Braid Dev: Story-Based Games Are Bogus

Keane Ng

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Braid Dev: Story-Based Games Are Bogus



Jonathan Blow, the outspoken developer of last year's Braid [http://www.braidgame.com/], doesn't like story-based games. That's not because the stories aren't any good, but because he thinks they're completely missing the point.

"Stories in games are typically not good, right?" Blow asked in an high-profile authors [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3911/jonathan_blow_the_next_phase.php?page=4] writing games is because nobody thinks game stories are any good. For Blow, however, "even if we had really, really good writers doing this stuff - it's still really hard to do a good story in a game, because of the game part."

Blow sees games as essentially challenge-based, a notion that certainly rang true for Braid, which was essentially a sequence of increasingly challenging time-manipulation puzzles. The problem, then, with story-based games is that stories conflict with those challenges. "So the challenge part is trying to hold the player back and keep him from getting to the next segment," Blow explained. "But the story part wants you to get to the next part in order to keep going. This structure doesn't actually work, because these two fight each other."

The common solution, as Blow explains it, is for a designer to create the sensation of challenge instead of "real challenge" so that it doesn't get too much in the way of the thrust of the story. Citing examples like God of War and Fable II, Blow believes that the softening of challenge just makes the gameplay flaccid and meaningless. "Fable II's combat is not actual challenge," he said. "It's just there to feel like combat. But I don't feel like there's a reason to do it, because I know that I just hit these guys with the sword a few times and they'll just die."

Ultimately, the point isn't to tell good stories, because that's not what games are built to do and that's not what makes them superior to other mediums. "In terms of what games have to offer us, we're not giving people the greatest stories ever told," Blow said. "What we can give them is experiences that challenge them to invite them to do something that they haven't done or whatever...If we eventually become no interaction and all story, then we're just a bad movie, right?"

I'm inclined to agree with Blow in that story and challenge often don't mix, and both are left worse for it when a game tries to put them together clumsily. But while I love (and sometimes prefer) a game that's pure challenge, I do think there is genuine narrative power in games, and that maybe we haven't started looking at how to tell stories in games the right way. What do you guys think?


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PedroSteckecilo

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I disagree with Mr. Blow... but that shouldn't suprise anyone, I'm a story nut.

In terms of story in games, it isn't about pure narrative, it's about experience. With a novel you get a straight narrative, same as with a movie. With a game the story should be an experience, one that you interact with and gain a greater understanding of through play.
 

Anton P. Nym

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I disagree with Blow and Costikyan; I have found games with narratives just as involving as pure challenge games.

More detailed refutation when I can spend more time typing than hacking my lungs clear.

-- Steve
 

Yensid

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I'm starting to wonder if this guy is getting a big head over the success of Braid. I think there are some games out there that are good on story and gameplay. Personally, Fatal Frame, Bioshock, several FF games and Mass Effect comes to mind. I believe some games just aren't designed for stories and some are. PacMan isn't going into why he eats ghosts and Final Fantasy 12 isn't going to have a FPS segment where you need to get headshots.
 

Avatar Roku

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Anton P. Nym said:
I disagree with Blow and Costikyan; I have found games with narratives just as involving as pure challenge games.

More detailed refutation when I can spend more time typing than hacking my lungs clear.

-- Steve
I agree.

Oh, and you're sick too?
 

Virgil

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It's the whole narratology vs. ludology argument again. And it's still a bunch of crap. They're both right.

An interactive story is an experience different than film or movies, even if the interaction is limited. It's more engaging. It gives you more opportunities to see things from different angles. It lets you combine techniques from different mediums.

Being purely about gameplay is just as good. Like Braid. Or Gravity Hook. Or Super Mario Brothers. Or simulations, racing games, and most competitive multiplayer.

Or, like Dungeons & Dragons (and its many digital brethren) it can be a combination of both that makes things work. And yes, different players appreciate these games in different ways - one person may love the story and find the game mechanics to be filler, while others will focus on the mechanics and won't pay attention to the story at all. And it's OK to be different things to different people.

Games can be about the story, or the gameplay, or both. Everybody wins.
 

Baby Tea

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Anton P. Nym said:
I disagree with Blow and Costikyan; I have found games with narratives just as involving as pure challenge games.
This, and...

PedroSteckecilo said:
In terms of story in games, it isn't about pure narrative, it's about experience. With a novel you get a straight narrative, same as with a movie. With a game the story should be an experience, one that you interact with and gain a greater understanding of through play.
This.

Like Pedro admitted, I, too, am a story nut. I NEED a good story in order for a game to be really good.

And to say that challenge and story don't mix is a load of crap.
When I was facing down Jon Irenicus in Baldur's Gate 2 with the character I used to beat Baldur's Gate 1, I found myself sweating with anticipation, moved by the final battle cries of my companions (Some who lost those close to them to this villain), and breathless at the final sword fall.

And this is a game you can pause any time.

If it seems like challenge and story don't mix, that's the developers fault, not the fault of the medium. I've seen it happen, I've experienced it, I'm spoiled for it, and I know it isn't impossible.

Pure challenge games are involving for the challenge. I'm involved in Gravity Hook (Curse you, Escapist!) because it's a fun challenge to beat my high score (2443, by the way). But that is not even close to the same type, or level, of involvement I have with games like Baldur's Gate or Mass Effect (Can you tell I like Bioware?).

I'll be the first to say that bad game stories are everywhere. But like I said: Blame the developer, not the medium.
 

CanadianWolverine

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"Stories in games are typically not good, right?" Blow asled in an interview with Gamasutra.
I am assuming that "asled" was actually meant to be "asked", with the k and l keys being right beside each other. Hope you don't mind me trying to help by proof reading.

