DAMN IT I WAS HOPING TO SEE DAN IRL XD

Best kind of games are those in which story is told through the mechanics. Bioshock, Brothers Tale of Two Sons, Antichamber, Spec Ops the Line are all example of games which stories are entirely driven by emcahnics and would be impossible without them. For instance when in Bioshock 1 you go through the game you pay no attention to the fact that it's linear and that you keep acomplishing mission objectives, because that's what we, as gamers, have been trained to do. But when the plot twist unfolds and it turns out that the linear nature of the game is actually a part of the plot and that you, as a protagonist, have been under mind control the entire time... The perspective shifts. Inocrporating story into mechanics makes it much more vivid, because you interact with it on personal level. Gameplay does not have to be disconnected from the plot. Ideally, the storytelling is a part of gameplay.

I loved when Dan asked what the thing was between Mike's head and body.

Thing is.... if a game has a sub par story but great mechanics, people will enjoy the hell out of it..... ...but if a game has a great story but lackluster mechanics, many people will force themselves to complete the game... they don't enjoy the game but they lie the story..... The same also goes for movies or books... A good cinematography or writing can complement a bad story than the other way around.... And just for the record... I mostly play games for their story!

I think it's not so much a problem. In fact, I think it's great! *We think and talk about videogames the same way we think and talk about real life!* What an amazing testament that is to the immersion! Consider it this way: *What did you do today?* You don't say "well I awoke, took a shower, brushed my teeth, put my pants on, put my shirt on..." etc. No, instead, you say something like "well I went shopping, had a bagel, and talked to Sarah." You ignore the things that happen every day, even if they're notable and you're completely paying attention during them. The same holds true for games: *What did you do in The Sims?* You wouldn't say "Well I ran the launcher, clicked play, waited for it to load, selected my save..." etc. No, you say something like "well my sim Marty started going out with an NPC, I put an addition onto their house, and there was a small fire but it was put out before it did too much damage." This even holds true for less real-life games like League of Legends or even Tetris. You don't talk about things people assume happened, but skip to the things that are more interesting. See what I mean?

Nah video games are actually about misogyny and racism. Trust me, I have a tumblr.

I would like to request more crossover videos with Extra Credits. These are two of my favorite KZfaq channels and getting to see different aspects of one topic discussed this way was really interesting.

i came in the hope to see Dan's face but despite not seeing his face it was so worth coming here because 3:11 - 3:16, that was so friggin' hilarious

Mechanics should always come before story, not even a question.

I don't understand how games can possible not be, by definition, about their mechanics. The mechanics are what define them as being games. If they didn't have mechanics, they'd not be games. If tetris didn't have mechanics, it'd be abstract art. If Last of Us didn't have mechanics, it'd be a movie.

'Do you think that the ways you can interact with a piece of media stop you thinking about it? Let us know by interacting with this piece of media in the following ways!' No but for srs I take your point that it's focusing on the way you navigate through the media that might limit your connection with it, not just interacting with it at all. Could this be why there are no really significant Choose Your Own Adventure books? Some of them might be popular, but what I mean is that a focus on how you navigate the media (like making choices in the book) rather than the content of it could be why Choose Your Own Adventures aren't as significant as Dickens or Shakespeare. I think a possible criticism would be that in deciding to apply or interact with a mechanic you have some idea of what it's going to do; you don't just use them blindly. Using them usually involves some kind of understanding of what's going to happen in the game world, like you know that if you use the sword swinging mechanic then it'll involve chopping that monster but it won't work on the human NPCs. So already you've got some understanding of the game world as being divided into acceptable and unacceptable targets. What you could say in reply to that though is that it only requires a narrow understanding of the game world, enough to know when certain mechanics are applicable or not, and by just focusing on the mechanics you still wouldn't get a full understanding of the whole work.

Dan's sped up talking is actually easier to follow and, at least seems to be, slower than Mike's normal way of talking in these videos. How in all hell....

Yes video games are most definitely about the mechanics. To say otherwise would be to agree with Jennifer Hepler and her desire for a "Press X to skip Gameplay" button in games (the harassment she received was disgusting)... Story driven content is the reward we get for successfully completing challenges/game mechanics and enable us to rest and get ready for the next challenge . Thats why they are games. without the mechanics we are just watching a movie. Even story games with just dialog options uses mechanics. In a away story content turns games in to Skinner Box styled operative conditioning. I would hazard that is why sandbox games are seeing a huge success while scripted event driven games while popular are not being as widely embraced.

There is one game I want to bring up about this topic: The Stanley Parable. The game, in case you don't know, is that you are controlling Stanley, a man whose job is to push buttons, around an office building. You navigate according to what the narrator tells you to do...or you don't. Throughout the game, you have a multitude of choices, and each one causes you to have a different "ending." The most common criticism of the game is that it's boring. Why is it boring? Because many gamers are agitated at the fact that the game has little game mechanic: you can walk, turn, and crouch. That's it. What people don't realize is that the game itself is a critique on game narrative. You may feel disconnected from the main character, Stanley, as he doesn't speak, and there are only two times in the game where you see what he looks like. However, recall that Stanley's job is to push buttons. That is basically what you are doing, right? You control Stanley's actions and choices, not him. YOU are Stanley. At least, that is my interpretation of the game. The point is that you definitely don't remember or relish the gameplay. What you do relish is the narrative. Not the story, per se, but definitely what happens to Stanley/you in the game.

Um excuse me, Mike, Dan, I'm a huge fan of both of you :). But seeing you guys come together out of nowhere is pretty out there. I feel like I got my internet all over my internet.

OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTT. I was not expecting an Extra Credits crossover! Damn, I'm so happy now hahahaha

There is so much disservice being done towards mechanics here. Saying "games are about mechanics" is NOT the equivalent of saying that "books are about the words" or "music is about the notes". Mechanics covers a very broad range of interactions, many of which are being ignored when mechanics are (unjustifiably) generalised as "jumping and shooting". A book's content is determined by the composition of words and how they form meanings, music is about the composition of notes to create a sense of melody and flow. A game's content is about the interaction between the player and the system to create a sense of gameplay. To say that "books are about words" and "music is about the notes" would ACTUALLY be more analogous to saying "games are about the buttons you press". To equate gameplay with simply pressing buttons is where people do a disservice to games. If books can tell a story VIA their words and music can create compositions VIA the notes, then would it not be equally fair to say that games create their gameplay VIA the player interactions? I mean, it's really not fair to simplify gameplay as "the thing you are doing", because if you do then you could equally simplify books to "the sentence you are reading". Gameplay is the whole experience of use interaction and it has a lasting/overarching effect, whether that be through successfully making a jump in Super Mario Bros (saving you a life that may come in useful later and preventing you needing to redo obstacles from before) or thinking about which materia you should level up in Final Fantasy VII. TLDR: Yes.

OMG ec AND ic doing a collab? My life is complete :3

Lol love the neck comment xD

So I am on Dan's side here because you see games like "Papers, Please" and "Dark Souls" are examples of how Mechanics as story telling is so important. In Dark Souls as you progress things get harder and as things get harder you need more souls until eventually you need so many, well how do you progress? You have a few options, jump in with other players to slowly grind away at gaining souls, grind your own, or my personal favorite.... enter the Red Eye Orb. The existence of Dark Wraiths and the option to be one of the games villains makes the weight the game places on you feel more meaningful, shouting in your face THIS GAME IS HARD while giving you the easy option was such a good choice. Meanwhile the story which was attached tells you that some fight, some become villains, and some.... well they give up. They just go hollow and stop moving sometimes. If I could find an MMO that could capture that I would love it.

