my view of RPG’s. Fallout 3 is my favorite game of all time, taking the spot of the once Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I think the reason why I love F3 so much is that I could really go anywhere and do anything; like pick up an empty rusty metal can. The fact that I was in no rush to get to some end point allowed me to “explore the space”, as Zoolander’s photographer would say. I mean, I spent 130 hours playing the game before I ever even went to turn the water on at the Memorial, and I still have 4 DLC packs to get to (Only did Op Anch.) Because of the work put in to creating the world, I KNOW what post apocalyptic DC is like.
I know people who didn’t like Fallout 3. They were either overwhelmed by the vastness and freedom of the game to the point of being crippled of choice, or they didn’t have the patience to roam around the wasteland. I liken this to an idea I have about people in general. (Bob Wiley logic to follow) There are three types of people in the world, and you can know which one you are based on what you when you visit a new place. Do you…
A. Spend a majority of your time visiting the famous landmarks/sites?
B. Spend a majority of your time getting to know the people/culture/language?
C. Or would you rather stay home?
I am a B. and I’m guessing our dear Lenore Coffee is the same way, based on the postcard statement. I can look at pictures, or watch Rick Steves show me architecture at home. When I visit a new place I want to; get to know the people, the customs, the language, the history, food, and some slang terms “smooth skin”. Why? Because that is what sticks with me for a long time. I cannot connect with a building, but I can connect with the people, and that is why I love Fallout 3, and other games that let me meet the people in the world, and get to know the charm of the land.
Concerning the Ghostbusters game, I think much of the reason behind the pacing and lack of exploration of the game was due to the fact that; it was a direct adaptation of the 3rd movie’s script. So it was presented as a film, which happened to have you ‘control’ a member of the scene’s being shot.
So with all of this being said do I think all games need to be structured like Fallout3, GTAIV, Oblivion? The answer is no. But do I wish more would? Yes, because there are too few right now. But there need to be games that are there for pure fun like; Bust-a-move, Mario Kart64, and most recently Borderlands (which I’m going to write about on my c-blog later). Because sometime we need a break from the ‘Seinfeld nothingness’.
@Lenore Coffee – thank you for getting us talking about this, good stuff.
Yeah but you could do all that stuff in Fallout since 1997 ;D
Why would anyone want more than that from a game?