What do you guys think?
I think Jonathan Blow is correct to a degree, especially on this point:

"So the challenge part is trying to hold the player back and keep him from getting to the next segment," Blow explained. "But the story part wants you to get to the next part in order to keep going. This structure doesn't actually work, because these two fight each other."
What he seems to fail to notice, possibly deliberately, is the notion of player driven stories when over coming challenges. This can be most easily highlighted by the comparison made it games where we call one "sand box" and the other "linear". He is right about games that dictate the narrative to you but in a few games, you are actually deciding your own narrative and thus if the developer allows, the game play challenges and the story work together because they are not presumptuous enough to presume what the player will find to be a good story. Any story that tends be player driven can be exciting and enticing for the player because interest in the game having a purpose is maintained. Even purely challenge based games can fall flat when they lack purpose, so it would be wrong to discount story telling through games altogether.

Smith: "It is purpose that created us. Purpose that connects us. Purpose that pulls us. That guide us. That drive us. It is purpose that defines. Purpose that binds us."
 

Break

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I played the Braid demo. Ironically, even though I enjoyed the levels offered, I'm more tempted to buy the full game to see more of the story.
 

Nordstrom

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I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Blow. I'm always looking for a good story and feel consistently let down. When I look at the games that I really love, it's all about the game-play.
 

Podunk

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Arrg! This is just another chocolate vs vanilla debate. We have to love chocolate, or demand vanilla, or it's not okay.

Me, I'm more of a Neopolitan kind of gamer. I can enjoy my vanilla (Silent Hill 2) and my chocolate (Devil May Cry 3) just the same... and I still have a taste for strawberry. (Boom Blox, let's say. Or Rayman Raving Rabbids 2)

To drop the metaphor, it isn't necessarily story-driven games or challenge-driven games I prefer... what I like most is being able to choose between the two to satisfy my current craving.
 

nimrandir

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Virgil said:
It's the whole narratology vs. ludology argument again. And it's still a bunch of crap. They're both right.

An interactive story is an experience different than film or movies, even if the interaction is limited. It's more engaging. It gives you more opportunities to see things from different angles. It lets you combine techniques from different mediums.

Being purely about gameplay is just as good. Like Braid. Or Gravity Hook. Or Super Mario Brothers. Or simulations, racing games, and most competitive multiplayer.

Or, like Dungeons & Dragons (and its many digital brethren) it can be a combination of both that makes things work. And yes, different players appreciate these games in different ways - one person may love the story and find the game mechanics to be filler, while others will focus on the mechanics and won't pay attention to the story at all. And it's OK to be different things to different people.

Games can be about the story, or the gameplay, or both. Everybody wins.
The D&D analogy ends this discussion, as far as I am concerned. Some playgroups spend every session crunching numbers and min-maxing their characters, while others can go a whole evening without rolling a die.

Back when I played MECCG [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECCG], I knew folks who built streamlined tournament decks whose only goal was victory, while I used cards to tell the tale of a group of dwarves rallying Gondor or Radagast transforming Mordor into a big garden. Was I 'playing the game' any less?
 

Woe Is You

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I actually don't agree that story-based games are bogus, but what I do think is that a good deal game developers should look into integrating the story more tightly into the game. The whole keeping the story and the gameplay in separate containers really has to go. Tell your story through the game, not long unskippable cutscenes. Taking control from the player and into infodump mode is just a lazy way of doing things.

The situation we have now with games is really similar to early television: they were basically just radio shows that really didn't take advantage of the medium they were using.
 

level250geek

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So long as game designers don't depend on story to save their game, I'm okay. Games should be games first.

"This game sucks."

"But the story is awesome!"

"...yeah. This game sucks."
 

TsunamiWombat

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As with several previous members, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Braid and tell him where he can stick it.
 

Kilo24

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Here's a question: what stories have you seen that needed to be in games in order to tell them?

The games that are usually held to have the best stories tell them in linear affairs in my experience. You may choose how to solve the puzzles the game throws at you, but having a meaningful effect on the storyline as it plays out it something that happens in very few games; and those games rarely have complex storylines. The longest story-based games tend to treat their story as what a movie director might do if he had 80 hours to fill, creating a variety of subplots to keep the movie going. Or maybe a better translation might be a novel author trying to incorporate video and audio into his work. My point is that the storytelling possibilities of games still remains unexplored to a large degree: We're still presuming the limitations of other forms of media.

In most games, the story is dispensed in little pellets as a gradual reward to playing the game. If the developers desperately want to tell a story, they might neuter the difficulty (see Bioshock, Dreamfall, and maybe Portal) so that perhaps nongamers might experience it. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I'm sure that you can think of many games that tacked on a story just to loosely justify the gameplay. In one way or another, games are (usually) seen as hybrids of story and gameplay (though in most multiplayer games, casual games, and sometimes some more abstract games story is ignored.) In some (perhaps even most) games, this dual valuation holds back being able to purely appreciate either of the two aspects.
 

Keane Ng

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Break said:
I played the Braid demo. Ironically, even though I enjoyed the levels offered, I'm more tempted to buy the full game to see more of the story.
You know how he talks about how games that have heavy stories end up shorthanded on gameplay? Braid is the opposite - the gameplay is prime, the story is garbage, except instead of making that obvious, he makes the narrative ambiguous and unclear so you don't notice there's not much storytelling going on and just think it's deep.

At the same time that works on a meta level because figuring out the plot becomes a game in itself, another "challenge." Maybe that was intentional, I dunno - Blow is a tricky dude.