"Privileging" mechanics is what makes good gameplay. Good gameplay is what makes good games. Mechanics are what makes the game and they come before anything else. The story of a video game is there to give context to what you are doing in the game's world, not to culturally enrich you or enlighten you in any way. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be games with good stories, but the story should still serve the GAMEplay in a video GAME. There are mediums besides video games that are all about storytelling, and people who have a large bias towards stories in entertainment should stick with those mediums. It's not the mechanics that interfere with a game's story, it's the story that tends to interfere with the gameplay. Don't forget what video games are actually about. PLAYING them.

Yes... Video GAMES are games. Interactive Video Media (Dear Esther, Coming Home and etc.) do not use mechanics. That makes them into something that isn't a game. However... Are interactive Video Media something that includes both video games and things such as Dear Esther? Yes. Interactive Video Media includes things such as; Mechanical interactive video games (Super Mario.), narrative interactive video media (Dear Esther, Gone Home.) and of course, mechanical/narrative interactive video games. Of course there are a lot of other iterations but do not add "Game" onto something that isn't. It's like saying that reading a book is a game. It isn't... However, playing chess is, even if the chess pieces have their own personalities and background stories.

Having watched this several times now, I think I better understand what you're saying. If you 'privilege mechanics' that means that you consider a game to be mostly 'about' it's mechanics, meaning that a game should focus on making it's game play interesting because a game having a message is not important. If you privilege mechanics, you don't care about the story/message that the game is purposely or accidentally suggesting; you can dismiss criticism of the game's story or message as "FFS, it's only a game" Thus, someone who "privileges mechanics" is ostensibly not interested in discussions about how a game projects positive or negative messages.

PBS Idea Channel and Extra Credits, are, in the literal sense of literally, literally my two favorite channels. Thanks guys!

Wait... did I miscount or were there three clips from Half Life?

I think it really depends on the player and the game. Some games are very dependent on their mechanics but when I'm playing an RPG I am VERY focused on WHY I am doing things.

Videogames should be about their mechanics, because it's those mechanics that set them apart from other mediums. When you read a book, you can't fail the chapter because you didn't give your partner enough covering fire from invading monsters. How you play a game, the way you make your character interact with the world, is often the most important thing in a game, and some of the best games realize this and harness it. I feel like Valve was really good at doing this in the original Half-Life; if you break the story events of that game down, they're basically nothing. How you move through that world, interact with its denizens, and experience its encounters are where the bulk of the "story" is, and it is uniquely your own. It's actually something I feel like Half-Life 2 maybe ruins a little bit because they introduce named characters and lock you down in to stronger plot threads and sort of lose a bit of player-driven personality. Half-Life 1 is a game where you largely speak to the game, and Half-Life 2 is a game that more frequently speaks to you. Going back to the previous point, when you think about it, where gaming is going, it's about games where you can tell your own stories. Minecraft, Spelunky, etc. are not so much games as they are sets of rules in which you can relate experiences about your existence in that world to friends, about the one time you did this super special awesome thing that was uniquely exclusive to you. The recently released Shadow of Mordor is a lot like that, where there's a narrative in there, but the most interesting aspects of the game are the social structure of the enemies you're fighting against and how that reacts to the player's actions. It's narrative as a mechanic, not narrative wedged in between mechanics.

YES! Extra Credits!! Actual comment though: Why can't they be about both, or one or the other at different times or in different situations? I play WoW, so I can use that as an example, but I feel it would work with other games. When I'm first running through content, I'm mainly focused on story. I read the quest text, put it into context with whatever else is going on, and try to keep a consistent narrative. The mechanics take a backseat, since they don't matter as much below the max level: Cast spell A, Cast spell B, enemy is dead. When the player starts getting into max level content, however, the story begins to take a backseat, and the game IS about the mechanics: I need to do X damage, which would best be used at time T, by doing actions A,B,C, and then I have to do Y to make sure I don't die, etc). The story is still there, but that part of the game isn't ABOUT it.

Many games I've played that have an *epic* story often feel as though that story is disconnected from the mechanics. Halo, Command & Conquer, 3D Zelda titles, etc. They all tell stories but the stories are told cinematically; the developers rip control of the game from your hands and force the story down your throat. I believe that stories in games, when done in this fashion, undermine their intention. For me what is important is how the mechanics of the game interact with story elements. For example: BioShock's story mostly comes from dialogue in game, rather than through a cut scene. This beautifully and cleverly ties the game's mechanics to the game's story. Where BioShock and Infinite are both posing existential questions about the nature of agency, the developers usually leave the story up to you seeing as you can just walk away from (or not pay attention to) critical exposition. This is story done right. Another great example would be Braid. You have a choice to read the story or to simply pass by the books on your way to the next world. But if you take time to read the story--if you choose to--the ending of the game is much more satisfying (and terrifying) and you find a much deeper meaning behind it. Half-life, Bastion, Portal, and others like them do story right; leaving the experience of the story up to the player and thus *engaging* the player. And then there are games like Minecraft which have no story which allows you to create your own. Player agency is crucial for a successful story in a video game, in my opinion. Without a players active participation in the narrative, in my opinion the story will be totally lost.

This is the arguement between my friend and I. He plays games like a machine and I play it for the story. An example of this could be Fire Emblem Awakening. His characters are max level and untouchable because of the skills he unlocked for them yet he actually doesn't know a single character's name beyond their class. Then there is me, my characters are complete garbage as far as their combat effectiveness goes, but I have a connection to every single one and can name them all with little effort. This is exemplified with the DLC of the game, I was discussing them with him and after I told him about how interesting the stories of the DLCs were and how he should absolutely play it all he asked was, "What benefits do they give your troops?" He then disgregarded everything I said because they didn't give him any power ups. He did the same thing with Bravely Default, he can't even name the 4 main characters...

As a novel writer, I found this quite interesting, as there is a, sometimes necessary, mode I have to step into, which I kinda think of as "mechanics mode" . Looking at a plot as a collection of mechanisms acting, such that the story develops and interesting things happen. I find it to be simultaneously the deepest, rawest experience of narrative, as well as the most surface level, and least meaningful. Spending all my time in this mode is counter productive, but as stated earlier, sometimes necessary.

Having been a longtime subscriber of Extra Credits and Idea Channel, this was some sort of surreal treat.

I feel like mechanics can be used to reinforce the narrative. Extra Credits themselves have an amazing episode called "Mechanics as Metaphor" showing how the arcade game Missile Command does this. Spec Ops: the Line does this as well, using its "gamey" shooting mechanics to make the player feel uneasy and show them that something isn't quite right. I'm not saying this is anything resembling the "norm" of game design, but I do feel it's possible. I don't think mechanics should take a backseat to narrative, I believe that ideally, if video games are to reach their full potential as an art form, mechanics and narrative should work in tandem.

I'm just saying... Best. Crossover. Ever.

Story gives you a framework within to play a game, playing a game creates a personal story.

