STORYLINE VS GAMEPLAY

I usually work out the mechanics first. I find it really easy to come up with a story, but then get discouraged when there is no game for it. Well, most of my games end up being arcade style or having very little story at all. Most of the story ends up being who the characters are, and then the game shows them in situations that are not really explained in any story...but then the story becomes just that those characters were in those situations.

I'd rather play a game with amazing gameplay rather than storyline.
I'll read a book for a good story, I'll play a game for good gameplay. Because I can't stomach a game's story if the actual game itself sucks or is boring.

Then again, SquareEnix the user seems like a troll joke account, because like LockeZ has pointed out it's odd how close his beliefs actually reflect that of Square Enix the company and the games they make.
(Not saying all SquareEnix games suck with gameplay, that'd be a lie)

It all matters on the game you're trying to create.
If you're going for a heavy interactive storyline? Great.
If you're going to save the princess with amazing gameplay? Great.
Gonna mix those two up? Great.
Kay, I'm done feeding the trolls :D

author=Ocean

I'll read a book for a good story

Why does this always get brought up in these dumb topics, it doesn't make sense! There are many ways to transmit and depict stories, good stories are not the exclusive realm of books.

Haha, I know! It's just if gameplay were to suffer to tell me a story, I'd rather just read a story without gameplay or play a game with little story. Like Left 4 Dead for example, its story is so minimal there barely is one, and the game is awesome. If they tried to shove too much story down my throat in that game, yeah I'd still enjoy it but it'd be like wtf, who cares I wanna kill zombies!

When I sit down to play a game I'm usually not there for the story, I wanna fight and kill shit.(any shooter really) And if I want to focus heavily on nothing but a good story, I'd get me a book or a comic. That's why I said that, it would be ideal for me personally.

Imo it really depends on the kind of game. I can spend countless words on how in some cases good gameplay overrides a good story, and... visa versa. But I won't.

Go try "To the moon." (think it's made with RMK XP)A game with basically no gameplay, but it's so well written, that it actually kept me playing until I finished the game in one run, even though I started the game at 1 am, and I had to get up early the next day. Game is short though, about 5 hours long, but still.

It just really depends on your focus, what you want to do. So yeah, the importance gameplay/story depends on your game, and your audience ;)

I think the concept of 'storyline vs gameplay' may be something of a false dichotomy as there is no reason to keep the two separated into 'story segments' and 'gameplay segments'. In fact, games generally turn out much better when the two are combined to compliment each other.

A thing to keep in mind that even big-name developers seem to often forget is video games as an artform are not the same as movies, plays, or books (not that any of these things are the same as each other either of course) in that the sense of 'touch' and the interactions a player makes through it is the primary strength of video games while 'hearing' and 'sight' are secondary. While a few cutscenes are fine, loading a game to the brim with them or making excessively lengthy ones (ex: Xenosaga) is not a good way to handle storytelling in video games regardless of the quality of the writing as it takes control away from the player.

Instead, there are various ways to tell the story and develop characters through gameplay, especially in RPG's. These include:

1) Make flavor text both plentiful and meaningful. Comments which characters make either to themselves or to each other when observing things around the environment (pots, bookshelves, dressers, oddly-shaped rocks, statues, etc) can go a long way towards passively shaping a character's personality and telling players about the general state of relationships between party members. Many high-quality games do this, such as Earthbound, most entries in the Dragon Quest series, and even various RPG Maker games such as Star Stealing Prince.

2) Make puzzles meaningful whenever possible. Even a simple block-pushing puzzle can work to flesh out the history behind a place or a world. For example, let's say there is an ancient temple from a civilization which originally worshiped four gods, but which eventually praised one over the other three. In such a place, you could have statues representing each of the gods (examining each statue informs the player of the name of each god) along with pushable torches representing the worshipers and a tablet somewhere with a short hint such as "We foolishly worshiped the Four equally before seeing the supremacy of Vilna"; the solution would be to move the torches to surround the statue representing 'Vilna', which in turn will cause a door to open and the statues of the other three gods to fall apart to represent their 'death'. La Mulana is a fantastic example of how to tell a story via puzzles and clues as many puzzles rely heavily upon understanding the basic backstory and history of the ruins in order to solve them.

3) Use the environment itself to tell the story. You don't need to spell everything out for players in cutscenes, they can piece things together themselves with a sentence or two from a random NPC in town and objects they see in their environment. Dark Souls is an especially good example of this with the area 'New Londo Ruins' being particularly memorable; early in the ruins an NPC can be found who offhandedly mentions how they citizens of New Londo were used as sacrifices, but it isn't until the player goes deeper into the ruins that he/she sees the piles of corpses with an especially large pile in front of the barred-off city gate. In instances such as this, the player doesn't need to have an NPC go into a lengthy discussion of the history of a place nor do the characters need to go into a long discussion about how 'horrible' everything is, the player can see the 'story' behind a place simply by looking around without breaking gameplay

4) Combat itself can be used to tell a story, both via character skills and enemies. Most games do this on at least a basic level, such as by putting zombies in a necromancer's castle or alligators and slimes in a sewer area. Bosses especially can be used for this; if a boss gains his power through a relic, allow players to attack or otherwise seal the relic in-combat to reduce the boss's strength, if a boss has a split personality, have him/her use two 'opposing' types of abilities (ex: light/dark spells) or outright switch between two different forms, etc. However, even the characters in the party themselves can be used to passively tell the story. Final Fantasy IV does this constantly to great effect; Rydia can use impressive magic, but she is incapable of casting Fire until she overcomes her fear, Edward is a coward so he automatically hides in combat when low on health, Cecil desires to become a protector so (unless a player is particularly persistent) he defeats his clone by not attacking at all and instead guarding and healing, etc.

While it is still entirely possible to make a good game which places a heavy emphasis either on story or upon combat, I'd argue that the best course to take when making your game is not to ask "Which should I focus on more?", but rather to ask "How can I use gameplay to tell a story with these places and characters?".

If a game has a nice storyline, but shitty (or lack of) gameplay, I might as well be reading a book.

End of monkey.