I think you misunderstand what a story is, and how it relates to games. But I won't go into detail (because that would result in a comment that's longer than your article), so I'll focus on a few things.

A story need not be passive, and often isn't. Campfire stories, theatre, live music, and, yes, games all offer interactive storytelling, which changes and is shaped by the audience. Every game has a story, although it is not always authored. And no story is ever exactly the same no matter who it is experienced by, because we project our past experience onto the characters and environments; we change the story in our heads as we experience it. Sure, a traditional story will lead to highly similar experiences from person to person, but keep in mind that no story is entirely passive.

A game of Civilization has a story - it is the story of your civ, and emerges from the narrative structure embedded in the mechanics of the game. Tetris has a story about the neverending quest to arrange blocks into neat rows.

The power of games, which is what people are always striving to improve, is in their ability to create narrative structures and story spaces from which player-created or player-modified stories can emerge. But this is extremely difficult to do well, and developers of narrative-driven games are still looking for the right balance between authored and emergent storytelling.

One final thing, don't get hung up on dialogue and plot being the core of stories in games. The environments can tell stories of their own (and this is the case in the best games). I think this kind of storytelling -- environment/level design and architecture -- is the real core of storytelling in games. And that is something that is tied to the mechanics and gameplay systems of a game.

Firstly, thanks for reading and typing up such a long and cogent response.  It's appreciated. 

As for oral stories and other story-telling that changes...that's a fringe example that changes extraordinarily little between each iteration.  More importantly, it's not applicable to games, since all the cutscenes and information is hard-coded beforehand. 

"And no story is ever exactly the same no matter who it is experienced by, because we project our past experience onto the characters and environments; we change the story in our heads as we experience it. Sure, a traditional story will lead to highly similar experiences from person to person, but keep in mind that no story is entirely passive."

I knew before I even started writing the article that someone would come back with this argument, but it completely ignores the main point of that argument; while the individual INTERPRETATION is different, the story ITSELF is the same.  

"Tetris has a story about the neverending quest to arrange blocks into neat rows."

And this doesn't sound like a silly, funny explanation to you?  Look, if you quibble enough with definitions, then the entire discussion becomes meaningless from both sides. 

In that case, EVERYTHING becomes a story. 

"The power of games, which is what people are always striving to improve, is in their ability to create narrative structures and story spaces from which player-created or player-modified stories can emerge."

Really now?  Like Guitar Hero, Wii Fit, Wii Sports, etc, etc? 

"One final thing, don't get hung up on dialogue and plot being the core of stories in games. The environments can tell stories of their own (and this is the case in the best games). I think this kind of storytelling -- environment/level design and architecture -- is the real core of storytelling in games. And that is something that is tied to the mechanics and gameplay systems of a game."

Cutscenes are an example of shoehorning storytelling methods from non-interactive mediums into an interactive one. I am (for the most part) against them. But you can progress a story via other means, such as successfully achieving a gameplay goal of unlocking a new skill, or finding a key for a door (this one is tired and outdated, but the first example I thought of).

Everything can become a story. If I ask you what you did today, your response is a story about your day. Chances are it won't be a very interesting one because of a lack of relevance and meaningful conflict, but it will contain some kind of conflict nonetheless. Conflict is the essence of story.

What is the core experience of playing a game if not conflict with a system? The example of Tetris may sound silly, but on the subconscious level that story resonates, because it uses a very powerful kind of external conflict. I agree that it seems a bit of a stretch, but Tetris fits with the classical definition of story. As another example you could look at Space Invaders. That game is pretty basic, and its story is weak, but the big draw of the game back in 1979 was the idea that you could save the world from an alien attack. Story provides context and motivation for gameplay.

Yes, Guitar Hero is an example of the power games have as a storytelling medium, but it is a very shallow one - much as the dream (of being a superstar musician without the real-life repercussions) that it emulates. Better examples, which still fall far short of the potential of this medium, are Passage, Grand Theft Auto 3/4 (kind of/depending on how you read it), Civilization, and the Fallout games. Far Cry 2 tried to do this, too, although from what I've heard it didn't quite pull it off (it is still sitting on my backlog, so I haven't played it).

I'll also refer you to an article that appeared on Gamasutra five years ago about this problem. There are many other such articles on Gamasutra and elsewhere, but this is one that looks at how games are different from other storytelling mediums, and how they should (but often don't) take advantage of this.

