To all you modders out there!

[Adrianis]

It's not really about Story > Gameplay or Gameplay > Story, despite the fact that either of those terms define.... nothing at all really, it's that there are a million different starting points for ideas and a million different ways to start a project, and a million different ways to execute on a million different aspects of a game.

It doesn't matter which you define first and consider more important, what matters is not shutting down avenues of design for students by people who think they know what games should be.

To be fair to Kaye, her job is to get people job's, and it's all sound advice with that goal in mind. That was only 1 of many decent slides (except, what Palistov said)

[palistov]

I agree with Adrianis agreeing with me. Scanner trumps all. No scanner = no job.

[Kman]

Yeah I wasn't trying to say story > gameplay, I'm just saying there is a lot of potential in story driven games and saying gameplay always comes first pretty much crushes any chance of that potential ever being unleashed. Gameplay based games have there place, and like I said it's basically to be fun and challenging ways to kill time.

[plutomaniac]

The funny thing with Dear Esther for me is that I spend 3 hours to see if I could play it with my gamepad and 1.5 hour for the actual game. I agree that a game with only story and no gameplay is boring. I liked Dear Esther but it's a one time thing. I would never play it again even if the devs say that each time the dialogs are a little different and in the end you learn more about the story. If it was longer, I would have gone crazy. Not only that, the story made little sense! Of course, the EA style (just gameplay, shoot and shoot) is not acceptable too.

[Mine Turtle]

Dear Easter

Lel

[Kman]

I'm gonna be honest, I can't stand it when people use replay value and gameplay time as a means of judging a game. It's not about how long a game is, it's about what it does with the time it uses. If a game only needs two hours to tell its story and give you the intended experience, then adding on extra time just so it has a lengthy play time would only detract from the experience and act as filler. I'd rather have an incredibly mind blowing hour long game than a good game that lasts 20. Same goes for replay value, I'd rather play an incredibly well done game once and have an amazing experience than play a good game 5 times because it has replay value.

If you really need any proof of this, go play Journey, and then get back to me on how longer play time and replay value make a game better.

[darkely]

I'm gonna be honest, I can't stand it when people use replay value and gameplay time as a means of judging a game. It's not about how long a game is, it's about what it does with the time it uses. If a game only needs two hours to tell its story and give you the intended experience, then adding on extra time just so it has a lengthy play time would only detract from the experience and act as filler. I'd rather have an incredibly mind blowing hour long game than a good game that lasts 20. Same goes for replay value, I'd rather play an incredibly well done game once and have an amazing experience than play a good game 5 times because it has replay value.

If you really need any proof of this, go play Journey, and then get back to me on how longer play time and replay value make a game better.

Just because a game is longer doesn't necessarily make it "filler" content. Fallout is fairly long with all of its DLC and mostly all of it is worth playing and is fun.

I agree with you about quality over quantity: I played GTA IV and the main story line isn't very long at all. The story is actually good, but it could be better. I don't know what you have against replay value though - I personally love starting up GTA SA or IV and going on a rampage. Granted it is not thought provoking and story heavy, but in all honestly sometimes I just want a simple game to have fun with.

[Kman]

No I'm not saying all games that have long play times are bad or that all games with replay value are bad, just that those aren't valid reasons to criticize a game for in my opinion (unless that's what the intention of it is). If the developers need 20 hours of game time to give the player the experience they intend, or if the game is heavily gameplay driven in which case replay value is important (think arcade games like Pacman), then by all means make a 20 minute long game or make the game have lots of replay value. But with that said, devs shouldn't add in random crap just because they think the gameplay isn't long enough or there's not enough replay value.

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Okay about this whole story vs. gameplay thing - after I went through game school I can totally understand where she's coming from there. Keep in mind, she's not saying that story is always, in any case and without exceptions less important than gameplay or whatever - she's giving advice to students.

And I can't count how often I've met students who were all like "Yeah i got this awesome game idea! It's about this angel who was cast out from heaven in this alternate cyberpunk reality where technology has replaced blah blah blah..." and when you asked them what kind of game they actually wanted to make, they were like "oh... kind of an action-rpg-adventure open world shooter thing...with melee combat!".
Needless to say, their projects always failed, unless someone shook them violently and forced them to first think about stuff like engine and core gameplay mechanics before writing the story. Because a game without story is still a game, but a story without game is a book at best and you're not in game school to write books.

So yeah, I think that's what she means there. And it's sound advice if you ask me

[Adrianis]

Spoiler below!

Okay about this whole story vs. gameplay thing - after I went through game school I can totally understand where she's coming from there. Keep in mind, she's not saying that story is always, in any case and without exceptions less important than gameplay or whatever - she's giving advice to students.

And I can't count how often I've met students who were all like "Yeah i got this awesome game idea! It's about this angel who was cast out from heaven in this alternate cyberpunk reality where technology has replaced blah blah blah..." and when you asked them what kind of game they actually wanted to make, they were like "oh... kind of an action-rpg-adventure open world shooter thing...with melee combat!".
Needless to say, their projects always failed, unless someone shook them violently and forced them to first think about stuff like engine and core gameplay mechanics before writing the story. Because a game without story is still a game, but a story without game is a book at best and you're not in game school to write books.

So yeah, I think that's what she means there. And it's sound advice if you ask me

Totally, which is why I added the caveat that the sentiment of that sentence makes some sense in the context of her being a university lecturer. But what's happening there is that there is an attempt to define what makes a game and what doesn't make a game - story driven games that are increadibly linear with little to no player agency and mechanics that amount to a single click to interact have existed and continue to exist in the format of Adventure games, and they have been and will continue to be (fairly) popular.

They are still games, Dear Esther is still a game and attempts to cast it as something else amount to people not liking the format - that's fine, you like what you like and she doesn't like that. What should not happen is game design students being told by people in a position of authority that a game idea that starts with a story is not a game idea, that is clearly bunk, and will discourage a future generation from exploring certain avenues of design.


I would also like to re-iterate my support for Palistov supporting me for supporting his comment, in order to see how long that chain of approval can feasibly continue for.