What makes a game: Mechanics vs narrative

[Fox12]

I've noticed over time that there have developed two schools of thought about what constitutes a proper "game."

It first started when the The Last of Us and The Walking Dead came out. Though successful, critics claimed that linear, scripted zombie games had poor design, and were little more than interactive movies. A game with limited interaction could barely ba called a game, after all. Fans claimed that this made it easier to tell a story.

Conversely I've heard people criticize Mario and Zelda for their lack of story or characterization, while fans praise their tight controls and well constructed level design. Hence the mechanics are brilliant, and the game is well designed. According to these people, games are separate from film, and should focus on things other than narrative.

This made me realize that people have very different ideas about what makes a "game." Other titles, like dark souls, seem to have found a middle ground. So what do you think constitutes a game, and what are the most important elements of a game? Should game mechanics be sacrificed for story, or is it just icing on the cake?

 

[TheIceQueen]

This [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.339695-Gameplay-vs-Story] tired [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.301101-Poll-Story-vs-Gameplay], old [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.57000-Story-Versus-Gameplay] argument [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.168562-Poll-gameplay-vs-story] is tired [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.399948-Poll-Attention-RPG-Fans-Do-You-Favor-Gameplay-Or-Story] and old [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.149188-Poll-Gameplay-or-Story].

Seriously, it's super boring now and overplayed. There are some games where the mechanics shine through and make it great and there are some that survive (and thrive) on a strong story. I like that we have both. I love KOTORII's story as much as I love Europa Univeralis 4's mechanics. It just depends on what mood I'm in at that particular moment.

 

[josemlopes]

I have made a thread recently on how I think The Wolf Among Us suffered from being a game but in the end it is something that with some more care (and budget) could have been better handled.

I do see where something like The Walking Dead or TWAU tries to go, even though it can be linear (and those two games certainly are where most choices are illusions with only a few really changing things noticeably) the influence the player gives to the protagonist can be a very interesting way of telling a story. I think that it needs more some more options, especially in arguments that involve a wide arrange of points of discussion, but in the end we only choose how the character aproaches the situation, mostly in his tone (agressive, sarcastic, playfull, etc...)

Those games are entirely about dialog, the action scenes are unimpressive (although as good as they could be) and the dialog is also as good as it could be with todays technology and their budget.

Cant really comment much on The Last of Us but since there is no choices in the dialog or anything there really isnt much reason to not give a bit more open gameplay in the combat/exploratin sequences, all it probably needed was to have a well defined direction with some choke points to the areas where the story has to progress (cutscene, important contextual dialog, etc...). Even with some clever management certain key moments could still exist in one path or the other, imagine the character finds a certain object or comments on something about the scenery, the game could be programmed that depending on the path the player takes, that object spawns in that path, the animations and dialog would all be the same, the only thing that would change would be the position and rotation of the events.


I think that there is space for both story and gameplay, Wolfenstein: TNO to me felt like it handled things well enough, very good focus in its cutscenes and nice and open-ish gameplay (its a corridor shooter where you do have some space to choose from what direction to attack, or even stealth). And we will always have the good old Half Life 2 example where the story is perfectly well told with well paced exposition (both in the enviorments and dialog) and by never taking the controls from the player.

 

[sanquin]

The answer is simple. Th mechanics/gameplay. Without a narrative you can still have a game, say, chess. Yet without mechanics you're only left with a story.

 

[Pogilrup]

Having game mechanics mesh well with the story is good. Having the mechanic be the story is even better.

Take for example, Kosmosis, by Molleindustria.

http://www.molleindustria.org/kosmosis/kosmosis.html

The game is about using a player controlled dot to gather small blue dots into a swarm and occasionally turning a sphere of destruction for a short time that can destroy bright green squares before resulting in the swarm being split into smaller parts. As the game progresses it comes harder and harder to control the swarm and if the player dot dies then the swarm continues on with a life of its own.

It can be interpreted as the vanguard gathering individuals under the banner of socialism. Every so often the individuals unite into a mighty force to destroy the influence of the oppressors. After a while, the revolutionary effort breaks apart into factions and the vanguard must reunite the factions in their efforts to overthrow the oppressors. Given enough time, the vanguard becomes obsolete as the people learn to lead themselves and should the vanguard perish, the revolution still continues to gather new members to its cause in its fight against the oppressors.

Personally, when I tried a pacifist run in which try not to destroy any green squares, I found that the swarm would splinter the bigger it got and when the splinter group it would occasionally turn into a destructive sphere.

This offers a different narrative. If one is the leader of a peaceful cause, it quite easy to control one's followers when there are only a handful of them. But as the causes grows, some followers might decide that you aren't getting the results fast enough and split off into a more aggressive and possibly violent sect. Personally, I found it impossible to achieve a pacifist run without having a splinter destroy a green dot.

