Video Game Narratives: Stop Wasting My Time

David Jaffe isn’t the most eloquent human being to walk the Earth. When Jaffe isn’t spending his time insulting women he’s saying things like this:

Building a game that is primarily driven by story and narrative "is a bad idea, waste of resources, of time and money, and worst, I think that it has stunted the medium of video games, to our own peril." He objects to games "With the intent purpose of expressing a story... or giving the player the designer's narrative." "If you've got something inside of you that's so powerful ... why the fuck ... would you choose the medium that has historically been the worst medium to express philosophy and story?"

I agree with Jaffe’s premise though not his reasoning or motives for it because his motives come from his inability to craft a strong story himself and his jealousy of people who can. What’re my motives? LOGIC!

Argument 1: Salary Disparity

                Starting salary for a movie writer: ~$60k for ~120 page script

                Starting salary for a video game writer: ~$60k for ~300-600 page script

The amount of work relative to compensation makes movies a far more lucrative career path and I’m sure looks better on a resume. If you're a great writer you should focused on screenplays or novels. Plus, video game writers aren't protected by the Writers Guild of America. Compared to movies, books, and tv, games are like fortune cookies, they’re dull, predictable, and the writing typically goes unnoticed because of all the sweet gameplay elements that make up most of the experience. No one really aspires to be a video game writer; they emerge from versatile game developers who’re also good at writing or hungry freelance writers. Basically, talent follows the money. There are exceptions but they’re far from the norm and besides, established writers get the fat checks, yo!

Argument 2: Games are too fucking long!

Maintaining focus on a narrative for the entire length of a video game wouldn't even be a ‘game’, it’d be an 8 hour movie. The cutscenes and dialogue like to interrupt the game so you’re not constantly focused on kicking ass and chewing bubblegum the whole time. The narrative breaks up the action sequences to pat you on the back for doing tedious stuff by showing you someone else doing bad ass stuff. Here’s an idea, skip the cutscenes and let me do the bad ass stuff, that’s why I bought a fucking video game.

For the sake of argument let’s say a game focused on the story the whole time and let’s assume it’s good. If the ideal representation of this premise is basically an interactive movie then shouldn't the story be more succinct and coherent in the form of a movie instead? For the sake of argument let’s assume your answer was ‘hell no!’  Let’s say this game has an entertaining and cohesive narrative from start to finish. Now, it’s the player’s responsibility to maintain a consistent pace of progress to experience the story properly. Aside from all the dumbed down game design mechanics and forced tutorials that treat us like idiots and make us want to rage quit, a game has to be designed from start to finish with no points for the player to get stuck while encouraging them to keep moving forward. It’s all a deception that’s exceptionally fragile. You see this all the time when you linger about in an ‘urgent’ situation and all the NPCs just sorta derp around screaming ‘common les gogh!’ until you walk forward 2 more steps. It's a precipitous concept that movies don’t have to deal with because they never linger.

This creates another problem: what if the game is too easy that players get bored, or what if a game is too hard or drags on too long and players forget major plot points. Surveys suggest a good game that has the perfect difficulty curve, engaging gameplay and encourages constant forward progression will have ~50% completion rate and that’s being optimistic. Do you routinely go to movies, good or bad, and see half the crowds leave before the ending? No, ya know why? Because movies don’t take 8 fucking hours to watch!

Argument 3: It’s called a video game for a specific fucking reason!

Just like any other game like basketball or Monopoly, before you even begin, the goal of a video game is to win and there’s only one other possible outcome, to lose.  And just like basketball and Monopoly, every time you play a game it’s usually a little bit different then the last time you played it and that’s what makes video games awesome, they don’t have to end when the credits roll, you can just go back and do it all over again with a different approach or difficulty setting. But a static video game narrative is like watching a movie, there’s only one way it can be experienced and everyone experiences it the same way. That’s fine for movies because they take that restriction and utilize its advantages with controlled pacing, showing only what needs to be shown, and emphasizing the important parts. A dynamic narrative, which suit games better, can be personalized so that each of us has our own personal experiences to appreciate and share with others. We play games because we want to be challenged or we want to assume a role and play out our own story.

Wrapping Up:

I’m not saying all video game stories are bad or that they should go away. But I am saying that the magic of video games comes from the feeling of discovering something new, the feeling of conquering an arduous obstacle, the feeling of playing how you want to play, letting you choose your own fate.  Then there’re the games that are so god damn fucking tight and addictive that no one gives a shit about the story at all. I mean, even the games with interesting stories, what do you remember most about them? Do you think about Ezio’s struggle to avenge his family and overthrow a corrupt oligarchy? Fuck no! You think about fucking cutting people’s throats open and scaling buildings like a boss! Do you think about Gorgon Freeman’s journey to cut the ties between a hostile alien race and their home dimension before our species expires? Fuck no! You think about fucking shooting a bunch of aliens and tossing shit around with a gravity gun and it was really cool and stuff! I mean, video game stories can be cool, I’m not denying that, but they’re still an accessory to the actual ‘game’. The same thing happens in sports where before a big match all the press will try to frame some sort of narrative and get people emotionally engaged with a story about the players and the teams and the cities or whatever. But it’s still just a game, and if the game is good then you don’t need a story to make it interesting.