I am so interested in this!!! I can't remember who wrote it right now, but I remember there was a filmmaker I was reading about who wrote a book (or magazine column?) encouraging watcing films better; encouraging viewers to be more attentive, more critical, etc. There is also, of course, the famous 'How to Read a Book' by Adler. At music auditoriums they will teach you Active Listening, such that you can pick apart instrment from instrument, chord from chord, key signature from key signature, etc. Maybe there is some analogy to this, active watching/reading/listening and passive watching/reading/listening, in videogames, that we don't know about. Maybe we don't know how to play videogames yet!

mechanics > story > graphics ALWAYS

Hey, loved their EC cameo, their new video "Digging Deeper" is next on the subscriber list Anyway, I feel the need to break the generalization about this. Most games I play for 1 of 3 reasons: strength of the story, sense of accomplishment, and the value of community. Most good games find a mix of the three that encourages you to keep playing, but mechanics aren't directly part of any of them. Take Ocarina of Time for instance. The main reason people play it is for the story. Saving Zelda and stopping Ganon is so important to you, almost nobody actually goes fishing for that giant fish before they've beaten the game at least once. The key is that you can put those things off for later. The story is the main course, but once you beat it, or if you just need a break, there's SO much more to do that the world feels big and the story benefits from it. Everything, including the mechanics, go back to the main purpose: the story. On the complete other hand, Smash Bros seems to lack a story entirely, and yet it's a great game as well. It's popularity is all about the best game experience through mechanics and the best multiplayer community possible. But neither of those appear to have much over other fighting games, and yet Smash Bros is undeniably a huge success. The key is the characters. The story of all the individual characters is what makes people interested in the first place. Without that, there'd be no community, and no point to the mechanics. In both situations, the mechanics strengthened the story and the story strengthened the mechanics. I realize you probably didn't have Nintendo in mind when making this video (MMOs especially seem only about mechanics and story takes a back seat), but they're a great example of how these two key parts of games can work together to make a great game. Sorry for the rambling.

Dan: Mike, what is that thing between your head and your torso? Mike: That’s a neck *I’m dying*

mabe the problem is thet the story is not realated to the mechnics

You say that "[...] narrative elements fuel video games as an art form, experience giver and vehicle for meaning", but I feel that the same is true for the _mechanical_ elements, possibly even moreso. You say that as if concentrating on the mechanics does not fuel video games as an art form or as if gameplay over story robs games of their meaning. I think the _opposite_ is true. Video games are important as an art form precisely _because_ of their mechanical aspects. Interactivity is at the core of video games as a medium because that's what sets them apart from other media. Not to mention that communicating meaning and emotions solely through gameplay is not only possible, but also, in my opinion, something that should be emphasized _way_ more than it currently is. Now, I'm not saying that we should go all the way to abstraction and only create games without any narrative elements. That'd be stupid; I greatly enjoy a well-written story with interesting characters. I'm just saying that a game can be art even on the merits of its gameplay alone. I especially disagree with your statement that "that importance [of the player's actions] is set inside a [...] structure of meaning, intention and ideology". In my opinion, it should be the other way around. The narrative elements can and should inform and supplement the player's actions, but the gameplay should come first because that is how the player primarily perceives the game. brutalcumpowder (it's like talcum powder, but more brutal) made a very good video on that, mostly referring to the way games are criticized, over here: Separating Gameplay from Art

Holy cheese balls, this is perfect timing. Had a discussion today with a colleague while we were writing the subchapter on mechanics for our survival horror games thesis. So, here's the thing, a bunch of people consider mechanics differently. Fullerton, Björk, Schell. The overall view, though, is that mechanics are a tool that creates a system, a system that is what the player shall interact with. So, it's not really that mechanic A + mechanic B in a context = Gameplay, but rather just the game. Why is that important? Because the "play" part in gameplay comes from the player and it's important to know what everyone is doing in order to tackle this question. Thinking from the point of view of designers, it's really hard to not see games as a bunch of mechanics. I mean, mechanics are the guts of games. To make a game without mechanics is like saying I'm going to create a human being without a liver, kidney and lungs. It just can't be done. This conversation is also very delicate, because what Dan and Mike mean is not that we should put Mechanics to the side, but rather use them to convey more meaning. It is *VITAL* to understand this, lest you attempt to make game-movies like David Cage and... let's not talk about that. Thinking from the point of view of players, it's... funny. In a way, we as players ran towards games for escapism, some for more reasons than one. In the past gaming was a way to cope with the hardships around us or simply to forget our problems and have some fun. So I think it's funny that a media in which the average user dives deeper than the average user in any other media has so much problem giving deep meaning to what is the core of it. In other words, your average game have mechanics that only function to build the game rather than give it depth. And the ones that DO give depth are very rare and, some times just fly over people's heads (there was a guy that demanded a refund because he thought The Stanley Parable was stupid, too short and had a horrible ending) So, maybe the answer is... not here yet. I could guess and create theories, but at the end of the day I don't think we're at the right point. We have a good start, though, and that's awesome. We just have to start teaching players to question and look into what they're doing more as well as have developers challenge the way mechanics are created in their work.

I posted on the Extra Credits video, which I watched first, that this collab between two of my favorite channels made my day!!!

This comes up a lot with modern, designer board games. What's more important: mechanics or theme? Many people fall on one side or the other. Betrayal at House on the Hill is completely broken as a game, with some scenarios being unplayable. But people love it because of the immersive theme and experience. Through the Ages is an incredibly dry and ugly game to behold, but it's one of the most beloved games ever because people love the complex mechanics. For me, I love games - digital or tabletop - that look good, are simple to pick up and play, but will reward players who put in the time to get better at them. Let's call it "optional complexity".

Why shouldn't we privilege mechanics? If we were going to privilege the visuals, sound design, or writing, or whatever to the detriment of the gameplay, then we might as well be making movies or something. And I don't like movies.

_HOLY FLURK IDEA CHANNEL AND EXTRA CREDITS IN THE SAME VIDEO!_ I can die happily now. Thank you. In terms of mechanics vs. story, it really depends on the game. The only thing I can really say about this is that gameplay and story integration is important to keep the two aspects balanced. Too much story can overwhelm gameplay-hungry players, and too much gameplay can bore those looking for a solid story.

