How Important is Game Story

Written by: Olivia Grace (Twitter @oliviadgrace - Google+) | March 1, 2013 6:58 am

25 Comments

Gamebreaker’s own Gary Gannon interviewed World of Warcraft’s Lead Quest Designer and general game story guru Dave Kosak yesterday, discussing the patch 5.2 trailer.

It was a privilege and a pleasure to interview Dave, who is clearly as knowledgeable and passionate about WoW lore as the reddest of red shirt guys. But the comments on the interview, particularly its discussion on external sites, got us thinking. We here at Gamebreaker found Dave’s input fascinating, we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to talk to him, but, just in general, how important is game story?

While I love to hear about it, and am getting ever more interested in game story in WoW, I personally don’t consider it a priority. I’ve always liked having a general overview of the story, to the extent of having an idea of what we’re up to. For example, it is enough for me to know that there’s a giant armored dragon intent on destroying the world. It was nice additional information to know that one of the first raids was essentially a dragon laboratory, but I don’t know that it added anything much.

I’m much more interested in gameplay, and while I do recognize that the two are not mutually exclusive, I give the example in the video of League of Legends. I’m very, very new to League, but I’m fast becoming totally hooked. And I have not yet seen any story. Now, I don’t doubt that there is story. I’d be very surprised if it was completely absent, but I really haven’t noticed it, and I really haven’t noticed its absence. I’m too distracted by the awesome gameplay to care whether there’s a story, and to an extent WoW is the same. I do think it helps, but thanks to the gameplay, particularly with my PvP focus in the game, the game story probably isn’t necessary to my enjoyment of the game.

But how about you? How important is game story?

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72 comments

http://www.facebook.com/inkogni.alex Inkogni Alex

story is needed, without it its just mindless grind. kill that, gather that and no idea why.
so its important to me as a player, it also gives some reason to why i can be mad in games
Remeer

Story isn’t what’s important, what’s important is the delivery. Look at Bioshock, little bits of information lying around about Rapture everywhere but for those interested, you mentioned Portal, another great example of a game with story and little tidbits lying around. World of Warcraft does the same justice, if you want to get into the games story and lore, you can, but its not vital, it lets you go out of your way to absorb the story, if that’s what you want, but again, it’s not forced.

Games can be a great tool for delivering any story, just so long as the game doesn’t force it upon the player.
http://profile.yahoo.com/JRR3QVH43G2QDO6M5KQ6E6T2F4 Kodoku

Story is as important if not more important than gameplay to me. It gives me a reason to care about anything I’m doing in the game. I can go a lot of places for compelling gameplay, but a good story really pulls me in and makes me stick with a game. Immersion gives meaning to gameplay, and good immersion comes from a good story.
Jonathan Cuevas

You have such pretty eyes Olivia <3
7BitBrian

Double Post Fail
http://www.facebook.com/jason.jenkins.73 Jason Jenkins

A good story is vital to me, just focusing on WoW for a moment I love sitting down with WoW friends and talking past, present, and future lore with them. I’ve always loved the tin foil hat lore discusions particularly cause I love taking a bit of lore from this expansion and a bit from that expansion and putting them together to come up with a fesiable conclusion as to what could be in store for us in the future of wow.

To jump out of WoW for a mintue, SWTOR is a good exsample of a game I probably would not have stuck with for as long as I did had it not been for the story they did. Yes the genaric story lines they had for each planet were a bore to do over and over again but the first time doing them I was on the edge of my seat for each planet often with family looking at me werid cause I would laugh at certain story elements they put in. Without all that though, yeah SWTOR is kinda a boring game, the jedi/sith fighting styles are not that spectacular and there is only so many times you can shout UNLIMITED POWER!!! when you shock someone with force lightning .

Other games with good stories to me were the orginal Command & Conquer and its sequals…minus C&C 4 which just left a big what the fudge did I just play through feeling in me. Freelancer was a great story and the mods really keep that game going for me. The Elder scrolls games were the best to me cause they gave you free reign as to how to do the story. There are others as well but no real need to name them all, but I can say any game I have enjoyed has always had great story to it.
http://twitter.com/Deadalon Deadalon

Story in a world driven content is good… IF the world is is actually maintained and updated acordingly. Thats why the expansion formats of games like WOW fail to add up into a strong storydriven game.

