To all you modders out there!

[eliasfrost]

Honestly, I think everyone is missing the point about the "don't start with the story". It's not a question of story vs gameplay at all because in an ideal storydriven game the story is part of the gameplay. Story should never be a starting point because a game is something you want the player to experience, not a story you want to tell. Starting from a game mechanic is just as bad as starting from a story - you start with core experience values. One of your core experience values can be narrative, but if you're simply there to tell a story then go write a book. You need to know how you want your player to experience a narrative (a.k.a. gameplay) before you even start thinking about what that narrative is going to be. "Gameplay comes first" does not equal "game mechanics come first".

There's a reason starting with the story is considered a cardinal sin by most experienced gamedevs, including industry vets like Chris Avellone* or Ernest Adams (the latter of which gave me a good chewing out about it in person). I've made this mistake before myself and if your gameplay is based on your story, your game will fail. Even examples of story driven games given here work this way, The Walking Dead or Heavy Rain or even Dear Esther. You think the only thing to that game is the exposition fed to you by the narrator or something? Story is simply an element of this game, an important element, but without the other experience values this story would simply not have worked (with all due respect to Thechineseroom, I'm not completely sure it works now).

For anyone really interested in core experience values, go read Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics by Hunicke, LeBlanc and Zubek. Link for your convenience: http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~hunicke/MDA.pdf

*To drive this home, this is the guy who wrote and designed the majority of Planescape Torment.

Pretty much what I mean, maybe I just worded my post poorly.


Not directed to anyone in particular:
What I'm going for is that both are important yes, but you can't work on both at the same time at the idea stage, you need gameplay to forward the story, but you also need a story to be forwarded by the gameplay, see what I mean? These can later interviene but without one of them to start with, there's nothing else to complement that, and note that I used the word complement in a way that doesn't emphasise one thing more than the other, it's very much like when you write a book, the language partially define the story and setting but the story also defines what language is used.

Maybe that sounds retarded but my point is: Gameplay and story is both equally important (depending on game) but you need one to accompany the other, you can't start with both unless you are the absolute ubermensch of storytelling and game design, because it needs to fall together in a compelling way, if it doesn't, and the gameplay doesn't complement the story or vice versa, then I'd say you need to rethink things. And as I said earler, it all depends on what game you make.