AZNCHIPMUNK'S PROFILE

Yeah, that's definitely Tal Tal Mountains from one of my favorite games.

post=151323
Describing what you are doing is not a story, at least, as far as game playing goes.

I'd say that in those games, the amount of story is comparable to the amount of gameplay in visual novels.

post=151321
I thought a story had to fulfill the basic functions of being a narrative.

A narrative is a story. A story doesn't have to be a narrative.

post=151302
Academics have a hard enough time defining "game" and "fun", so I suppose it is open to interpretation.

As for stories, they only have "a lot to do with it" if it is an RPG. The lack of a story in Tetris or Tron or Chess or Poker or Tag doesn't really negatively impact those games.

Story: Blocks are falling.
You are playing chess with chess pieces.
You are running after someone.

This is still a story in it's most basic form. There's no plot but there is still some sort of idea or premise that fuels the game.

Story = stuff happens.

post=151268
Stories have nothing to do with being a good game-maker because, if a developer can't write a story, they can simply not focus on it and just have something functional like "save the Princess". Their game will still be good if the mechanics are fun.

Mario would be the obvious example of this. The story is always the same, but the games are good because they have awesome mechanics.

EDIT:

Basically, what I am saying is that you'll never be a good game-maker if you can't create "fun" gameplay. Breaking down what makes something "fun" is pointless because it is a very person-to-person thing, but we do have to recognise that "fun" gameplay is magnitudes more important than an OST or a custom grass tile.

This is not so.
It's pretty undeniable that The Way and ABL are two of the most popular RPGMaker creations, no? Probably even the most popular, or close to being so.

Both games are rather dull in terms of gameplay. The Way has very tedious battles that are exactly the same, over and over again. Literally. You heal after every battle so you just use the same strategy every time... hundreds and hundreds of times to win. No one plays The Way for its gameplay. People play it for the story. The developer even later added modes to skip past the gameplay mechanics to the point where you can skip all the battles and puzzles and whatnot, but it still has the core ideas that make it a "game." And the same idea goes for ABL.

I wouldn't say LunC or Lys could never be "good" game-makers. I'm saying that the only part of being a good game-maker is not just making "fun" gameplay and that yes, stories do have a lot to do with it. If you don't have one it doesn't mean the game can't be "fun" (and I don't think Darken was saying that either) and some games would even be better off without a story. But some games would be better off without gameplay either.

Well, of course, there has to be a tiny bit of gameplay for it to be a game and a tiny bit of story to have anything like a setting, characters, premise, text, etc.

While you can say that gameplay is omnipresent and required within games, a story is as well. Your game can literally be about nothing... your story will just be about nothing as well. There is always a basic fragment of story, as there is always a basic fragment of gameplay.

Which means... You can't break a game down into a single core component. A game is comprised of many, many ideas and concepts and things, and whichever is most important corresponds to the vision of the creator.