irishda: You're right, a good story "connects to everyone," and that's a valuable for any product. But you're conflating the "written element" -- the script and dialogue -- with the narrative. The quote I pulled was meant to demonstrate Hitchcock's preference for nonverbal narrative ("eyes tell the story in visual terms") over spoken or expository narrative, not a distaste for story as such. It's sort of unusual for a director in the higher reaches of our critical/artistic respect, but Hitchcock's films tended to be exquisitely plot-driven. What set him apart was his ability to depict the movement of the plot with visual devices rather than with dialogue. He told stories, great classic stories, but his stories were shown and not told. That's what earned him the respect of the Cahier -- while he was without a doubt a for-profit Hollywood titan, like Bay or Roth and with all the catering to the bottom denominator that entails, he still managed in the meanwhile to push at the boundaries of film's visual storytelling potential.
As far as games go, I just can't get on board with this bit: "a crappy story is a pretty safe way for a game to be cast aside." I mean, except for a few shining exceptions, most popular games have weak-ish stories. A lot of the time their plots are just barely cohesive enough to string together the action elements, the core mechanics. Games like Indigo Prophesy fail not because they have poorly written plots, but because they're trying too hard to be plot-driven and the plot isn't solid enough to lean on. Of course there are games with excellent stories, and of course those games are appealing -- there are plenty of excellent dialogue-driven films, too, but they don't do anything exciting visually. (Also, some pieces do it all: there are excellent plot-driven, dialogue-heavy and a visually innovative films; there are are plot-driven and mechanically innovative games like Portal.)
In a recent blog post, Leigh Alexander pulled a quote M. Wasteland's book, and I think it's relevant here:
"I think instead that the problem was structural ? deeply structural to the product itself, at a level where no amount of ?smart? versus ?dumb? choices can really change things. One of those games centered around shooting aliens with guns and lasers. Another was about navigating an environment and punching people until they died.
"The very second you try to wrap actions like those in a ?good story? that does not somehow address what happens during the mechanical part of the experience is the second you fail to write a good story."
burymagnets: First, thanks for your kind words. That's pretty high praise. Second, I totally agree: auteur theory is valuable because it allows "higher" appreciation of pop products. Also, it just seems more concrete than the eternal "what's an art game after all" debate, and that's refreshing.