Braid Dev: Story-Based Games Are Bogus

[Simriel]

*Sigh* Another gem from Jonathan Blow.

I can't quite decide whether he's completely genuine, or if he's just cynically trying to keep himself in the limelight. Let's face it, before Braid, Blow was hardly a household name, and as loathe as I am to use a such a trite sentiment, 'out of sight, out of mind' seems oddly appropriate.

This is my sentiment as well, which is kind of unfortunate given how much I enjoyed Braid. What disappoints me the most is that he COULD be spending this gripe time working on another fantastic game. Of course, if he is out of ideas but is coasting on the sweet high of popularity and narcissism then I can't imagine any better way to hold yourself up then making over-generalized controversial statements.

I doubt he is even a household name among gamers now. I knew about Braid but the name Blow before this would just have made me make sex puns.
Edit: Make him play Mass Effect. That game is story, spliced with the odd firefight!

 

[squid5580]

I dunno I am much more willing to sit through a bad game when there is a good story involved as opposed to the opposite.

 

[Kellerb]

Bioshock.

 

[Sewblon]

All mediums are equal. Anyone who played Monkey Island or the system shock games knows that story and gameplay are only in conflict if the designers make it so.

 

[shadow skill]

He needs to play Persona 3.

 

[Citrus]

Because everybody loved FFVII for the ATB system.

Mr. Blow is completely missing the true potential of games by far. No, they don't require good stories, but if they have them and execute them properly, then they can have a greater impact on the player than any movie could hope for.

You're playing a game, and you get drawn into the narrative and fall in love with the characters, and it's made more powerful by the investment you're putting in yourself: when they're doing something, you're doing it with them. When they fight, you fight. When they win, you win, and when they lose, you lose. It's not just watching or reading about them; you are with them, and you are developing a more intimate connection to the characters and the events happening around them thusly.

As graphics near as good as they can reasonably get, and gameplay ideas are slowly exhausted, I'm willing to claim that stories will become far more integral to games than they currently are, and that the true potential of the medium will become far more prominent and respected when this happens.

 

[AgentNein]

It's adorable when these people think they've found the silver bullet

Now, someone send this guy a bundle of Star Control 2 and Psychonauts ~~

Congrats, I was on Blows side more or less till you mentioned Psychonauts.

Tim Schafer truly understands how to tie gameplay and story together, and that game is proof positive. The gameplay can be challenging, especially towards the end, but because the gameplay is constantly tied to the story, it works.

This guy is just getting a big head over the success of Braid which gives him rights to spout nonsense? I guess it's a matter of opinion, wouldn't expect an Indie developer to say any different, after all Indie games have always been "challenge over story" just like portable games, it may sound harsh but I think INDIE GAMES are to GAMES what Alternative Rock is to Rock, just a quick ALTERNATIVE to the REAL THING, which could be fun, very fun, 'till you get sick of it after a little while and you end up looking for the real thing.
Personally I'd take any Metal Gear game or other story driven games over Braid or the likes any day. 'nuff said.

Believe me, I don't think Metal Gear is going to help your case. What with the completely nonsensical stories that can't even stand up to the lightest of examination, and the fact that the last game in the series completely sacrificed any semblance of serious gameplay for it's stupid convoluted pretentious bullshit story in the last third.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually a Kojima fan. But Kojima needs to understand that his strength is in gameplay and not in storytelling (oh god no), and he'll be a much better developer than he is.

 

[DarkBlood626]

HL2 enough said Mr. Brow

 

[shadow skill]

MGS' story really is not that hard to figure out if you are paying attention to the game. As far as the last game sacrificing gameplay I will just say that MGS4 has the most varied gameplay I have ever seen.

Hl2 is not a good story, not really anyway. What it has is a good setting and backstory but you really don't get a feel for any of it through the course of the game mainly because not only can you not control any of the dialog, you never get to know what Gordon is thinking. You are not actually a part of the game, you are just viewing it.

 

[Gladion]

"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."

I'm sorry, but this makes absolutely no sense at all oO

 

[keptsimple]

Blow has a point, but I don't entirely agree that the conflict makes story-based games bad.

More to the point, has he every played God of War II on God Mode? If that's an illusory challenge, I'd like to see what he thinks actual difficulty is.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

Johnathon Blow asks a lot of rhetorical questions, right?

Also, while Briad was not heavily story-based, its story was somewhat pretentious and in-your face, right?

I liked Braid's story, but Blow is kinda like a pot calling a kettle black, right?

I think that there are games where stories fit, and games where they do not fit. I believe that games are a viable method of storytelling though as they are interactive and actually put the player in the world of the story, rather than just showing it to him or her.

 

[Alex_P]

HL2 enough said Mr. Brow

Half-Life 2 has a few good characters in it (about 1.5 of them), and it has a moderately interesting setting. That's not the same as a good story. The criticism leveled at Braid earlier in the thread definitely applies to HL2 just as thoroughly: it's just an incoherent plot masquerading as allegory.

A story is only good for immersion.

Naw. Since time immemorial, human beings have enjoyed narrative for its own sake in all kinds of media. Video-game storytelling is a pretty poorly developed art at the moment, but adding a degree of interactivity can do a lot to change the way the audience experiences a work (independent of "immersion" and all that). I've played some great interactive fiction that does things you really couldn't replicate in a regular ol' short story or novel.

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.

I think D&D's a pretty weak example. Look at the way everyone, including the book, talks about how great it is to create "stories" without rolling dice (this isn't universal but it's definitely typical, and it's something that both the play advice in the books and the wider culture of play reinforce). That's because the mechanics don't usually do all that much to really push the fiction forward in an interesting way. The kill-heal-loot-level cycle doesn't contribute much to character development or narrative pacing, it's just a time-waster keeping you from getting stuff done very quickly, and a source of some pretty ugly constraints (inflicted upon us by the need for encounter balance).

In short, if seldom engaging with the mechanics makes for a better story, I think that's a clear sign you should chuck your game book -- it's not doing what it's suppose to do.

-- Alex