The narratives tend to be a vestigial part of games that has been carried over from earlier forms.

That's true. I mean, what would Pac Man and Pong have been without their epic, gripping stories. Gamers today don't know how bad it is today, with their Ico and their Shadows of the Colossus.

K

KevinQ: I suspect they were referring to the large number of oldschool games that WERE driven by story, particularly those in the adventure game genre. Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, King's Quest, Day of the Tentacle, and even Space Quest were all very plot-driven. I found that the story was such an integral part of the whole experience that you could actually just skip through a large number of puzzles (via a hint guide or similar mechanism) and still get a lot out of any one of those games.

I, for one, won't even touch a game if it doesn't have some semblance of a story. The deeper the story the better IMO.

Me thinks the "earlier forms" they are referring to may be ye "court bards", "printed type", and maybe even "moving pictures".

I am not sure whether the point that is being made, since I have not read the article, is that narrative is good or bad. My take is that you can use narrative heavily in a game, but that makes it a movie with some predetermined user-driven actions or at best a choose-your-own adventure. I would lean mostly towards games that are derived not from the narrative path, but rather from the gaming path. You can put a narrative to chess or a puzzle or a board game like Risk, but the narrative is really secondary. A game like Street Fighter II has a story, but it is tacked on. Is there a story for Tetris? Meteos and Dr Mario had stories, but it was secondary to the puzzle-driven gameplay. I enjoy Star Wars: Battlefront because I like to have a large scale battle. The story behind the battle is really unimportant; it doesn't affect the fact that it is basically team in masks against team without masks. Sport games do not really revolve around a story, but rather a series of "battles."

To my tastes, a focus on narrative in an interactive environment is really missing the point of having an interactive environment. Does this mean I avoid story-driven games? No, but I tend toward those games where the story takes a backseat to gameplay.

I love it when people approach games like this (most often in the "Videogames = Art?" debate). This shotgun approach doesn't work anywhere else, why would it work on games? As many others have mentioned, all games are not created equal. Games like puzzle games Tetris can't hold a literacy candle to Halo which, in turn, can't hold a literacy candle to RPGs like Chrono Trigger.

"When people play games, they aren't playing them for the story. They aren't playing them for a narrative arc of any kind." - Well then I guess I should trash Myst, Psychonauts, Metal Gear Solid, Zelda, and so on and so forth. I think peole play games for the experience, of which the story is one important aspect.

But seriously what do you expect from a Magazine like Harper's? :)

To be fair, the sorts of games Johnson's most interested in tend not to have a central plot: the massive genre, sim games, and the like. I have a pet theory that gameplay and story tend to exist in more or less inverse proportions: some of the genres featuring the purest, most polished gameplay tend to be what we might call "astorical". Off the top of my head, these genres would be racing, shmups, and puzzle titles.

For a nice overview of story in the medium:
http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=...

-Fat

Hey, I didn't think the article was so bad when it comes to ripping games. They seemed more interested in discussing what games could teach people re: literature, although there were a few snobby comments. I blogged about this Harpers article a couple weeks ago.

Oops. That was obviously the wrong link. The correct link for my discussion of the Harpers piece.

Oops. That was obviously wrong. Here's the correct link to my post on the Harpers thing.