The famously outspoken Denis Dyack emerged at the Develop conference in Brighton to talk about one of his favorite subjects: narrative in games. The Silicon Knights founder and president discussed the similarity between the gaming medium and the film medium.
"Gameplay is not everything," said the creator of Too Human, according to Gamasutra. "If you look at the most popular games today, they are far more narrative-focused. If games are to follow the trajectory of films, then the dominance of gameplay will diminish in place of an increased focus and importance on gaming’s stories and the ways in which they are told."
Dyack went on to say how gaming is a mosaic of different artistic elements, and not just a reflection of gameplay. "It’s an unpopular viewpoint," he said. "But I don’t believe that gameplay is the most important aspect to games. I have a theory: that engagement is greater than or equal to art plus story plus gameplay plus audio plus technology. It’s all of these things combined, and one is not more important than another."
"While I think that narrative is going to become more and more dominant, possibly superseding gameplay, narrative is not the be all and end all," he added. "You can have 100-year-old films where narrative is very light and they are still enjoyable. However, I think we will move towards a place where games can be a success because of more than just their gameplay, because of their music, their internal architecture and so on."
With all due respect to Dyack, we still think that gameplay is the most important aspect of games; it's what gives games their unique interactive properties and can really carry a game even if other aspects are lacking. Narrative is all well and good, but not enough games make it a part of the interactive experience, and frankly if games are being used for the sole purpose of telling a linear story, then something like film or television is a much easier medium to work with.
1 Comments
July 16, 2009
I need good gameplay above all else, including graphics. However, I also need a good storyline to keep me entertained. Max Payne is a good example of both gameplay and story balance that I really enjoyed.