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050727/sutherland_01.shtml

Oh, and a great example of how games can tell stories unlike any other medium is The Last Express, which I have written about before. I still don't understand why no-one took the ideas from that game's cohesion of narrative and gameplay structures and developed them further.

Richard Moss- 

If you're going to describe everything as a valid story, down to the silly example of Tetris being "the neverending quest to arrange blocks into neat rows." (seriously?), then the entire issue becomes moot. 

If Tetris is a satisfactory enough "story" for you, why complain about stories in games at all?  It's accomplished anything you could ever want!   Of course, we're talking about MEANINGFUL, good, unpredictable stories here, not stories by the overly trivial definition you apply to them. 

As for examples like Passage, it's not even much of a game or a story; just a shallow, primitive effort overhyped by the "games are art" community.  A similar example was "Seven Minutes". 

And Civilization, like Guitar Hero or Tetris, has no story at all.  It's a game which derives its popularity from being an early, well-balanced turn-based strategy. 

And yes, I have read that GamaSutra article before.  It's a nice summary, but does not even attempt to discuss what you claim it does; namely, how "non-cinematic" approaches can be used to enhance stories in games. 

In fact, it's not even related to the main point of my article at all.  (Whether stories are the least bit necessary in the first place) 

Mark, ever stop to think you might be a projecting your own sense of insecurity? That the idea someone wanting something within a game that you may not deem necessary is perfectly fine and valid without proclaiming varients of an inferiority complex because you find it unnecesary?

I don't care for many online multiplayer games. I'm part of what apparently seems to an contigent of people that a game that strings a very good single-player experience is just as valuable as a game with multiplayer. It's totally unneeded in a game and is often done not so great. But when done well, it very much enhances the experience of one for a part of the gaming audience.

And I'm spending a little too much time enjoying the experiences I like to devalue someone else's experience.

It's an interesting point of discussion. Story definitely isn't the necessary for enjoyment of a game. Maybe my favorite game of last year in Splosion Man was completely devoid of story. I like Peggle and Bejeweled. I'm an avid sports gamers. I loved Road Rash. Games as pure games have been fun well before video games and will be well into the future.

I'm not sure a person that seeks stories in games necessarily thinks they can't be enjoyed without one. It may not appeal to them but I don't think a mature person think a game without story isn't valuable and enjoyable to someone even they want it. That said, said, I've not come across any critics that seem to hold this absolute idea in your head a game must have a story to be worth anything. I do think many value the potential in the medium for storytelling, seen an occasional "good" story told - good differs from person to person and if your premise is a game hasn't nor can't tell a good story you're fundamentally never going to find a common ground nor understanding with people that do. Which aside from maybe being a venting exercise or call to attract people in agreement might make this fruitless exercise from the start - and would like to push that forward in the same way they want to see graphics, sound design and many other things that may not "make" a game. True HD graphics may not be neccesary for makes a game fun but there are people that value it. Surround sound or a great score isn't either, but many a person with a tech fetish wants to push that whenever possible too. The greatness of the medium is that it can be diverse enough to push so many things with a diverse collection of products that appeal to people of different tastes seeking different experiences.

A game being a phenomenal game is what matters to you. Great. I share the sentiment. But you are you as I am I.  And there's nothing more telling of an inferiority complex to feel the need to paint someone of a "lesser mind"  or to be care about nonsense because they value someone you don't as if your own values were of greater importance to the world.

Music is not an incidental, extraneous element of film. Take EDWARD SCISSORHANDS -- without that incredible score by Danny Elfman, it would not be the same film. Or take any of Wes Anderson's films -- when he is writing he will often think of the song he wants to play over a particular scene. For Anderson the music is like another level of dialogue, one the film itself is having with the audience.

Of course, not every film uses music with such specific intention -- but that doesn't mean music is an extraneous element of film. It just means not every filmmaker uses music well.

The same can be said about game 'stories'. Story is not irrelevant OR necessary -- it's another of the many things 'gaming' has in its toolbox to facilitate a particular experience.

I see gaming as this huge, broad canvass that most folk -- developers, producers and especially critics and web pundits -- are content in painting just one corner of.

"Mark, ever stop to think you might be a projecting your own sense of insecurity? That the idea someone wanting something within a game that you may not deem necessary is perfectly fine and valid without proclaiming variest of an inferiority complex because you find it unnecesary?"

