Why is a good story so hard to come by?

Hmm, two people above me with horrible taste in games. How sad. 001011000101101

I can safely say rjdofu has great tastes in gaming.

As for my own, well, I don't mean to brag but it's pretty damn fantastic as well.

I think its because these days people are more conditioned towards visual porn rather then writen.

Storytelling and interactivity can easily get in the way of one another.

To be honest, I wish most games would drop the story entirely. Sure, a few good stories are nice, but why try when failure is inevitable, especially when said failure ends up getting in the way of the reason people play your game.

Adventure games are the best genre for storytelling. And those games are far more structured than the rest. 

Maroxad

My feelings as well. It's best to stick with a genre where story-telling is the main point.

I think its because these days people are more conditioned towards visual porn rather then writen.

tenaka2

The Last Story's story :P keeps me hooked. That's rare tho.

The Mass Effect games is an excellent example of a perfect blend of action and story. Video game perfection.001011000101101

One vid is worth thousands of words

Because when you can't do good gameplay because of platform limitations, you settle for story.Neon_Noir

You are probably used to mindless platformers, but plenty of people prefer playing a game that gives them a reason to play.

[QUOTE="Neon_Noir"]Because when you can't do good gameplay because of platform limitations, you settle for story.Crazyguy105

You are probably used to mindless platformers, but plenty of people prefer playing a game that gives them a reason to play.

Because too many games want to tell stories the way films do. Such titles usually wind up being not only antithetical to what the focus of a game should be (interactivity and player agency), but just poorly done stories in their own right. Plenty of games have provided fantastic stories, but that group ends up being a pretty small portion of releases as a whole.

Time restraints, and big budget. Oh and writers not writing books but scripts.

Books are bigger, longer, and get the point in more detail in your own head. Games are shorter, have a script with certain feeling that you can't imagine for yourself in your own mind since they are actively showing it. Sometimes makes it feel like you are getting something taken away from you in regards to good story. Its almost like watching a film where interaction and scenes tend to ruin your own thoughts on the aspect. There are some that mix it well, but most of the time its cut and dry 'this is what just happened, nothing more'.

Time restraint because those guys make some hard crunch time for devs to get them out pronto. This can make certain aspects less smooth than you would like.

Big budget just because they tend to focus on one thing that attracts customers on adverts and gameplay and not the whole package considering they are trying to make their ends meet.

 Thats why PC indy games are your best friend. They don't really care for units sold, but normally trade off graphical effects and action that are needed to sell those types of games for a melding of its own gameplay and story.

Well, most of the guys that write video game stories aren't writers. They're designers first and foremost.

Secondly, balancing storytelling with player agency is really, really hard.

[QUOTE="001011000101101"]Hmm, two people above me with horrible taste in games. How sad. Sagem28

I can safely say rjdofu has great tastes in gaming.

As for my own, well, I don't mean to brag but it's pretty damn fantastic as well.

I completely agree, but tbh they're only hard to come by on consoles. Since the indie scene is big on PC, there are a load of great games with good stories. Just don't go for the high-budgets since (most of the time) they have bad stories. Even Mass Effect fails to deliver in terms of story at some points, it's inconsistent basically. 

the first thing is that sharing a good story is hard. even if every developer had its priorities aligned with storytelling, it wouldn't be all that common to have a good story in video games. however, they don't even have that. a lot of developers either have no intention of wowing people with their stories or are much more focused on making an action sequence or whatever.LoG-Sacrament

That's true, but don't that have years to make this happen? Like, if these were really professional writers then I'd assume they'd be able to come up with something better than what's out there at the moment. Even if only a couple months of development was allocated to writing the story (since they obviously have to get that done before designing major parts of the game), you can easily make a Mass Effect-calibre story in a months time even if you weren't a writer. I could be undermining talent here, if so excuse my ignorance, It's just something I've always thought about.

PS3 games have good stories.

Game stories are conventionally told in ways that aren't supportive of them.

The actual stories themselves aren't neccessarrily worse than what is found in other media.

Because people play the wrong games. For instance everyone wants to play the new Metal Gear Rising instead of DMC Devil May Cry because they are butthurt Dante no longer looks like a girl they wanna whack off too.
So they end up playing a game Kojima wrote instead of something good

So it is gamers fault they end up playing something with a $hit story.

[QUOTE="LoG-Sacrament"]the first thing is that sharing a good story is hard. even if every developer had its priorities aligned with storytelling, it wouldn't be all that common to have a good story in video games. however, they don't even have that. a lot of developers either have no intention of wowing people with their stories or are much more focused on making an action sequence or whatever.XVision84

That's true, but don't that have years to make this happen? Like, if these were really professional writers then I'd assume they'd be able to come up with something better than what's out there at the moment. Even if only a couple months of development was allocated to writing the story (since they obviously have to get that done before designing major parts of the game), you can easily make a Mass Effect-calibre story in a months time even if you weren't a writer. I could be undermining talent here, if so excuse my ignorance, It's just something I've always thought about.

a lot of gameplay scenarios make for silly stories. i mean, say you are a developer and want to make a big budget shooter. with the current state of the genre, that already means your writer has to write into the story why the main character is killing thousands of people. put a talented writer on the job (and this is often not the case) and you still may not end up with something good even after a long time.

and this is often how games are developed. it's not the story that comes first, but the broader mechanics and then the writer has to work around them.

They aren't.

They just typically aren't mainstream games.

On top of that many games require the player to immerse themselves within the game, and too many people fail to recognize a good story because they themselves can't immerse themselves to the point of experiencing it.

Half Life, for instance, has 99% of its story told through interactivity. Your vision isn't funneled towards any set pieces, nor are you locked into cutscenes for half the game. You essentially tell the story to yourself. There are things you may experience on your 10th playthrough that you haven't seen before. It's just sad to think there are people out there who look at Half Life, and see nothing, but a gun with aliens in the crosshairs and scream "GENERIC!!!!".

Plenty of games meet this same fate. Amnesia is another one. Amnesia isn't really the embodiment of a great story, but I've seen many complaints about how the game isn't scary when you figure out how the monster paths. I think many people, who have that criticism of the game, may have just rushed through the game from checkpoint to checkpoint without taking the time to truly immerse themselves in the world around them. There are some incredibly sick, and twisted areas of that game, and very disturbing sound effects to go with them, and yet I've talked to people who can't even remember those areas even though they've beat the game.

You can say the developer failed to make an immersive game, but the gamers definitely share a huge part of the blame.

It just seems many gamers don't quite treat video games as their own distinct medium. People go into them without the mindset that their interactivity is what is the driving force behind the game, and instead settle, and prefer, when a game feeds them cutscenes and set pieces. Games are simply a diversion to occupy their time for a couple of hours on a boring night rather than experiences that should be cherished for their uniqueness in comparison to other mediums.