I think that, going for either mechanics focus (Killing Floor, Counter Strike, Racing games, 'Arcade' games, Pong, Chess) are a perfectly valid and fine form of game. Sometimes all you want to do is play and you don't care about context too much. These games are common. And that's fine, they are 'games' in the purest sense of the word. Equally so, I think 100% story focused games ('Walking Simulators' are the purest example) are also valid as well. Sometimes you just want a story and you want the added bonus of feeling like a part of it without nessesarily needing a challenge or any sort of actual 'gameplay'. I'd argue that calling them 'games' or not is sort of a pointless debate. All I know is that they seem to appeal to many of the same people that play 'mechanics' focused games, because most people play games for the agency it gives them, and both forms of game gives people that. And really this is more important that worrying about whether they need to be labeled one way or another. Finally, what most games do, like most excellent and crappy AAA games alike is that they focus on both, but make the story and mechanics inherently 'disconnected' from each other (Borderlands, GTA, Mass Effect, Uncharted). This fine as well, but it shows the limitation of non-artisan corporate-made games when you have departments of people developing the story and mechanics and then stitching them together later. Its really hard to effectively combine mechanics and story in a meaningful way, but some games arguably manage. Dark Souls is often cited as an example but I'd argue that it sort of 'cheats' by being as story-lite as possible during its standard gameplay, you really have to actively look for story in that game. Hotline Miami sort of manages to do so by making the story all about the 'mechanics' of slaughter and how much the player enjoys killing, lots of games do this but Hotline Miami does so extremely well. Spec Ops: The Line takes the reverse perspective of Hotline Miami and criticizes the players actions and makes its gameplay somewhat tiresome and cruel on purpose. You might notice that these examples are all violent. There has never been a game though with a particularly unique non-violent story that also manages to tie in particularly compelling gameplay without essentially separating the two aspects of the game, non-violent games usually abstract the gameplay as some sort of puzzle or point and click, etc. This is because gameplay is all about challenge and conflict resolution and actually has a basis originally in violence (chess is about war, sports tend to be violent, etc, this is a whole different topic) and story can literally be about anything and in fact needs to be varied to be compelling. Imagine a game made with compelling mechanics that mesh well with the story of a non-violent classic piece of literature without actually just copying the story from a classic piece of literature. You'll find that it doesn't exist. I'm not saying its impossible, but it'll require a collection of multifaceted genius's to properly create and those genius's need the same vision. AAA developers and publishers as well as the small indie developers are very unlikely to be the source of such a creation. Making such a game would be harder than making pretty much any other 'great' form of media. This sort of segues into how video games have arguably so much more potential than other non-interactive forms of media. The problem isn't the media form, the problem is the limitations of what humans can create (which if you really think about it is sort of a dark thought). It would require a planet alignment level statistical anomaly for humans in their current state to make even one example of such a master piece. Its more likely that the humans of the future may create something like this utilizing some intelligence enhancing technology or even potentially in unison with AI. I just don't think we are capable of it as we currently are. That's right, I think the ultimate form of media is a video game. And I think its potential is so great that we aren't even capable of reaching it.

One thing I wonder about that is being lost is the fact that in movies, books, Tv shows, and such, the story is always moving forward. In a video games, the story only moves forward when you progress in the game. This means that if you get stuck on a certain part of the game, you have to stop thinking about the story and what do you need to do to move forward. And this forces the person to focus on the mechanics and not the story. The perfect game would be one in which you can play it without needing to think about the mechanics. Everything becomes secondary so you can focus on the enjoyment of the game instead of figuring out how to play the game. It is like how a person is playing a video game for the first time struggles with it much more than a person who has played video games before. For example, I played Super Mario Bros before. So with my knowledge of Super Mario Bros, I can try and apply what I learned there to other platformer games. However, when a person is playing a game for the first time, they need to figure out how one plays a game. The person needs to slowly figure out that they need to move right, or they need to jump, or that there is even a button to jump. It is like trying to read for the first time and never seeing letters before. What are those weird symbols on the paper? They are letters? Okay, but how does one read them? What are things weird dots and why do some dots have a tail? Repeat until you finish. And then when you have learned how to read, you can try seeing if you can read stuff with more vocab words and longer sentences or even longer stories. This is why I think it is a good idea to teach someone how to play on an old 2D video game like Super Mario Bros as there is less they need to worry about, like the Third Dimension, and they focus on playing. You could argue that this is why simple games with some depth is more enjoyable and why we might like them more than complex games where we need to learn the ins and outs of the mechanics of it, so much that not knowing them can be the difference between hating or loving a game.

IMO games should be about mechanics, not story. Story is just a plus. I also think atmosphere is more important than story in videogames, like, I've never played Super Metroid, but I love the game simply because of its super atmospheric music and visuals for example. I also seem to love when games are subtle about story elements and world building. That's kind of why I LOVE the Half-Life series, most notably in HL2 and its episodes. They don't shove too much in your face. It's so easy to miss dialogue and hidden messages, but if you look for them, they're there. And even then, you don't know everything about the universe, and that's one of the reasons why I want even more Half-Life games. Also if you decide to read about the game you find out a bunch of interesting notes and theories about why something is like it is, who/what G-man might be and so on.

I completely agree with this from personal experience with the game Pokemon. When I was younger, I would not pay attention as much to the mechanics of games, because I was not very "good" at them. In particular, Pokemon Blue was probably the first game I ever played, and I enjoyed its narrative. I truly wanted to become a Pokemon master and detested Team Rocket. I also understood the message of a coming of age through the adventures of life with friends. But as I got older, and "better" at the game, I focused less on the story and more on the mechanics. I now focus on EVs, IVs, move set predictions, and other parts associated with the game. I still enjoy it, but I feel that I enjoy it a lot less than from when I absorbed the game as a narrative than as a set of statistics. Now, I find completing the narrative almost to be mundane and useless to the "real" aspects of the game. I feel that us, as hardcore gamers, forget the fun in simply "playing" the game as competitiveness forces is to focus almost exclusively on the mechanics. Perhaps we may all go back to simpler times when we enjoyed games for the stories that they are.

Great video, well done. Also, here from Extra Credits, absolutely wonderful and well-crafted combo. Subscribed. In my opinion, as a player you'll (obviously) remember much more depending on how much you're invested in the game/character/life. If you're playing a Kirby or Mario game you're probably not going to remember individual jumps, deaths or levels, but well-placed throws or attacks or that ridiculous stunt you pulled to climb a wall or go through fire, or how about that one part where you died over and over again, maybe trying to get that one last secret on the level? Those will stick with you for a long time. I still remember the last secret exit I found in Kirby's Adventure for the NES (that damn boat level with the hammer and laser). Then you can look at games like NetHack, FTL, Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress or Don't Starve which are all about the journey, not the getting there. There you'll start to see the memories of 'doing' things, and what Extra Credits mentioned about feedback loop of learning about the game, then going back into the game to enjoy it more. Maybe it's simply about the enjoyment of doing things you're good at or are constantly getting better in. For instance, I played Final Fantasy 13 for a bit, wasn't impressed and dropped it, then a few months later ran into a great LP of it, found surprising depth in the mechanics and proceeded to enjoy myself thoroughly with a second go at the game (80+ hours for first playthrough, about the same as Final Fantasy 7).

Something i thought he could have explored further was the potential for mechanics to enhance and intertwine with a story. i guess the game braid immediately comes to mind, because the mechanics of that game reflect really beautifully the story of that game. Also, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons expertly intertwines its innovative mechanic--of controlling one brother with each stick--to drive home their bond to the player. When the older brother died and I was left exclusively using one control stick, the sense of the younger brother's loss was amplified that much more, in my eyes.

I remember the shit storm that emerged when Gone Home received positive reviews upon release a year ago. A lot of people who played it got pissed off because there is little gameplay, and weren't willing to forgive this in favor of the great story. (If I remember correctly, it might have been a factor in Adam Sessler's departure from games journalism after all the flamey comments he received after making Gone Home his game of the year.) Some describe it as a "visual novel" rather than a game so that potential buyers know what they're getting into. To me this is a great example of the larger gaming audience expecting an emphasis on mechanics rather than story, and feeling ripped off when the gameplay is minimal. I loved Gone Home, and it bugged me that Gone Home got so much hate while The Stanley Parable was adored simply because the latter was funny. It was similar to how I felt when people's reasoning for not liking BioShock Infinite, one of my favorite games of all time for both mechanics and story, was that the gameplay was boring or too similar to the original BioShock. The number of subtleties in that game blew me away and I was bummed that a lot of people weren't interested in that. I believe there's a potential for a larger chunk of the games industry for titles like Gone Home and The Stanley Parable as well as 'normal' games that are still story-focused like Bioshock Infinite. To me it seems like a larger perception of what games are meant to be is holding a lot of people from discovering these incredible experiences.