Hmm...perhaps I should have been more clear in the article.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with either putting a story in games or enjoying it.  (I certainly have!) 

Rather, the article's point was to correctly identify story and game as being separate elements, and to note that there are more exciting, original topics of discussion than the redundant "story in games" one so many people go back to. 

"Music is not an incidental, extraneous element of film. Take EDWARD SCISSORHANDS -- without that incredible score by Danny Elfman, it would not be the same film. Or take any of Wes Anderson's films -- when he is writing he will often think of the song he wants to play over a particular scene. For Anderson the music is like another level of dialogue, one the film itself is having with the audience."

An even better example would have been Fellini's or Leone's films.  (I've actually never noticed this use of music in Anderson's films, although I think a lot of his work is overrated and mediocre)

Music might be more important to a movie than a story to a game, but it was, after all, an ANALOGY; Edward Scissorhands might have been worse without its music, but not by much. 

Mark, could you please explain what you believe is the difference between "meaningful" story and non-meaningful story?

What I've been trying to get at is that games provide interactive systems and fictional worlds that adhere to the rules of these systems. Most good games embed elements of story and narrative in the fictional worlds, and relate these elements to the mechanics of the interactive system through metaphor. The interplay of these ideas will result in a player-created story. But this story will be terrible and uninteresting if the game is not created with the player's power and range of expression kept in mind.

Furthermore, the "story" that gets tacked on to a lot of games is meant to enhance this power for narrative expression. Often it fails to do so, but even in these instances, story is typically necessary as the glue that holds together the interactive systems that are in place.

Do all games need highly developed and thought out narrative and story elements to support their interactive systems? No, of course not. But some do. Half-Life wouldn't work without the story, neither would Bioshock. I would go so far as to suggest that most first-person shooters are actually distinguished from each other solely on the way they fuse stories with gameplay, because essentially they have the same mechanics.

I never once said that I was satisfied with the quality of stories in games. The example of Tetris was meant to illustrate that a good game is more than just an abstract system, and there is an element of story in any good interactive system.

I maintain that Guitar Hero and Civilization also have stories. The story in Guitar Hero is horrendously simple, and adds nothing to the game, but the premise of its story is what sold a lot of people on trying the game. The story of Civilization is created by YOU as you play the game. Don't believe me? Head on over to Apolyton - they've got an entire forum dedicated to Civ4 stories. When people talk about Civ they often mention things like wanting to nuke the f'ing Mongols or build some important World Wonder. That's a story - the story of their civilization.

So, to reiterate, the unique storytelling aspect of games is that they allow you to create your own story within an authored, carefully designed world, which features its own rules and systems of interactions. It may have an explicit back-story. It may not. But its narrative elements become a story only through the emergence of your play. (Cut-scenes take away from this, and ideally should not exist, for they are a hallmark of the largely non-interactive film medium.)

I apologise about the Gamasutra article. I linked to the wrong one, and re-reading the one that I thought I was linking to, it doesn't offer much to the discussion, either (it actually states that cut-scenes can work).

A meaningful story is impossible to define; it's like the legal definition of porn, "I know it when I see it!"

And if, in your words, "Tetris has a story about the neverending quest to arrange blocks into neat rows.", then it doesn't crack the list. 

Guitar Hero has a story?  I would argue it doesn't (does a broom you play air guitar on also represent a story?), but if you think it's "horrendously simple" and "adds nothing to the game", then it's hardly the good example then, is it? 

"The story of Civilization is created by YOU as you play the game. Don't believe me? Head on over to Apolyton - they've got an entire forum dedicated to Civ4 stories. When people talk about Civ they often mention things like wanting to nuke the f'ing Mongols or build some important World Wonder. That's a story - the story of their civilization."

You're just being difficult and flippant now.

If you can't define meaningful story, how the hell is anyone supposed to create it? Just throw rocks in a pond until one of them floats?

I never said Guitar Hero was a good example of a story. YOU were the one who brought it up -- I merely explained how it does indeed have a story. (A broom you play air guitar on may represent a story, if you must progressively learn how to do it, beat pre-determined challenges and face setbacks on the journey to become a (pretend) rockstar.)

Those people writing Civlization stories are retelling the story of their experience WITHIN the context of the game. The story is their game; it has EVERYTHING to do with the game itself. The act of writing it down merely records the story, preserving its existence for other people. They could just as easily share the "replay" of their game instead, so that you could watch the story unfold rather than read a prose/written retelling.

