How important is writing for games?
I am trying to create a game that has a small plot (maybe more of a theme). The plot just describes why the characters are fighting each other. Other than that I have not fleshed out the story.
How important would it be to flesh out the story/characters for the game? Would it make the game more immersive?
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Stories can make the game very much more immersive.
That said, it depends on the game. We don't have to know a back story in order to play Battleship, or fight zombies, or shoot bad guys on one side of a war, really. I don't need a backstory to play Monopoly.
But games that take off from fantasy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons (before any electronic assistance) are driven very much by the back story of each character.
So yes, a good backstory can make the game more fun, the player is making the world safe for children and puppies and young love. You raise the emotional stakes and increase the impact of winning or losing.
Without the stories and imagination, D&D is just another very long form of Yahtzee. All you revel in is the luck of rolling 20, or the bad luck of rolling a 1, and the mechanical increases or reductions of "points" that mean nothing. It would be boring, too long, and nobody would play.
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The logical answer is: IT DEPENDS.
Is it a platformer? Is it an RPG? Is it a shooter? Is it a big game like a AAA game, or just some test game for school or something?
Truth be told, if you are not required to know about the story to play or enjoy the game, even some of the most cliche stories might work, or even no story at all!
A game is art, the first thing to consider is to make it more enjoyable for most people to play it, then think of a story to SAY something, not just be there in the background. If you have a small game with great mechanics and some interesting story (please note: not an epic story necessarily), more people will love it an crave for more, if not, maybe is time to go back to the whiteboard.
Cheers mate, and good luck!
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Some roles writing can play in your game:
Story as enjoyable content - this is story as one of the "main dishes" of your game, along with gameplay, creativity, etc. - part of what makes the game enjoyable is just watching / listening to / reading the story parts. Final Fantasy does this a lot, but the story has to be good, and works better when the music, voice, visuals etc. of those story parts are also very good. Story can be a reward in your game, something players seek.
Improving immersion - Often goes with the previous, but here it's about making the player engaged in the world and it's characters. But you can have good immersion without strong explicit "story" segments (other things that help: a believable, coherent world, memorable events, a feeling that actions have consequences; but also a lot of small details in the world: signs, dialogue, books to read, etc.), or storytelling segments without strong immersion (Ace Attorney comes to mind).
Giving something to discover - just like some genres of games can have a lot of places to explore, or a lot of items to collect, they can have a lot of books to read or NPCs to talk to. This is especially if "exploration" is something you want to be in your game; games that have more of an open structure, RPGs, etc. It's one way of adding immersion.
Making the game more understandable - this is almost more UX / Game Design than writing, but having good names, good taglines, one-line-summaries of various characters, places, etc. can make the game easier to navigate for players.
Giving the player feedback on his actions - if he feels other characters noticed what he did, if they seem impressed by his actions, or judge his choices, this will increase immersion and make him understand the game rules better.
Note that like "fun", "immersion" is a bit of an emergent property of a game, that can happen for different reasons, and gameplay is usually more important than story for that (though good graphics, writing, animation, etc. can turn a boring hack-n-slash into the exploration of a living world). Minecraft is an example of an extremely immersive game with no (game-provided) story or writing. And Angry Birds is a good game that doesn't particularly try to be immersive.
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Excellent writing is one of the primary selling points of some games - but it is by no means necessary. It can even be counterproductive in some situations.
There has been research into what aspects of video games players enjoy the most. One model is Quantic Foundry's Gamer Motivation model. Their research indicates that there are six primary aspects of a game that can draw a gamer in - and each individual player will be interested in some, but not all, of those aspects, depending on their own personalities.
The six motivations are categorized as "Action," "Social," "Mastery," "Acheivement," "Immersion," and "Creativity." Of these six motivations, players tend to be strongly interested in one or two of them.
And of these six motivations, the only one strongly tied to good writing is "Immersion!"
What this means for you is that you need to think about what type of game you're making. Read the article I linked and decide whether immersion should be one of the core focuses of your game or not. Quite frankly, if it isn't, then spending a lot of time on your game's story is a waste and can even potentially drive away the kind of players you want to target. There are in fact gamers out there who find stories to be annoying and want to get straight to the action!
I posted these examples in a comment, but I'll elaborate on them here. Three games with excellent writing are The Beginner's Guide, Undertale, and Bastion. To be maybe a little too honest, all three of these games get me to cry every time I play them because their stories are so powerful. However, this comes at a cost:
- The Beginner's Guide is a walking simulator, meaning that there is no actual gameplay - you walk through levels while the story is narrated to you, but you have no control over what happens, and there are virtually no puzzles to solve or challenges to overcome.
- Undertale does have gameplay. However, one of the very valid criticisms levied against Undertale is that there are long stretches where you're walking around while story is dumped on you, and there's not much to do except slowly walk towards the next area.
- Bastion has relatively weak gameplay (compared to other games as well-received as it). There's not much to it besides fighting mobs of enemies - few puzzles to solve, and most of the enemies start feeling the same after a while.
All three of these games have been received well, but they sacrifice keeping the player in intense action in order to tell a powerful story. This appeals to some players and pushes others away.
In contrast, Thumper, Sonic Mania, and Beat Hazard are three games that effectively do not have stories. In exchange, they drop the player into the action of gameplay almost immediately and have few moments in which the action lets up. This will appeal to a different type of gamer.
In conclusion, you need to decide which type of game you want to make, then decide which aspects of the game need to be focused on the most. Even if you are willing to polish every aspect of your game completely, telling a story almost requires you to take the player out of the action from time to time, which will push some types of players away. There's a tradeoff to be made, and it's important to make a conscious decision where you want your game to fall on that spectrum.
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