I don't think games being about their mechanics is weird at all, they're SUPPOSE to be about their mechanics, a game doesn't need a story what-so-ever to be entertaining. When video games were new, and they had very little in terms of graphics, we didn't need much in the terms of a story. You were lucky if they included a few lines of text in the instruction manual. The great difference between video games and other medias is the actions and interaction between the player and the game. Mechanics are the essence of the player interacting with the game, and thus paramount to the entire idea of a game. The story is very nice, and can help a game be great, but it is by no means necessary or even important. A lot of video games start with an idea for a mechanic, something that sepperates their games from others, if you have an interesting game mechanic you start building from there and the story, characters, and everything else follows after that. This shouldn't be Are Videogames About Their Mechanics? It should be "Why Do People Care So Much About Cut Scenes and Story Telling In Video Games" Not that caring about those are bad, but that's the real "huh why is that" question, the mechanics one is a no-brainer. The extra credits guys like to throw the word "agency" around a lot, and I think that's what largely separates video games from movies, music, or reading. You don't get a lot of choices in other medias, by the time you are enjoying them all the decisions have already been made you can only appreciate it or pass it by. Video games however empower players by letting them choose how things will happen, similar to "choose your own adventure novels" which if you think about it, is sort of like a book "mechanic". Video games have expanded agency like never before, and that's what makes them great.

God I miss this channel

I believe games currently fall into two categories: 1. A game that focuses on a story line and has an end goal of completing the story line and finding out how it ends. A game like this usually consists of a Player vs AI or Player vs Environment mentality. 2. A game that is competitive and has a main focus of a Player vs Player or Team vs Team mentality. Obviously, these two categories are not mutually exclusive and there is plenty of room for overlap, but in my experience there is an indirect relationship between mechanics and story line and a direct relationship between mechanics and competitiveness. If we take a look at the most competitive games throughout recent history, the most competitive games have little or no story line, but require an incredible amount of mechanics to play; the better a player is at those mechanics, the better the player is at the game and the more competitive he or she can be. We can start at games such as physical sports, to games like chess, to the most competitive video games (Halo, Super Smash Bros, Warcraft and Starcraft, DOTA Allstars, League of Legends, DOTA 2, etc.) and see that these games have little or no story line, yet people make a living off of playing them. Games that focus on story line are still great and do require mechanics to be successful (and follow the same structure: the better a players mechanics the more successful they are at the game), but are really only played for fun. Even when games that are made for the story line are made competitive (such as a speedrun through a game), superb mechanics come heavily into play. Games come in all variants and everyone has different reasons for playing their favorite game, but I believe that with a rise in competitiveness of a game, there is an equal rise in mechanics, no matter what the game is, and this is okay.

On one hand, it's true, you can have fun without story in video games, but that doesn't mean that we should dismiss stories. In fact, when playing games like The Last of Us, my favorite part of the game wasn't the mechanics, but the story itself. And i feel like The Last of Us was so much better than movies and had a much bigger emotional impact due to the fact that we felt like we were LIVING in the story line due to the fact that we can control the characters.

PBS taking a page out of Game Theory's book with the WatchunderscoreDogs joke. Still funny. I was kind of expecting another crossover with PBS Game Show considering the subject but I guess two guests may have been a bit much.

I am a game designer. I do 3D modeling and sometimes concept art. When I make a character I must focus on all sorts of aspects around their lore/personality to further their creation. I've found that when a player is TRULY entranced by the game they are playing, they slow down and take a moment to notice the small details. So basically, if you make a game good enough, the players will, in fact, notice the story/art/non-mechanic portions of the game. You see this more when a player is going back and playing a game for the second+ time or when they are already a fan of the genre/series.

I get that it's different for a lot of people, but what always drew me to video games was their plots. I care very little for their mechanics beyond the fact that their functional.

There's this thing called immersion.

I've been thinking about this issue too. Have you noticed that many indie games seem to have a much tighter integration between narrative and mechanics than big-budget mainstream games? For example: in Braid, Fez, The Swapper the mechanics and story both engage with issues like the flow of time, unbeknown dimensions of space and identity and its relation to individuality, respectively. Could it be that having a tighter budget and only a couple people working on a project makes a developer focus everything they got on delivering a message? Or perhaps it is part of the indie ethos to deliver a more thoughtful and artistic product?

Here is my theory, as an overthinker working in the video game area, is the following : each art form can be decomposed into atomic disciplines, such as picture, space, movement, sound, rythm, physical performance, language, narration... Each of those constitute a skill to be mastered in order to convey emotion and/or meaning. Academic forms of arts are at set of these atomic disciplines with a core discipline. For instance, theatre and cinema are both narrative media at their core, and can use sound, and physical performance to convey this narration. What makes the difference between theatre and cinema, is that the former exists in actual space, while the latter happens in the form of a rythmic picture. So we have here three types of disciplines defining an academic artform : core discipline, defining discipline, and facultative discipline. To further illustrate this point, let's take dancing : it's rythm and physical performance at its core, but it's also defined by sound, in the sense that music is the framing of the dance, it provides an environment in which the dance can happen, else it would be mime or some other form of physical expression. Of course, you can find fringe exemples in every academic field. For instance, the music video defies my definition of cinema, and while they are indeed a form of rythmic picture art, they are not here to convey narration, but music. By these definition, games are the art of interaction. So anything else inside a game, in my point of view, is just here to deliver the interactive experience. My favorite exemple being Tetris, which is a video game without an ounce of narration. Because that's not what is important here. Now, I'm not advocating the use of tiny restrictive boxes to tidy classify everything, just trying to establish that, if you look what is academically speaking a game, the flagpole is here, and there are artworks that are closer or further from that pole. So, the point that narration has its importance in a game doesn't come in contradiction with the oint i'm trying to make, i'll just aknowledge that there are transitional works between pure games, and another landmark that would read "interractive storytelling" which is still something else, academically speaking.

Greetings from Denmark. Thank you for a great show. At first I thought that it was a very valid point that it might be the fact that video games are still relatively new and constantly developing that causes the focus on the mechanics. However, when you related games to other media and art forms I came to think of how I listen to music. I listen to everything from Jacques Brel to Muse to Bach and Chopin, yet for different reasons. I realised only recently that I can very easily categorise the music I listen to into two categories: 1: Music that has beautiful, well-written lyrics. 2: Music that has an interesting melody/rythm (can also be beautiful of course). Now, back to games: Couldn't this be the same with games? I know that the approach to technology is constantly changing. For instance I'm 17 and the difference between my approach and the approach of a 34-year-old is massive. Also, with the new Ocolus Rift and even just the thought that goes into developing tablets (designing them for children so that anyone would find them naturally easy to use) I believe that we are going to be able to get even further beyond the mechanics (maybe even a standardised system so that one wouldn't have to learn new mechanics and thus be more apt to forget about them, who knows). Yet going back to my musical argument, I realised that I also play games in different ways. For instance I play League of Legends without bothering to read any of the lore, yet enjoy competing vs other players and testing my reflexes and tactical knowledge and skill. But I also loved Portal (the first one was better) because of the story. I barely even thought of the mechanics and was only inspired by the possibilities of the universe and curious about the storyline. My point is that the future might not only bring games more easily digestible and closely connected to the story line, but separate into two categories: mechanics' games and story games. What do you think? Best regards.