 

[zen5887]

I think this is a silly question because, well.. What kind of game is it?

Narrative is much less important in a sports game or a puzzle game or a strategy game, but in something like Depression Quest or Papers Please then it's the narrative that keeps the player interested.

 

[Fox12]

I think this is a silly question because, well.. What kind of game is it?

Narrative is much less important in a sports game or a puzzle game or a strategy game, but in something like Depression Quest or Papers Please then it's the narrative that keeps the player interested.

I actually agree, but it's a view I see brought up again and again. People say the walking dead is bad, on account of its lack of gameplay. I've noticed this mostly with Nintendo fans, who typically value mechanics over narrative. Sony, and to a lesser extent Microsoft, seem more varied, with a strong prescience of story games. I was just curious about why these different gaming cultures formed, and people's opinion on the issue.

 

[AmberSword]

The answer is simple. Th mechanics/gameplay. Without a narrative you can still have a game, say, chess. Yet without mechanics you're only left with a story.

So many times this, I've been making this point continuously in multiple threads already. This I believe is one of the few objective and indisputable facts about gaming.

 

[duwenbasden]

As a person that almost exclusively play sandbox games, a game with all mechanics is called Lego; a game with all narrative is called a movie. You can still create narratives with Lego, but you cannot create mechanics/gameplay with a movie.

 

[matrix3509]

There is rule of thumb to follow when making movies called "show, don't tell". This rule of thumb was created WAY back when movies were young as the way for cinema to distinguish itself as a storytelling medium separate from books. "Do, don't show" needs to be the rule for game designers to follow that will separate games from movies. I've always been a firm believer that if your story can be told equally well as a book or movie, then it needs to BE a book or movie. The interactive nature of video games is what separates it from other mediums, so if you aren't taking advantage of that, you are telling your story in the wrong medium. I am NOT trying to put down books or cinema by the way, as both mediums can do things games can't, and all mediums have their up and downsides.

Games like Half-Life 2, Planescape, Dark Souls, Metro 2033, and Spec Ops are games that you really would not be able to represent in another medium, and frankly, that's the way it should be, at least IMO.

 

[maxben]

There is rule of thumb to follow when making movies called "show, don't tell". This rule of thumb was created WAY back when movies were young as the way for cinema to distinguish itself as a storytelling medium separate from books. "Do, don't show" needs to be the rule for game designers to follow that will separate games from movies. I've always been a firm believer that if your story can be told equally well as a book or movie, then it needs to BE a book or movie. The interactive nature of video games is what separates it from other mediums, so if you aren't taking advantage of that, you are telling your story in the wrong medium. I am NOT trying to put down books or cinema by the way, as both mediums can do things games can't, and all mediums have their up and downsides.

Games like Half-Life 2, Planescape, Dark Souls, Metro 2033, and Spec Ops are games that you really would not be able to represent in another medium, and frankly, that's the way it should be, at least IMO.

I disagree really strongly. A visual novel or Dear Esther have minimal interactivity, but they would not work in another medium. Similarly with movies, if you use voice overs correctly to narrate, that narration can never be copied in a book because the book will never be able to copy the use of sound. In fact, a movie, an audio book (a radio play would be a better example here but they aren't in these days), a book, or a visual novel game of the exact same story could happen, and each would feel so significantly different from the other in regards to your experience with them. It can never be equal because it would be like comparing apples and oranges.

 

[Batou667]

It's fairly simple really, games exist on a spectrum where at one end you have 100% mechanics and 0% narrative (something like Chess, or Tetris) and at the other end you have something that's maybe 95%+ narrative and <5% mechanics (I'm thinking of the oldey-timey FMV games here, or interactive fiction). Gameplay often IS at the expense of a good narrative and deep characterisation, but there's no optimal "sweet spot". It comes down to what kind of game it is and what the player is looking for as an experience.

 

[Silvanus]

Narrative is (almost) always what I remember long after I've finished playing a game, and on that basis, I'll have to vote for narrative. It doesn't have to be complex, and atmosphere/aesthetic is as much a part of it as writing.

Similarly, I tend to judge music by the lyrical quality a lot of the time. And, again, they don't always need to be complex; only affecting.

 

[Racecarlock]

I could listen to dune on audiobook on youtube unabridged for free right now if all I want is story.

I'm playing a game because I want to be interacting with a story. Shaping it. Molding it. Like how in mario games every stage you complete and star you find is another step to saving the princess. Or how in skyrim after the story is done you still have that excellent quality of just being able to walk around and then stumble upon an entire new adventure or a bunch of angry wildlife.

