This article is so full of incendiary bullshit, I'm surprised it even got on the front page.
Some of the most critically acclaimed games, as well as highest selling games, have stories.
For example: Grand Theft Auto 3. Final Fantasy VII.
Ico. Metal Gear Solid. Arkham Asylum. Mass Effect. Dragon Age. Dark Souls. Demon Souls. Starcraft. Starcraft II.
Modern Warfare. World of Warcraft.
Do you know what else made these games stand out? Art direction.
Some of the most critically acclaimed games, as well as highest selling games, have stories.
He's not saying games don't have stories, of course they do, he's saying that some game designers get distracted from making good mechanics, which I agree, is a huge mistake. Mechanics is the core of the medium, and shouldn't be put second on the list.
Valve gets that. Their attention and talent put into storytelling and art direction is top-notch, yet that has never distracted them from making sure their mechanics are excellent.
Mechanics are not the core of the medium. It can be for some games but the medium is much wider than that. How do you explain games that have basically no mechanics at all? I'm talking about simple point and click games like Myst. There are no significant mechanics there, but there can be a great story, and great visuals to keep you interested.
What about games like Minecraft? I don't know if it's possible to fuse a high quality 3D engine with less amounts of artist generated content and still have a great game.
Challenge assumptions.
But if anyone can do it, Carmack can. (and that was an assumption, but oh well).
Yes, these games made it big and were good, but did they really push boundaries and invent new styles of play? No, they are just a story with an engine - the OP is talking about JC going off and doing something "different."
Grand Theft Auto 3? The grand-daddy of open-world gameplay? It even gave birth to an entire genre of clones.
World of Warcraft? Didn't invent a new style of play? They took Evercrack and distilled it into pure, fine weapons-grade MMORPGing!
Metal Gear Solid? Didn't have an incredibly unique (and much cloned, and much parodied) style of play? Whose story and art direction is so famous that today we have people running around conventions with big exclamation marks over their heads?
Ditto Mass Effect - whose conversational mechanics practically redefined how all games do it today?
Arkham Asylum? Whose unprecedented combination of unique art style, stealth mechanics, pitch-perfect voice acting, investigative gameplay, and open-world format was widely lauded by both players and critics?
Oh yeah, those games. I'm sure the stories were not at all core to the games' success. It's all the mechanics, I'm sure.
Fortunately, I haven't played a single game you mentioned. So I can be serious and totally off base at the same time. However, I have played games by JC and they are more of the same. Hoping his next gig isn't Rage++, but something new
It's also full of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. I had to reread every other sentence to get the gist of it. If the content was gold I could probably overlook that, but it's not. It's basically a carelessly scrawled rant.
As a linguistics student, I have a good deal of sympathy for people using a secondary language-- but I don't think this author even proofread his post before submitting it.
That hurts to read. I enjoyed Deus Ex - a lot - but the narrative there is the stuff of cheap sci-fi paperbacks. It's just that such a narrative is more enjoyable when you get to actually walk around the world it's portraying.
Some of the most critically acclaimed games, as well as highest selling games, have stories.
For example: Grand Theft Auto 3. Final Fantasy VII. Ico. Metal Gear Solid. Arkham Asylum. Mass Effect. Dragon Age. Dark Souls. Demon Souls. Starcraft. Starcraft II. Modern Warfare. World of Warcraft.
Do you know what else made these games stand out? Art direction.
Give me a break.