Games Need More Artfully Story-Entwined Gameplay

Movie and Game writer Justin Marks has written an impassioned plea for the industry to concentrate more on artfully story-entwined gameplay, exploring what he thinks major titles are missing these days. "But for the most part, we as an industry are stuck in the same trap that GTA exemplifies. We value narratives in games, we understand their purpose and their necessity, and yet we have no idea how to parse them effectively into the game's interactive structure. As technology gets better, the weaknesses of poor story integration are more exposed."

What games need, Obviously

[Alzheimers]

It's pretty obvious to anyone with a Playstation 3 what games need:

More Cutscenes. [joystiq.com]

Re:How about artfully Gameplay-entwined stories?

[Cruciform]

Accidentally firing a gun in GTA definitely ruins the date. Michelle got pissed at me, called me a freak, and ran off.

The problem was that I couldn't actually put the damn thing away. For some reason the weapon switch stopped working, and I was walking around on the date with the gun out. I thought it might be a graphical glitch and pressed the fire button, but alas, I unloaded in the middle of the street.

Maybe I should have went to TW@ and ordered some little pills online.

No they don't

[Cathoderoytube]

Why would game developers bother with any sort of meaningful or halfway decent stories? Their core audience believes Naruto is masterful storytelling, and they've never read a book in their entire lives. With an audience like that you just need to give them the ability to call people noobs during gameplay, and they're happy as pigs in shit. Just look at the whole Halo series.

Re:How about artfully Gameplay-entwined stories?

[dintech]

but alas, I unloaded in the middle of the street.

This usually ruins most dates.

Re:Good comment

[drsquare]

When you boil it right down, Frodo's quest in The Lord of the Rings was a fedex quest.

And most of that was pages and pages of walking up and down: just like most MMOs.