The thing that is coming so aparent with WOW now is that there is “to much of the same” in terms of content. If you lvl 40 levels or so – you will have pretty much got a full dose of Azeroth. The stories in the individual zones are very rarely interesting enough to keep ppl going.

We have seen new games create good world events like in GW2. WOW also has holliday events that they switch in and out. So… not changing quests at all in the old world when the litch king is dead (and has been for years) just adds to the weak points of a dead world instead of a vibrant and living one.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

How the different games tell their story is also interesting. Do they tell the story as a personal journey or a shared friendship as a group. Is it told as a grand myths of past glory or explorations of unknown past.
http://twitter.com/Clajo3 Clajo

I like games that provide an immersive setting to play in, with the option to dig deeper into the lore if players so choose. Also a game where developers can create random setting-based events to surprise players and keep them on thier toes.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
  
  I’d love to play a game like that. Hopefully we’ll see one in the years to come.
Revanhavoc

A good example of an exception for me in my love of story is Hitman: Absolution.

This game had horrible story, but the cut scenes were well done, and the world itself was so fleshed out it made my immersion almost a sidetrack from the story.

I think the sandbox elements allowed me to glaze over the bald headed dude strolling through levels with sunglasses and a purple coat.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JD5RIAPTFFZFIF3DCNYVVG7NIQ Kyle Bohannon

story is the make or break it point for me in a game. i like to immerse myself in the story and thats what i find most enjoyable about games. warcraft is the game that i have followed since their first rts in 1994, it was my first pc game and yes i split the computer time with my dad playing it. ever since then most of their titles have been awesome and ive loved every one of them.

the exception being the diablo franchise. while i did play d1 and d2 quite frequently it wasnt something that was as exciting to me as the starcraft and warcraft stories. i thought that d3 would change that and i was utterly disappointed. its story was quite frankly terrible, cliche and so predictable.

that being said, i havent truly found a game that has told the story quite as well as bioware has done with kotor 1&2 and of course swtor. while i might get some flak for bringing up swtor, i havent personally played an mmo where when i was getting tired i would keep telling myself “one more class quest”

just my .02
hellzpawner

I would say that the story ads a certain point to a game, I would say that a good story in a game is a major pluss. because with out a good game story, I personally don’t see a point in playing it, because it doesn’t catch me in the same way. like a game with out a story I can play for hours, but a game with a good story leaves me interested in finishing the game to see the ending.

Another point i want to put out here is that, what is a game with out a good stroy, i mean c’mon, give the players something to get their gaming love on. Take me for example I refuse to buy a game that doesn’t give me a story for the money. Because I want a game that gives me much, take devil may cry, i like the idea, but doesn’t have much of an interesting in game story. I want more games that gives me much for the price of it.
I might get lots of hate for not believing that Devil May Cry has a good in-game story, but im just saying my opinion.

Love from a game lover
theunwarshed

if i want story i play a single player rpg. any other game, game play trumps story every time. i’ve found in several mmo cases that story actually gets in the way of game play quite often..ahem, SWTOR!
http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey “Crimzen” Jenkins

Story for me is King. If a game’s story isn’t that great, then I’ll rarely continue to play it for more than a few hours. The only time I normally make an exception is either when the gameplay is really enjoyable or when I’m gaming with friends. Otherwise I’m pretty much a lore nerd myself. Read all the quest text, all the npc dialogue, all the hidden books(In game and IRL), watch all the cut scenes or read whatever wiki information I find interesting at the time heh.

I pretty much devour a story, especially if it’s a good one.
http://profile.yahoo.com/W76UOX2IDTRMMYTPASSJDLXLRM Bob

Story is important but MMO’s don’t do story well (this is from someone who’s played WoW, RIft, SWTOR, TSW and GW2). If I want to play a storytelling game I’d play an RPG. MMO’s essential design make it so that story is set to the lowest common denominator.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz

