Stories that can ONLY work as a video game

[TheDorkyDane]

There is something about story telling.

There are some stories that only works for books, but doesn't work as movies.
Other stories, works as movies but do not work as a book.

Simply due to the differences of the medium. Books are a written medium, allowing you to enter thoughts and feelings of a character. Movies are a visual medium where you can use camera ankle, lightning and music to get across different points and emotions.

Video games, the mysterious third medium... A medium of interaction!

There is a joke going around, that there are no good video game movies. Probably due to the nature of many video games that they tell MASSIVE expansive stories, and to fit all that into a movie you have to cut 60 hours content and stories down to two hours.

There are other factors as well. There are games out there that truly take advantage of the medium, the fact they are a game and thusly tell unique stories only possible because they are games.

I think one obvious example of this is a game called. "nine hours, nine persons, nine doors, the nonenary games."

This game has a plot a bit similar to saw, you as a main character alongside eight other people making nine total is caught in "The nonary games." a game of life and death, where you enter rooms, solve riddles and if you manage to do it in time you get to survive, how-ever as tensions rises the characters turn on each other and no matter what you do, you are going to die.
How-ever! When you die, you are returned to the beginning of the game, only this time... not only the player but the main character you control REMEMBERS what happened in the previous time line, so you can actually use the knowledge you gained in the first time line to change things in the second time line.
You can then jump and skip through time lines, often needing the knowledge you only get in one time line to unlock another one. The smart thing about this one is that suddenly the player and the character you play as is on the same page.
Of course you as a player is going to remember what happened before, how-ever that the character you play as acknowledges this is very unique to this game series.

Another and COMPLETELY different example is the first "Bioshock." game.

I feel like, the big twist and reveal we all remember in this game, only works BECAUSE it is a first person perspective you play as.
The entire game, becomes about the illusion of choice. Which is great, because that is what most linear games are all about, giving you the illusion of choice.
Of course the further we move into game development, the more such games as Far Cry and Red dead redemption will attempt to give the players actual choice... How-ever, even games that offer us actual choice, it will still only be a set number of choices and thusly it will still only be an illusion of freedom.
That is the games job though, create the illusion so we believe we have a choice and is a part of the story. Bioshock acknowledges this aspect of gaming itself and completely goes. "You you thought you had a choice in any of this? Pff, the moment you put in this disc, the story was only going to go one way stupid."
I really feel like this big twist would not have worked nearly as well on a movie, it worked because you played AS this character, you saw the world THROUGH his eyes, you shot all the big daddies, you think you are the one controlling the game when really you never were.

Third and last example.

Journey.

Journey to me... is the game coming closest to feel like a classical symphony.
It throws out any ideas and notions of dialogue we have come to depend on in books and movies, and has made their way from movies to the games, and instead it is about exploration and how you interact with this game.
The game has a plot... kind of. But the plot is told through your senses and how you explore.
Perhaps this could work as an art animated movie, all though I feel like if you didn't control the character and felt its struggle as it slows down and gets weaker and weaker in the snow, a lot of the impact would be lost.


So... You guys has any other completely different games you think only works exactly because they were games?

I felt tempted to talk about "Steins gate." as well, which is a funny piece of work to me because the first thing you realise is that you are seeing this world through the world of an unreliable narrator. The main characters narration is absolutely unreliable, so you will never be able to tell what is real
How-ever as it happens, that game is more like a visual novel... and it has an anime, and that anime is quite good. I will stay say the game has the edge because we see the event THROUGH mr mad scientists eyes, and you will never know if it's true or inside his own head. While in the anime, it is a third person perspective so we can assume everything is true.

I am sure there are other games out there I know nothing about that takes this entire concept to very interesting levels which could only be reached because it was a game.

[Nekid Coboy]

That's ok, English is not my native language too My message is basically reword what isturbo1984 and JackofTears said. My addition is that any game has a basic story. The way(reeding, playing, watching) this story had been depicted creates it's own uniqueness. So, to the topic question "Stories that can ONLY work as a video game" - I don't think there are any, because all major mediums are incomparable.

[Merlin]

That is a really good one! That really is a game that requires you to act... or not act.

Have you tried just standing still in front of the two doors? Just... Don't move at all. That voice will grow increasingly frustrated until the game "Crashes" and he just goes. "WHAT DID YOU DO?!?!"

Love trolling you, british voice in my head.

exactly. It makes you try to really search to see how the game will react to what you do. I got the closet ending.

[Dub-Z]

I would agree with Stanley Parable and Journey.

I guess I could make a case for Chrono Trigger. Although choose your own adventure exists, I think the idea of multiple endings and story directions accessible through re-reading, and after having acquired a higher reading comprehension level, would be difficult to do and make enjoyable in a book (or film), even if time travel is a long established concept.

But I also agree with Nekid's idea. Someone could probably make a case for any game.

[pxfbird]

100% agree. It seems any video games turned into anything else that have actually been good have been done by fans. Or at least those that take the time to familiarize themselves with the source material.

[JackofTears]

Every medium has its strengths and weaknesses, every medium has stories best told in its form and no other because they were designed to be told in that form.