It is different if you take an experience within the game as inspiration for a story, as I did with Untold Stories of War (published on this site), because that is using the game as a launching point for a more traditional story.

"If you can't define meaningful story, how the hell is anyone supposed to create it? Just throw rocks in a pond until one of them floats?"

You're being extremely short-sighted and foolish in your thinking here.  If it were possible to define a quality story, don't you think someone would have done so already?  Do you HONESTLY belive that with the mass of amazing, diverse, stories out there in literature or movies alone, one can give them a succinct definition? 

That's lunacy. 

But yes, I do know that neither Guitar Hero or Tetris (or the interpretation you gave to Tetris) qualify as meaningful stories. 

"The act of writing it down merely records the story, preserving its existence for other people.  They could just as easily share the "replay" of their game instead, so that you could watch the story unfold rather than read a prose/written retelling."

Stating that "games don't need stories" isn't something that really warrants discussion, which is why people are going off-topic. That's a statement that leads straight into a brick wall - yes, you're right, they don't -need- stories, but many video games have stories, and many people like them.

Games not needing stories is also not what your piece is really about. It's about how you feel on the subject. You don't want people talking about story in video games because you don't think it's important. You don't want people talking about video games as art because you don't think it matters. Why opine on the subject if you're so against the conversation itself? You're not going to change anyone's mind if they disagree with you. If you really want people to stay "on-topic" the best you are going to get out of the comments is people agreeing with you, which is no conversation at all but rather a search for validation; and if you honestly believe this and feel strongly about it, you don't need to be validated.

To say that stories in video games are irrelevant when games like Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption and Heavy Rain and Uncharted 2 and Grand Theft Auto IV, games whose cinematic narratives are inseperable from the "action," are so popular makes you sound very out of touch with the current state of the video game industry, and takes away a lot of credibiilty from your argument.

This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to with "games as art" or "games as entertainment," because those two propositions are not mutually exclusive. That's one of the first things I learned in film school. It's a false dichotomy. Good art -is- entertaining - it simply isn't entertaining in a bland, mindless fashion. That sort of entertainment also has its place...and can also be done artistically.

Storytelling is precisely what gives a large number of video games their "flavor" nowadays, else they would all blend together into a mushy, bleached mass of FPS, RTS, and RPG titles that are precisely the same because control schemes and gameplay mechanics can only evolve so far. FPS games have been in this position for at least a couple of years now, with only games like Portal breaking through to new territory...and the story is an immensely important aspect of the total experience of Portal. Just another of many examples.

Good comment Dennis!  There was a very neat point you brought up near the end I hadn't considered before. 

"Games not needing stories is also not what your piece is really about. It's about how you feel on the subject."

No, the article really was about games not needing stories.  Obviously, it incorporates my own feelings, and mentioned that stories shouldn't be such a big focus of reviews, but you went a bit overboard in your interpretation there.

There's nothing wrong with writing about a story that accompanies the game, as long as people recognize its true nature in the video game medium. 

Mark, I think I got mostly what you were getting into with it. As I said, I totally agree a great game didn't need a story even if I totally like a good story told through one when done well. I mostly was just making the point I didn't feel it necessary and it possibly detracts from the point you seemed to be making of focusing on making sure the foundation of any game, the game element and those rules and controls, before going too far on the things being built around it. I feel once you started taking it into the territory the latter half of the article ventured it became less an agrument about priorities in game design and more an set-up to attack people for valuing something you don't as much as they did. Whether it be storytelling, art style, sound design, UI, presentation, or core game design, there is a lot of the same game out there and few true gems that stand out as different. Story is only one symptom of that problem.

But that's also the nature of entertainment media in general. You can hop into a forum of music, television, book and movie fans and hear the same complaint of those other media. I'm not sitting on any figures at the moment, but I would find it reasonable to think video games are on the lower end of products released in a year of entertianment media. It's an unfortunate result of trying to of making something original that stands out and making something that the people controlling the purse strings feel comfortable is familiar enough for people to flock to and spend money to recoup production costs. I don't know how you fix that. I don't run a business. But I think a lot of the problem - not all but much of it - lies there regardless of what we on the outside may argue amongst ourselves about. Maybe it's my cynicism but I often feel sales figures move business decisions a lot more critical discussion.