Why don't I play gone home or dear esther? Because their stories have already been told. Their stuff has already happened. All you're doing is going through unnecessarily complicated steps to read a book. You don't make any difference or contribution. You're just there. Both games could have easily been books or movies. In fact I think gone home has excellent representatives in the book world as murder mysteries, detective novels, and I spy. As for dear esther, the only thing it would lose as a book is having to hold a key down. What a profound loss.

Would galaga make a good movie? Would pac-man make a good movie besides that one fan movie on youtube that's 6 minutes long? Would tetris make a good movie? Even skyrim would lose the whole sense of adventure if it was adapted into movie form.

Interactivity is the most unique thing games have. The worst thing to do is make that interactivity mostly inconsequential, ala beyond two souls, which for all of it's guff about choice is nothing more than an overly complicated alternate endings DVD menu.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Mechanics are what make a game. That is literally unquestionable. Without mechanics, you are left with a movie or a book (depending on how it is presented), not a game.

However, the exact relationship of mechanics and narrative is entirely up to the designer, and some games even benefit from having relatively simple mechanics. The Walking Dead's gameplay may have existed almost solely in talking with people, but they worked with that simple mechanic in such a way to make conversations tense and to emphasize the incredible story. It was hardly the same as watching the TV show or reading the comics, but it still offered a great story with mechanics that did their purpose: delivering that story. The Witcher may have had very simple combat, but the mechanics that were (picking the right blade, fighting style, oils and potions, and signs) all emphasized learning about the world, which is where the game's biggest strength lay. Mass Effect may have had design that no game should succeed on, but its incredible writing is what helped it successfully launch the biggest trilogy of last generation.

On the flip side, Super Mario Bros. had almost no story at all, but it has gone down as a classic that pretty much single-handedly saved the industry, and despite its weak story, people have come up with numerous odd theories based on the levels and items that are present in the game. Similar things can be said of Sonic the Hedgehog, Donkey Kong Country, DOOM, and Metroid. Context was all their narratives needed, yet they remain popular games and even managed to spawn interesting theories about their comparatively simple stories.

Still, there are some games that don't really emphasize either. The Sands of Time, Half-Life 2, and BioShock all managed to give plenty of story (unlike Mario) while not letting that story completely overshadow the gameplay (unlike The Walking Dead).

Overall, though, gameplay and narrative are simply two parts of the whole game. They both support each other to varying degrees based on the designer's vision, and they are often times extensions of each other. To limit it to some vague ratio of how they should relate simply ignores the vast array of experiences that games can offer. It also is just blind to what each can mean to different people.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Given that a game is defined by interactivity (without interactivity it's just a movie after all) that means mechanics are fundamental. You can design a game using nothing but mechanics but you cannot design a game using nothing but narrative.

 

[gargantual]

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Always looking at these two things as seperate elements, thats why games feel stuck to so many of y'all.

These elements have to work more hand in hand in the future to make the player feel driven. The narrative must help condition competitive anxiety in the gameplay challenges, and changes in the game should reflect changes that occured in the story, whether linear or influenced by earlier decision so you feel the consequences of whats happened and deal with that as a player.

I'll say this. in the 5th and 6th gen. Games did have cutscenes and FMV's but they still understood the balance to some degree of narrative informing the state of the game.

 

[sanquin]

Say you're creating a game, and start out from the story. Once you have that you then have to work the mechanics around the story so it fits. Which can be quite difficult to do. What if your engine can't render certain things, yet you need them for the story? If you go about it the other way around though, it's different. You make some basics. An engine that you're able to use, maybe a camera that can move around in a world you still need to create. And from that point you can keep the game's engine in mind when thinking of what to do with the story.

Take for instance Terraria. As far as I know it doesn't have narrative. Same with Minecraft and other such games. You're just a character that was dropped on a randomly generated world, the rest is basically up to you within the games 'rules'. But it is still definitely a game. Then take something like Dear Ester. I'll leave my personal opinion on whether it's a game or not aside, but it is clear that Dear Ester is far more about narrative than mechanics. Like a 95% to 5% ratio or something. Yet I don't think anyone doubts that Terraria is a game, while there is a ton of debate about whether Dead Ester is. In other words, when a game becomes almost only narrative, people are unsure of it's game status. Yet when it's just mechanics people have no doubt it's a game.

 

[Evonisia]

Mechanics make the game, you can't have a game without them. However I assume you're referring to challenging gameplay and/or gameplay that changes.

In that case I prefer gameplay/mechanics, but honestly what I'm likely to remember from a game is its story, assuming the game had some kind of story focus. So, gameplay is what'll keep me entertained, the story will keep my interested afterwards (usually, there are exceptions).