When people thought about buying a game in the past, it would have needed a good story behind it for them to choose to part with their, or as is more likely their parents, hard earned cash. It was all very well and good that a game was visually appealing or that it had a solid multiplayer experience, but the story had to be there in order to make the sale. Today however the story side of gaming seems to have been made obsolete next to a new focus; mechanics. More often than not developers now brag about the new engine their game runs on, or how it allows you to do certain things that you’ve never been able to do before in order to make a sale.
It is not only the motives of some developers which have caused a change it what makes a “good game”, or at least one that will sell. Some gamers seem to simply have a different idea about what they want these days in terms of playability. There is nothing worse than hearing a gamer say the words “I just bought it because of the multiplayer”. While multiplayer is a fantastic feature of any gaming, particularly considering the openness it allows in the modern game with features such as online play, that alone would never in the past have sold a game. In some cases, games today are independently multiplayer with no story feature to them. A gamer then can hardly then be blamed for buying these types of games for the multiplayer alone, as that is the idea here. The fact that they don’t have a story and how strange that is compared to older games is something to come onto in a moment. In terms of gamers themselves buying games simply for the multiplayer features of them however is a new mentality which personally I find hard to understand.
The best example of this maybe is the Call of Duty series. While these games might not have the most dynamic, engaging and intricate story plots ever created, someone has gone ahead and worked out a campaign which allows gamers to follow a storyline none the less. The fact that some people will buy these games however and never even touch the campaign modes within them is a truly baffling idea. If you are going to spend your hard earned money on a game, which is a fair bit of hard earned money for big titles these days, then why on earth you would ignore its central plot? In all fairness, the Call of Duty series is heavily reliant on its multiplayer package these days in order to make its sales, and who can blame them for being that way if it is simply that easy. The element in all of this that does not make sense however is that developers who make a storyline in a modern game may never see it reach the eyes, ears and hands of the gamer who purchases the game anyway.
So are stories in games just not important anymore? Do people simply not care for the meanings behind games but instead the way that they play? From one side of the argument this may be seen to be true. There are numerous examples of games which are now pure multiplayer, priding themselves on the way that you play in order to make a sale. Often these games are first-person shooters or fighting games of the like which appeal to gamers because of the fancy new ways that you can kill people in. It would not be entirely unfair to say that it is not so much why you are killing people that matters anymore in gaming, but how you can kill them instead. In fact with the amount of mindless killing which modern games rely on these days, it is hardly surprising that there are concerns over the mental effects this has on people. At least in the past we knew why were making a kill before we pulled the trigger, and whether it mattered to us or not that reason was there in the story. I should quickly add that I don’t believe that violent video games will make us all into wild, mindless killers, but it was a good means of displaying the point which I was trying to make.
The other side of this argument about whether or not a story is important in a modern game would shout, scream and wail at the top its metaphorical voice that for the love of God yes of course it is! You don’t have to look far to see that some game developers blatantly do make the effort to produce the best storyline that they possibly can in their games. To give but a few examples of games which have really shown that there is still a lot of promise in this area of the industry in recent times; Assassins Creed, Heavy Rain, Skyrim, Hitman Absolution, the list goes on. Sure, it is true that you have to look a bit harder these days in order to find a game with a great storyline if that is what still matters to you, but it is very much there and the quality of these stories does not cease to amaze and improve with time. The great thing about the examples that have been listed here as well is that all of these offer dynamic mechanics which make their games a little bit different to what you would find in other games. The wonderful thing about this is that there is not a choice which must be made in modern games, between mechanics and story, but both elements can be achieved together to make something beautiful and captivating.
Perhaps then it is fairer to say not that story has become unimportant in the modern gaming industry, but rather that multiplayer features and new dynamic mechanics have simply become more important than they were in the past. At the end of the day, with constant technological and communicational advancements going on constantly in the world around the industry, it is hardly a surprise that this is the case. What is surprising and somewhat saddening is the fact that some gamers don’t seem to really care so much about storylines anymore and would rather spend their time just killing their friends and random strangers alike. I very much doubt if many gamers can deny that this is pretty fun too. To myself however, and I sincerely hope to many others as well, a good story is still what really sells a game.