As a creative writing major who spends most of his time focusing on the mechanics of different literary works, part of me likes to compare video games to an unfinished novel, where a person other than the novel's creator needs to complete writing parts of it. If a writer is given a manuscript that they know is incomplete and then shown what parts need to be finished, it's likely they will need to learn the mechanics of the work (motifs, themes, narrative voice, character nuances, etc.) before they can truly write it. Unless they master these mechanics, the novel likely will not be very good, or rejected by a publisher entirely (Game Over). The added problem of making a game, continuing this parallel, is that a novelist first writing the novel for someone else to complete also needs to make sure the reader knows what parts of the novel need finishing and make it so that what they can put in does not make the book utter trash. And that's the key. Because players can and will do whatever they want, to make a story that works, they need to make sure the players CAN'T do what the developers DON'T WANT them to do. When they fail at doing so, you get (and I apologize for using this term) Ludonarrative Dissonance. The clashing of the narrative the developers want to tell, and the play- the actions a player takes in the game. And THAT is why there's such a focus on the mechanics of a game. Because both the developers AND the players need to know them through and through. Unfortunately, because of that, there aren't very many games where the gameplay, the mechanics, really adhere to the story, and make the story the focus. If I'm to be ask an example, I'd say the clear choice- without equal- is Shadow of the Colossus. Travel, Solve Puzzle, Climb, Stabby Stab Stab, hold on for dear life. Those are the mechanics. It's also the story. Overcoming immense challenges and killing giant creatures to revive your lost love. You can argue that there is not much story to get in the way, sure, but there's also no game that's hit me as powerfully for completing my own actions. The closest game in comparison to me may be The Last of Us, whose mechanics are entirely about staying alive at any cost and protecting Elly. There are certain points I'm not sure it maintains that, but I think that's the closest I'll be able to think of.

I disagree. A game without some kind of story is not worth playing at all. Imagine a movie that is no more then a montage of guys shooting and things exploding. No story, charachters, anything. Jut the action. it'd be a pretty shitty movie, now wouldn't it? The reason we sometimes remmeber more about game mechanics than the story is because the gameplay consists vastly much less than the story. To visualise: game mechanics: Story I'd also add that I do remmeber more from the stories of the games I play than the game mechanics.

An Idea Channel and Extra Credits collaboration. Beautiful.

EEEEEE YAY EXTRA CREDITS! Such a great channel! I'm thrilled you collaborated with them!

i think there's a "it's just a game!" "games are only about fun" "review the mechanics" side of games culture, but i think they're a minority. they completely reject the notion of subjective experiences in reviews and critiques, and analysis appearing in game journalism sites. the only conclusion that i can come to is that most of them are not well read; they seem completely unfamiliar with the concept of new journalism. not to mention how critical analysis of pop culture works both in some journalistic publications and in academia. the most memorable, touching piece of writing on games journalism i've ever read was jenn frank's piece on super hexagon ("allow natural death"). it was an exploration of how she made sense of her mother's death in relation to the game she voiced. i showed this to some #gamergate people and they were horrified-- this isn't journalism, they said. and the idea that journalism would allow a place for things like that is terrifying to them. since art (even of the popular, mass created variety-- perhaps even ESPECIALLY of that variety) both reflects and shapes culture, we would be insane to not look at it critically. i'd like to get that message through to them somehow, but i don't know if it's possible. or even if they would accept it.

I don't think your comparison of game mechanics to page turns in a book is accurate. A more apt comparison might be game mechanics to grammar. You can have a book that writes things a thousand different ways. Uses a thousand different synonyms. Some feel better, progress better, than others. So to with game mechanics. Game mechanics, like grammar, give your story structure. Look at adaptations of books and plays to movies for fantastic examples of this concept. Shakespeare, in particular. The story of Romeo and Juliette comes through the same, but watching the story set in the streets of a modern city is a very different experience than reading the classic play.

How about this analogy: When a child learns to read, the 'mechanics' of readings occupy the child completely. The child does not retain any information about the 'story'. So writers of small children books don't even include delicate plots into their story. When the child eventually learns to read without focusing on its mechanics, the deeper meaning of a story becomes more apparent. In the same way gamers need to learn how to play a game without focusing on it's mechanics. When playing Guild Wars 2 a second time for example, I already knew how to train, solve the problems or defeat the bosses. The story of it all became more important the second time because I was able to focus on that more. Greeting from Belgium ;)

Hi Mike. Extra Credits brought me here. Nice beard! Video games are necessarily about their mechanics, as it is what requires the players attention. It's not a coincidence that if you look at the other side of the spectrum, games such as Heavy Rain have the opposite issue: mechanics get in the way of story. Games that straddle the line, such as some of the Final Fantasy games, have some players who watch the story and are annoyed by the gameplay, and others who skip the story as much as possible to get to the gameplay. I'm willing to bet every FF player has been annoyed by one or the other (or both) at one point in the game. Many games try to handle story telling in one of the following ways: 1. Slice up the story telling into cut scenes. You are either player or you're watching. JRPGs are typically done this way. 2. Communicate the story while the player is trying to play, forcing the player to either ignore the story or multitask. Many FPS' do this. 3. Provide some text telling you with some bogus pretense of why you should do what you're doing. MMORPGs are notoriously reliant on this. The problem with all of these is that the developers are telling a story, instead of providing the tools to experience a story. This is not a new idea. It's been discussed before with the idea of "emergent" gameplay, yada yada. It seems to be having trouble sticking in this medium. What many video gamers may not realize that this has been getting done with great success for the last 3 or 4 years in board games. If you've ever played games such as Mage Knight, Twilight Imperium, Eclipse, Robinson Cruesoe, Dead of Winter, Cosmic Encounter, Sentinels of the Multiverse, you probably remember exactly how the events of the game played out and how much of a story the very act of playing the game created. Here are some aspects I think allows board games to work as story telling engines where (most) video games struggle: * They are heavily randomized in their configuration (not their dice rolls), and in the actions of their opposition. They accept the possibility of "dud" games because of this. * They end due to win conditions, not due to the "completion of content". * They have discreet, transparent options. * They have fewer, more meaningful decisions * They require the player to slow down and reflect on their circumstances. * They have a distinct beginning, middle and end in each game session, which the game is designed around. * They require less long term time commitment and are designed for single session plays. Amongst video game genres, by far the closest to hitting these marks on the typical game are Rogue-likes, Sandbox Survival, and 4X. Consequentially, these are also the games where players are most likely to remember the story of the gameplay and interpret it as the "story" of the game. They can do better.

I think idea channel is totally off-base here. Mechanics SHOULD be priviledged. In my opinion they ARE what a game is. They are what makes it a game and not a movie. The focus should be on what the player does, how they do it, and what the result of those actions is, not on some prebaked narrative. If you want narrative and completely creator authored messages and themes, then go watch a movie or read a book. Games are about allowing a player to have an experience in a world of the creator's choosing. The message and theme should come from the setting and the options the player has to expore and experience said virtual world. This is why I consider something like Dwarf Fortress to be an opus of game developement where as I consider something like Bioshock to be a cute attempt at making a game with cinematic qualities (similar to how Sin City attempted to make a movie with very comic like qualities).

while you have an engaging premise and a fantastic beard, Mike, you're glossing over two major facts: 1. the story is soooooooooooo boring. unskippable cutscenes cause cancer, and also hurt adorable kittens. 2. story players are always noobs, sometimes scrubs, and often also bads. for this reason, i'd like to suggest that you reference "Playing to Win" by David Sirlin for the follow up; it is a pretty good place to begin understanding the mechanics player and their point of view. --further thoughts on scrubbishness and the "elitist attitude" of mechanics players: it often doesn't matter how scrubs or noobs choose to play a given game, or why they make those choices. it often only affects the efficacy of their own agency within the game state, perhaps ultimately limiting their ability to complete that story, or interact with the environment. this is particularly true of single player games. however, when it affects a team effort, e.g. in MOBAs or MMOs, any "wrong" choice made for reasons of story/fashion/whimsy can negatively impact the overall efficacy of the team and cause a loss or wipe, waste time and/or money, or simply negatively impact enjoyment for more than just the one player. this is very important to consider when suggesting that mechanics players are shallow or "elitist" - as is often the battle cry of the noobish, the scrubbish, and the bad.

