Dude!

by Jillybean, Sunday, March 03, 2013, 02:27 (4370 days ago) @ Cody Miller

In games, the fun must come from the interaction. I don't care how you choose to interact. Wander and explore the world. Try to master the mechanics. Piece together your own story. Do whatever you want. But when someone says they only care about the story, then they have no business spending their time in an interactive medium. There are games I play pretty much exclusively for the story (Snatcher, Policenauts, Final Fantasy games, etc). But 1. They are all terrible as games - Snatcher and policenauts have the barest of bare options for interaction (whihc consequently makes their story better, while the Final Fantasies would make better books so I don't have to pointlessly battle enemies with no skill or strategy involved), and 2. The story would be better told in a different medium. Deus Ex's story would NOT be better told in another medium, because when playing, I have a high degree of control over how it progresses because Deus Ex is highly interactive.

Is this making sense?

In a logical fallacy sort of a way. Why do you get to be arbiter of when someone is wasting their time? Nobody watches a film 'purely' for the story or reads a book 'purely' for the story. Any art form has techniques it uses to tell it's story and appreciating those techniques is unavoidable. You cannot focus simply on the story, even in it simplest form. That's why we have Bookers and Oranges and Oscars.

Now, crap films, books, shows and video games all exist, I'm not arguing that, and probably because they have failed to appreciate their techniques, but they're not bad because the person participating in them has no interest in the medium.