the gamer's struggle

the gamer's struggle

Postby stgzlg » 14 Feb 2015, 01:55

does any of you have good programming skills for a game but lack the motivation for a good story for the game?
If so, how many of you think the dynamics of the game are more important than the story plot?
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Re: the gamer's struggle

Postby eugeneloza » 14 Feb 2015, 06:01

Maybe I didn't understand the question correctly, but... the gameplay (you call dynamics, however, the game may be e.g. turn-based) is the most important part of most games. E.g. few know the story behind 'doom', its the gameplay people liked it for. On the other hand there are story-driven games. Like many (but not all) RPGs, quests, etc. You really don't need a cool story for a side-scroll shooter. Some will even find endless dialogs and cutscenes as boring. But a quest game without a story is like a rider without head.

At this point I'm working on two game projects: Project Helena (gameplay-driven game) and Decoherence (story-driven game). The development process is dramatically different while both of them are in the similar genre: Turn-based/phase-based RPGs.
It doesn't mean that story is not important in gameplay-driven game. But if you take away the story, the game doesn't loose much.
And gameplay is very important in a story-driven game. But if you take away the gameplay, It'll still be a playable game just for the story.
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Re: the gamer's struggle

Postby Peter » 17 Feb 2015, 16:52

I think many games benefit from having a story. It gives some meaning to what the player is doing. It doesn't have to be a great story. Remember the old Mario games, the princess has been kidnaped by King Koopa so Mario has to save her, but at the end of each castle the toad tells him "Thank you, Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!" and the game goes on (I guess it ends eventually).

The type of game is also important. The more action-paced, the less important is the story in my opinion.
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Re: the gamer's struggle

Postby stgzlg » 24 Feb 2015, 00:17

thank you for your replies guys. I'm basically saying this cuz i might know a writer or two that might want to have their stories somewhere and to be honest a games sounds as a cool places to test their ideas. I'm not talking about anything fancy, probably small and simple RPG's and then start somewhere, from scratch.
I see this as a way of helping each other. If the programmer finds a story he likes, he can work together with that writer to the end goal and make a pretty cool game. There are many style of writers out there, all with different ideas and i think every one could find their shoe.
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Re: the gamer's struggle

Postby onpon4 » 24 Feb 2015, 02:48

You could try writing replacement dialogs and otherwise replacing the data of The Ur-Quan Masters (the Star Control II data is under a non-libre license, CC BY-NC-SA, so replacing it would be beneficial). This is a space opera game with Spacewar-inspired combat.

If you've never seen Star Control II and are interested in writing a replacement story or otherwise replace the SC2 data, I can set up a template for such a project so that you don't end up accidentally infringing copyright. (I was planning on doing this at some point anyway, but if someone is interested in working on it, I can do so sooner.)
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