I was encouraged to start a thread in this forum regarding something I posted in the Betsy thread in the Sexy Game forum. I was originally going to let the topic go since I had said all I needed to say regarding the topic but since then I got a few pm's regarding it so the interest seemed to be there. I will post my thoughts here and you can agree or disagree with me as you will.
During a conversation about a game, a comment was made that the game we were discussing was not a "meet, say nice things, and have sex" type of game and that it was a good thing. Now the author that was being praised for not making "meet, say nice things, and have sex" type of game has a LOT of games that would be considered to be "meet, say nice things, and have sex" type games on his game development resume. In fact, he has a lot of what I consider to be VERY GOOD games that happen to be "meet, say nice things, and have sex" type of games. Which got me thinking, does a good game require a good story? In addition, does a game that has a good story automatically make it a good game?
I started thinking of other games. The games I thought of were considered to be high quality games due to their high quality stories. I don't dispute these were well crafted stories by talented writers. When I thought of these games though I noticed that the story actually hindered the game. The main character was often dragged through the game in a very linear fashion with little choice on the outcome. Sometimes the player wasn't even the main character, but a side character in someone else's game. The story revolved around the player helping someone else out and the criteria for "winning the game" was for that other character to complete their goals. The stories were great but in order to tell those stories the developers had to severely restrict what the player could do in the game.
Right now I'll stop here and explain what I define as a good game. I know tastes vary and judging art can be very subjective, but there are some objective things that define a medium that can be examined. For most stories, plots and themes can be broken down and analyzed, use of characters and so on and so forth. For me the defining quality of a game is that it can be played. There is some level of choice and some level of consequence for those choices. This goes for all games, not just video games. Even games of pure chance that depend on dice rolls will have some kind of activity before or after the dice rolls, such as betting, to give you some amount of agency over the game. So for me a good game requires a large amount of player participation and some amount of player agency, or having the player able to make decisions on the outcome (or failing that, having agency over the consequences of the outcome). So even in a game of Craps when the outcome is totally determined by the random roll of the dice, you can still decide how much you bet and have some control over the consequences, be them good or bad.
For me player agency is a fundamental part of any game and an important metric for how it is judged as being good or bad. I look at how much I can affect the outcome of the game and my experience while playing the game. But now we narrow down our focus to video games. Video games combine game with an interactive experience. That experience is designed to make the player feel something. In the broad sense this feeling is enjoyment, but the enjoyment is often because the player is simulating something he wants to be or wants to do. In a first person shooter, I want to be an unstoppable soldier, mowing down waves of enemy combatants. However, if the game is too easy, I don't get that feeling because I am not challenged to do this. If it is too hard, I get frustrated and I again don't get that feeling (or have to work extremely hard to get that feeling then I have to assess if the amount of work put in is worth that feeling). But if the challenge is just right I get that feeling. I am making choices in the game. I am prioritizing targets, choosing when to use my resources like grenades, and basically living my action hero fantasy from the game play. If the game has cut scenes then great, but it is the game play that is making me feel what I want to feel.
Almost any piece of entertainment is designed to make you feel something. Comedies are designed to make you laugh. Tragedies are designed to make you cry. Most entertainment uses stories to make you feel these things. You can think of the story as the delivery package for the emotion. The thing is most forms of entertainment don't have what video games have. That something is direct interaction with the consumer of the entertainment. The player is an active participant, not a passive observer. You can use the interaction between the player and the game to fulfill what a story normally does. This brings me to my central point...
A good story does not make a good game.
Like I said above, games are fundamentally interactive. I play a game to interact with it. If I want a good story I read a book or watch a movie. So even if I have the best story in the world, if I make a movie and use narration the whole movie and I don't convey what I want to convey in that visual medium, I have a bad movie. I still have a great story, but I have a bad movie.
So what I think designers should focus on when making a game is deciding on what emotion they want their players to feel. For those of us who enjoy erotic games, it is often a sexual fantasy. We want to corrupt the good girl, go on a date with a hot girl where anything is possible, seduce the boss, seduce our secretary, seduce the neighbor's wife and so on and so forth. So does this mean if you forgo the story and just cram your game with as much nudity and sex as possible? Absolutely not. Like the first person shooter, there is no fun if there is no challenge. You still have to provide the player with a challenge. In fact, providing a challenge is even more important without a story.
Also I am not saying that writing is not important. Writing is VERY important. Bad writing is a definite deal breaker for me in games. It is just that writing doesn't have to be for a story. It could be to make characters that the player can interact with. Characters that will make the player feel what the author wants them to feel without dragging them through a linear narrative.
I will give you an example of what I mean. It is the most overused example I give in all my threads, but I'll use it anyway. The example is Date Ariane. It has absolutely no plot but it has a very well written main character and the entire game is interacting with that character. The game is fun and I fulfill my fantasy of going on a date with a fun, sexy, confident woman where anything could happen. Great game and no story. And I never feel like I am being dragged through the story like I'm on a bus tour, with someone at the front of the bus holding a megaphone pointing out the scenery along the way.
I give an example of a game with no story, but that doesn't mean that I don't want story in games. It is not necessary, but it can elevate games. Just make sure that the story does not get in the way of the game. I want to play a game. Sometimes the story will need to take a back seat to that. At times it may hurt to dial back the story for the game. It is like when a director of a movie has to cut their favorite scene because it interferes with the pacing of the movie and doesn't add anything to the overall narrative. Sometimes you have to do it though.
If you want an example of a game that has a story and fulfills all my criteria for being a good game I would give Brad's Erotic Week. The game has a complex story and it is all done through interaction with the characters. The story does not interfere with the game at all. I have a multitude of choices to make in the game and the story does not prevent me from making them. I know BEW is is an incredibly ambitious project, but I would love to see smaller games that are inspired by BEW to become a trend.
For those of you out there making free games for all of us to enjoy, I say thank you. Also, make the games you want to make. But if you make the game you want to make and someone tries to make you feel inferior by saying "it's just a meet and fuck game", don't let it affect you. Don't force story into games that don't need it and don't make your games into the erotic game version of "Oscar Bait" where you make something that superficially tries to think of itself as elevated above all those "meet and fuck" games out there. A well made "meet and fuck" game is a well made game period and a bad "meet and fuck" game is similarly a bad game. They are not all bad games by default. Authors of the linear story driven game may not realize that their game may not be as superior to yours as they think.