More people need to know about you and Extra Credits, they need your brilliance in their lives.

This Idea channel video immediately made me think of MMORPGS and you're absolutely right. More often than not I find myself, and I'm sure others do as well, simply doing tasks as means to an end, rather than reflecting on how that impacts you or your supposed "role". You grind and level and do all the quests but don't think about environmental conseqences from picking all the shrubs for crafting, or how slaying a dungeon boss made you actually feel in context to your role. I come from tabletop roleplaying game home, where the focus is the story told, and trying to seemlessly integrates mechanics as to give players purpose. The massive disconnect in a "role-playing game" contradicts actually role playing. I think this comes from of mutual not-caring from both developer and player. The player just wants satisfaction of accomplishment the game provides, and the developer acknowledges that, instead making the game about stats, items, mounts and skill tree patchs (e.g. mechanics) rather than how those additions and changes affect a player's emotionally-judged actions because there are none.

Starcraft 2 didn't have a story. It had a dissapointment.

pls. Games are not fucking books or movies. Mechanics > Story. Or better, story which is told with the mechanics of the game or without interrupting it or giving the player the choice how much he wants to learn about the story. That makes the story itself interactive and also more memorable because you discover the things yourself just like you remember what you did mechanicly in the game. Half-Life 1 and Dark Souls are good examples of this. When I see people talk about story in games and ignore the mechanics (most discussions about games are about its story) I kinda get frustrated. Games can do so much with their mechanics but game devs go the easy way and do 100 cutscenes to tell a generic story. There are so many storys you can only tell in the games medium like The Stanley Parable did (which isnt really a story) or the first Bioshock. THAT is what we need.

Wow, cool to see that ec got some love here. Ec, vsauce, idea channel and game/show are the only things I needed on KZfaq anymore.

Mike, I'm sure you saw that Jamin from PBS Game Show has posted a video response to this video of yours, and I just have to say I think that's the coolest thing ever. I would love to see the two of you keep making videos in response to one another, and develop a dialogue through your shows. I have noticed a great deal of indy developers ("indy" int he traditional sense of 1 or 2 people creating the entire thing) making games that have relatively straightforward mechanical concepts, but communicate extremely deep, thought-provoking ideas and emotions. They don't necessarily have a long or complicated story, in the sense of the plot being narratively rich, but the messages of these games tell a story behind their inception, in the same way that traditional art does so well. With their relative lack of man-hours to spend on the game, these developers make a game with no bells or whistles, and gameplay that doesn't push the envelope very far, but still communicates a huge amount about why the game was made, and what is on the mind of these artists, in a way that only games can. So what I would like to see is an indy game developer, like Zoey Quinn or Alexander Ocias or Rachel Well, be handed a team of designers from EA or Blizzard or Bungie, and apply the indy, artsy design attitude to the mighty resources of giant studios. I think we'd see some incredibly complex and compelling games that are mechanically, narratively and thematically rewarding. I can dream, can't I?

A proper story will not trump game mechanics, EVER! You see, the big difference between a a story and gameplay is that the player spends about 5-6 hours total getting story in non-RPG games, but will spend about 30-40 hours in gameplay. And even in the case of an RPG, the 15 hours of story is still compounded by the 60-80 hours of gameplay. I find it impossible to believe that anyone would play through the mechanics of Daikatana to get the plot of Mass Effect 1-3. Far too many gamers underestimate just how deep the "shitty gameplay" rabbit hole can go. Pop in Bubsy 3D, Batman: Return of the Joker, Sonic '06, Superman 64 or Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis before you start trying to convince me that story can ever make up for shoddy mechanics. A bad story can be skipped in almost every game these days, but you're not progressing any farther in the game if you're not playing it. I pose a challenge to all the people who claim that a story can be more important to a game than mechanics: Please try to play through the entirety of Xenosaga 1-3. While it certainly has an interesting plot, despite the major setbacks it had, the gameplay of Xenosaga 2 is just so terrible that you'll find it damn near impossible to ever find out the conclusion to this story because you got tired of spending 15 minutes on one random encounter for the 300th time while trying to complete Xenosaga 2. I get really tired of people trying to get so artsy with games that they forget the simple fact that Tetris, Mario Bros and Minecraft did not become massive selling titans of the market by presenting a riveting narrative. At the end of the day, I have Netflix if I really want a good plot over anything else, but I've got jack shit if games fail to deliver good gameplay.

I find when a game is more mechanical or the mechanics are not in service to the story and character that I feel weighed down by the task and am unable to enjoy the game. It is immersion breaking.

I was watching this, and a phrase popped up in my head.... "Saturation of stimulation"

I would absolutely agree that mechanics trump the other aspects of games as a generalization for the industry. Many of the most popular games are ones that are pure gameplay, i.e. multiplayer FPS, racing, sport, several RTS, fighting, and arena games. I would go on to further argue that most casual gamers or the people that do not consider games a major hobby mostly only play the genres that focus on gameplay. The popularity of gameplay focused games overall, and the large amount of consumers who are only interested in gameplay certainly contributes to the extra emphasis on mechanics compared to every other aspect of a games quality. There certainly is tons of games, and outstanding ones at that, that focus on characters, ideas, story, aesthetic, music, or design, but many of these games wouldn't be regarded as well if not for decent gameplay to go along with it's other strengths. There are a few standout titles in my mind that do an incredible job at blending mechanics with other aspects of the game: 1) Dark Souls (and other similar titles from Fromsoft). This game has a lore explanation for everyone of it's mechanics. It perfectly blends what happens in game with the story of the game. I find this to be an absolutely incredible feat in terms of game design. 2) Undertale and Spec Ops: The line. Both of these games are completely different from each other in just about everyway. The one similarity I would say, is that these are the only games I know of, that blame the player themself for taking action in-game, vice the character on screen. Both games try to encourage the player to cease playing entirely, for the sake of the characters in-game. They do this without actually breaking the fourth wall though. The amazing thing about this to me, is it uses mechanics to forces the player into being synonymous with the character in terms of story.