Story is one of the most important factors in gaming. LoL isn’t about story, it’s about mindless killing with a character you like, so that’s a horrid example. WoW, although it has massive amounts of lore, truly lacks proper story telling and more importantly, it delivers it in a way that feels unengaging. If you’re only talking about MMOs, take a look at a game like GW1, where MOST players were driven BY the storyline. Heck, most players could recite the events leading to GW2 just because of how great GW1 delivered the story. I’m not quite sure what games you’ve played (@Olivia) but I can assure you that a good story can raise a good game into an incredible experience. If you want to talk about single player games, take a look at KoTOR, Jade Empire, and so on. I feel like perhaps you just haven’t had the opportunity to play a very deep game that has a rich and complex story. I could be wrong as I don’t know much about your gaming habits, just going off of what I’ve learned from watching Legendary and Chat Bubble.
http://www.facebook.com/michael.heggem Michael Heggem

In Star Wars I care about story. Everything else doesn’t matter.
http://profile.yahoo.com/V3HR6CMXI5WF5PXOHJV4Z5XPJA Yoh

If WoW and LoL are your examples when talking about story, then you really have to branch out more, they are both poor examples when it comes to story as it is not their focus.
Lore and story are not the same thing.

Story is about characters, how they interact, and how they deal with issues.
Try a Persona game sometime, they have a great story with strong, relatable characters.

But the short answer to the question, is that it depends on the game.
For MMO’s : Gamplay > Social Tools > Everthing Else > Story
http://www.facebook.com/stradus.woods Stradus Woods

I am actual shocked at how many players are so interested in story line. Game-play is a make or break for me. Everything else is fun extras. There are a lot of story lines in games I like but if the game-play had been bad would have never seen it cause can’t play a game where I don’t get some kind of enjoyment out of the game play.

Depending on how the story interacts with the game I will ignore it most the time. Sometimes story hurts the games for me swtor, (should have had a option to turn of that off) GW2, some Bioware games, DMC (once you beat it once story just gets in the way of really fun stuff). I wish they would keep story where they can do it well in single player games other wise it mostly becomes a nuisance or at least put in the option to turn it off.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=754168227 Len Hobbel

This depends on what game it is compared to World of Warcraft. It was always story story story in WOW. 7.5 years it was story story story in WOW….THEN Star Wars the old republic which has 35+ years of story writing and thousands of years of story and the story was not just text but you were told the story you heard the story. The story came a live.

Then there was a World of Warcraft change on the story that story didnt matter. Because Swtor has a massive story a 100 times what WOW could ever have so WOW decided BAH story…

This also goes for PLayer housing in games. I know form playing wow since the early betas PLAYER HOUSING was wanted BAD….but When RIFT got their version of it….WOW players slammed player housing…NOW that we hear WOW maybe getting it they are all hard for it. But WOW housing will be pretty basic since the engine can only do basic anything.

It all depends on what WOW dictates that will matter, if they have it , it matters if another game has it….it doesnt matter.

Played wow for a long time and heard so much double talk bullshit. AS it is WOW crated nothing new…just lots of players and that is pretty much when wow started there wasnt 100s of mmorpgs just a handful and we didnt have millions the first year. 6 months in it almost went down.

So what matters in ANY game is pretty much what WOW decides.
Having the most players of any mmorpg is WOWS claim, but it pretty much ends there.
They keep wow a dogged Warcraft 3 engine to keep 75% of the players on 8 year old plus machines.

We know wow will never get a modern engine and I want that BAD, WOW with insane graphics would be AWESOME.
http://twitter.com/caerulei Timothy Noël

A game isn’t nothing without lore, but I really will not care about any game very long if there is not great lore. I’m happy with story being presented in many different ways, but without story, I would not even be playing a game as good as GW2.
http://www.facebook.com/devon.barela Devon Barela

Lore, Aka Josh Allen, made WoW a much more enjoyable experience for me. But on a more relevant note. There’s a time and place for it. I enjoy my Final Fantasy games for story more than any other reason. And as you mentioned, League of Legends. it has some lore, but you don’t need it to enjoy the game.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000980670617 Rebecca Ramsey

To me, Storyline and Lore is the most important aspect of an MMO, after basic functionality – if the game has horrible bugs or gameplay, I wont play, but I’ll forgive graphics, mechanics, extra options as long as the story is fantastic and amazing – ala LOTRO.
http://twitter.com/capzlive Dale C

Single player story is much more important, the more players there are the less important story becomes.

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