[MadMummy76]

I disagree, every story can be told on any medium. Just because books describe emotions in words, and movies show emotions by actors acting them out doesn't mean the same story can't be portrayed trough either one of those.

The only thing that prevents some stories from becoming anything else than books is that it would be prohibitively expensive to bring them to a movie screen. But that's a practicality issue, not a fundamental issue of media.

There were numerous movies / tv series which used your described method of repeating time periods.

The reason Videogames fail as movies often is not the ah so expansive stories. Most games can be condensed into 2 hours easily. The reason they fail is because most videogames have very shallow and uninteresting premises. What makes games interesting is being interactive. You can't transfer that to the movie screen, therefore you're left with the shallow run of the mill story. That's not enough for a movie, but perfectly fine for a game.

As for the Bioshock games, I think that's a fine example of utterly bad storytelling. The story is deliberately made vague, information is deliberately withheld throughout the entire game just for the sake of the big twist reveal. I fucking hate it when the entire game is slave to the one big reveal at the end. You can't base an entire story on a twist like that. But despite that there is no reason whatsoever why you couldn't tell the same story in book form or on a movie screen. In fact there are many movies that used the same cheap tactic of deliberately keeping the audience in the dark to set up for a big reveal at the end. And unfortunately for them my brain immediately puts together 1+1 and I see the deception and I see a dozen plotholes where the twist should've come out if not for the deliberate deception on part of the writers.

The only way such a reveal actually works if it's not everything hinges on it. And you don't see a house of cards when it is revealed. Instead you say, oh fuck it really works, there were no points in the story that would've revealed that, if this wasn't told exactly like the way it was told with the deliberately omitted details. And as such the only game where this kind of twist works is system shock II. Bioshock games are just trying to plagiarize it and badly.

The question that needs to be asked when writing a story with a twist is this: If you removed the twist would the story fall apart or would it work regardless? If the answer is the first, then it is a shit story, go back to the drawing board. And bioware infinite definitely wouldn't work without the twist, everything hinges on that, every scene is carefully crafted to hide it and set up for it. And that's exactly why I hate it.

[Dub-Z]

That was my first though as well.

[TheDorkyDane]

Any product is a way you consume it; the book you reed, the movie you watch, the game you play, the story you listen. Any of them have a core plot which can be simply described with words on paper(even tetris or pong), everything else is a process of consumption which calls for special presentation methodology and tricks, unique for each one of them. That is the way you're comprehend the vibe of the product. You can't describe the sound by words and get the same feel. You can't recreate the feel of gameplay by presenting uninteractive moving pictures. Or feel of concussion by illustration of comic strip. At the end, complete story is the feel and experience what remains in you're head.
So, my thesis is quite simple - original story can only work in original method of presentation. Reproduction in any other way is creating a completley new product and expirience.
In addition, wellness of reproduction of a story depends only on actual quality of the execution. I believe that even assembling of Rubik's cube can be decently recreated in any over forman with enough abstraction and fantasy.

I... I'm sorry dude...

That looks like a lot of word salad in my eyes... I don't know if it is because English is not my native language but.... That didn't make any sense to me... I am confused.

[TheDorkyDane]

tl;dr.

I like the Stanley Parable

That is a really good one! That really is a game that requires you to act... or not act.

Have you tried just standing still in front of the two doors? Just... Don't move at all. That voice will grow increasingly frustrated until the game "Crashes" and he just goes. "WHAT DID YOU DO?!?!"

Love trolling you, british voice in my head.

[isturbo1984]

Yep. That's kinda what happens when you have a director and a bunch of actors who never played the source material making a movie adaptation. the idea is insane to me. Almost 100% of the staff on a movie adaptation reads the book or watches the play for the source material. Video games though... can't be bothered with it, lol.

[Merlin]

tl;dr.

I like the Stanley Parable

[Nekid Coboy]

Any product is a way you consume it; the book you reed, the movie you watch, the game you play, the story you listen. Any of them have a core plot which can be simply described with words on paper(even tetris or pong), everything else is a process of consumption which calls for special presentation methodology and tricks, unique for each one of them. That is the way you're comprehend the vibe of the product. You can't describe the sound by words and get the same feel. You can't recreate the feel of gameplay by presenting uninteractive moving pictures. Or feel of concussion by illustration of comic strip. At the end, complete story is the feel and experience what remains in you're head.
So, my thesis is quite simple - original story can only work in original method of presentation. Reproduction in any other way is creating a completley new product and expirience.
In addition, wellness of reproduction of a story depends only on actual quality of the execution. I believe that even assembling of Rubik's cube can be decently recreated in any over forman with enough abstraction and fantasy.

[pxfbird]

Maybe the title should have been "that only work WELL as video games." Unfortunately, many video game stories have not translated well as another medium because they just were not done correctly.

[isturbo1984]

I think when it comes to basic story-telling, all mediums work. But some work better than others. I don't think there are any that can only work in one medium. as is the nature of story-telling, how that story is told is experimental and subjective. I do not need to literally jump on the heads of turtles in a video game in order to tell a simplistic story of how a plumber saved a princess. Imo, your Zero Escape and Journey modes are bad examples, especially considering one of them has a "novel mode."