There has always been a division between mechanics and narration in video games, sometimes even laughably so. Some games are mechanics with story added afterwards, a mushroom kingdom taken over by a race of Turtles and saved by an Italian plumber... these are concepts explored after they where added. But most games are the other way, they make a story then they try as hard as they can to adapt the mechanics to the feel of the story. And many games suffer simply because the writers and designers making the story are not the same people programming the mechanics. The programmers have enough to worry about, they are happy with "good enough", while the writers/Designers never really get to understand the mechanics until it is too late. How many times have we not seen in game characters describe in game combat in totally the wrong way, focusing on totally the wrong thing. In Borderlands there is a machine that respawns you, you cannot die, and yet you seem to be the only one as the NPCs are being dramatically murdered in the story left and right. (Don't get me started on "that scene" in Final Fantasy VII). In Mass Effect the cutscenes can kill characters with a single shot from your weakest gun, but in the game that gun takes 10 or 20 shots just to get through someones shield. In Dragon Age the characters keep getting surrounded by cutscenes, opening a door, triggering a cutscene and the player character is seen walking straight through the door getting surrounded and just standing there while the enemy readies up. Thanks, I was hoping I could sneak up on them. One interesting concept is when Story is shoved into your mechanics unexpectedly. This happened in Fallout 3. In the Tenpenny tower storyline. A group of Ghouls wants to come into the tower, but old man Tenpenny don't like Ghouls and wants you to "take care of it". And you follow the quest mechanics of the game, follow the arrow on your ingame compass, talk to everyone you can talk to, and make your choice in the dialogue tree. Either back Tenpenny, or back the Ghouls or try to find a middle ground and make them friends. Par for the course in a heavy quest based game like Fallout. But then something happens. If you have the ghouls and Tenpenny make friends, the Ghouls betray them and kill all the humans. While you are not there. It's not part of the Quest, it doesn't give you any special item, there is no mechanic around the event. It just happens. You return and all the humans are gone. Their bodies stuffed in the cellar. So many players have at this point decided to attack the Ghoul leader for betraying the promise he made to you, but there is no quest to do so, no reward at the end of it. It is narration without mechanic and yet it makes the player stop and take note. A very interesting concept, I even think Extra Credits did an issue on it.

It's poor game design to let the mechanics of a game completely overtake its story, and if one should want to focus solely upon them they're better off making a game like Chess that doesn't have a clear goal, or as a more modern example- Team Fortress 2. TF2's story exists solely within item descriptions, comics released by the developers, and animated shorts. All of these things provide context for the various characters' actions, yet presented outside of the game itself are not necessarily part of the gaming experience, allowing these mechanics to take center stage. One thing to note about TF2 is the way that the mechanics define the characters- Only the medic can heal, no one can sprint or double jump like the Scout, the Sniper is the only character who can zoom in, the Spy cheats, etc. All of these unique mechanics granted to the classes give them a sense of character- when you're lumbering down the hallway as the Heavy, minigun raised and watching people flee in terror, you get the sense that he's some unstoppable monstrosity, whereas the haphazard arcs of the Demoman, pills that can bounce any which way or sticky bombs that can fire either ten feet or ten yards away from you; these give the sense of playing a drunk rather nicely as well, which his scant dialogue contributes towards . That said, the mechanics of a game aren't always at odds with a story, no. Look at Dark Souls- The process of dying over and over is justified as a concept known as "the undead curse" ' and it's literally the entire basis by which the game's themes are wrapped around. In Dark Souls, there are the undead- people who are effectively immortal in that they'll recover from any death via a Bonfire. However, should an undead lose hope, they'll become mindless beasts, this process is called "hollowing." The atmosphere of the game itself is dark and cruel, matching the unforgiving nature of its gameplay. You will never not fall off of a cliff if you were meant to, you aren't getting through a swamp without being poisoned, and yes, that dragon will one-shot you by devouring you whole if you decide his mouth is the best place to engage him. But, each time you die, you come back at a bonfire, and all of the enemies in the level respawn as well, and now you have to get through all of them just to fight that dragon again, hopefully from a smarter angle. When an undead loses hope, it's known as hollowing. It's what happens when characters in the game give up. Those that quit because the game is too hard for them are known among the Dark Souls community as having "gone hollowed." In other words, Dark Souls is a game in which the emotional process of overcoming and achieving has been engraved in to the game's mechanics and story seamlessly, integrating the human pathos as a mechanic within the game world itself. I'd argue that that's a successful interplay between story and mechanic.

Interactive elements force us to think about them. If you have non-interactive story, you stop thinking about the characters. If you do - wonders may happen. Look at RPGs and how interactivity makes thing more memorable, and lack of them - not-memorable. PS: I love what you did at the end of the video. Great idea :)

love seeing collaborations like this. big fan of Idea Channel and Extra Credits

Thumbs up if you came here from "Extra Credits"

Nothing in this episode relates to me... I play games primarily for the experience and a strong well told narrative is just about the best kinda experience there is... I mean, unless gameplay actions have narrative hooks into them, I sometimes can't even remember gameplay actions I've done mere minutes after I've done them. So your entire thing about your experience of playing Watch_Dogs, it's almost as bewildering to me as someone adamantly trying to convince me that gravity is a repulsive force... For the record I've not played that game and have no intention to do so but if I did I would almost certainly remember the story much more, unless the gameplay was compelling enough to actually create a narrative of its own, and then I would only remember it as a narrative and not as a sequence of actions that I performed with my controller. So this entire video... It's just... I don't even know how to react to it.

I am an aspiring filmmaker and a very close friend of mine is an aspiring game designer so we have talked about this topic pretty extensively. Our conclusion is that, yes, video games are just now discovering their language, but the mechanics is an essential part of that language. In movies many emotional stories were told before D.W. Griffith realized that the camera could be moved during a shot to create emotion. Cinematography is inseparable from a movie's narrative. If there was an argument about whether camerawork or story were more important I would say they are the same thing. The camera tells the story on more levels than people realize. For me a mechanics is the video game equivalent of the movie camera. Right now they are an ends to a means for the narrative, but what is being discovered is how to make the mechanics a PART of the story. How to create a "language of video games," if you will. What separates a film from a play is the way the camera enhances, supports and tells the story in a very elaborate and planned way. What separates video games from movies is the mechanics. I am waiting eagerly for the day a game comes out in which the emotional narrative and way the mechanics are used are inseparable. I don't know how close we are but every now and then we get close. "Heavy Rain" and "Mass Effect" were steps in the right direction but I do not think we have had the "Intolerance" of video games. When we do it will be a game changer that makes this debate of narrative vs. mechanics as a focus a thing of the past.

7:35 LOL "It's only game! Why you heff to be mad?"

most video game stories are objectively boring. and even if one has a good story, most gamers would just skip over it anyway because they don't like stories and just want to kill something.

games are not movies or books, if you want a good story, read a book.

It's funny how the fact that you review pertinent commentaries at the end of your video makes the comment section an interesting place and not a mass of trolls and immatures like it is usually.

omg i LOVE extra credit! you guys are awesome for having them on this episode.

I never watched anything more pretentious about videos games than I have here. GAME Mechanics is core to video GAMES. Without these mechanics, there are no objectives, directives or fail states in which to indicate anything by the GAME'S programming. To take away these, would only make video GAMES high budgets cut scenes where you would be watching a fucking movie. At a certain point, you would not even consider it a video GAME. Interactive movies, animated novels, or some weird form of modern art. They should not be categorized as a video GAME. So the very notion of mechanics to not be a thing in video GAMES is ludicrous, and asinine.

Somewhat unrelated, by why do essays and vlogs of this kind always use the phrase "we, as the audience". Isn't that a little much when strictly "we" would do? I mean, if the sentence said "we, as hamsters"... that would be notable. But I already know through the context that I am in the audience. Same goes for "we, the viewer" and "we, the reader" etc. It really annoys me.

Sometimes I tune out and just enjoy the rythm of his monologue without trying to comprehend it

Extra Credits and Idea Channel crossover?! I must be dreaming.