Games are games first and foremost. I understand story can be an important aspect to a game like an RPG, but if it isn''t a game, then it is just a story.
Gameplay comes first. Story is only necessary if it helps gameplay. That is why I don''t like review sites that include story in the ratings. Sometimes a story isn''t necessary.

The game is definitely about gameplay, but we should consider that story and gameplay may not be so distinctly separate units, each requiring individual treatment, when we could consider them linked game aspects that can have a synaesthetic effect on each other, improving both aspects, at least for games in the future. Some games in the past have been very successful financially and from a gameplay aspect also. These games required little story, yet there were distinct interstitial linear narrative exposition points in these games (either by cut scene or text or some other method of exposition like a mission briefing or NPC dialogue) that contributed to reinforcing player motivation by maintaining contextual causal flow, or to introduce new cause for the player to desire or care to continue play.

In the future of games, just as in other entertainment mediums, the audience wants more. In some current games, relegating the player to creating their own quests or missions is fine for now, but players will eventually run out of ideas worth persuing as their personal story creating skills become taxed. Eventually, the player will lose interest, and simply quit playing with as much motivation as they had previously.

If the players were such great storytellers, they would be making a living writing stories. In the future, in the quest for the holy grail of the legendary mass market game, in order to hook massive numbers of audiences into the game, you are going to have to plant the hook to land that fish somehow, and traditionally for wise reasons, that hook has always been a dramatic one. Dramatic as separate and distinct from fantastic or highly imaginative. Dramatism has technical storytelling requirements, and in case nobody noticed, you can make a tall pile of money from a great story. This is simply because great stories, or even good ones, for that matter, are some of the best culture humans are capable of appreciating. Appreciating culture is just a perception''s width away from buying the book or movie ticket. Good stories are some of the best culture we have.

Games are in a unique position from all other mediums to take advantage of this hook from mass media culture appreciation and use it for all it is worth in interactive non-linear ways. For me, I see a well crafted story as an opportunity to devise more interactive levels because the linear structure of a well crafted story gives you every possible expositionary plot point along the way to the end of the game, and you can find more game to fit into the story that way. The larger the size of the story, the more plausable levels you can create and not run into what a game can run into, and that is a level that does not move the cause the player got hooked on in the first place to participate to the point of spending money on the CD and scheduling play time thereafter via action that yields progress towards a goal. If the goal of the game is to obtain some fantastic goal after several levels of challenge via the tools of our trade, such as puzzles, tricks, traps, clues, foos, bosses, environmental devices and so on, then there was no need for much of an underlying story in terms of depth and characterization and subplotting. The more levels that you pack into your game, without underlying depth and complexity and characterization to give causal reason for them to exists, except for another environmental design with slightly altered challenges and a few resources to get to the next level which might get you closer to the goal or the conflict that was stated in the beginning of your game, then you are just not taking advantage of all the benefits the interweaving of these two tools can have for the benefit of the player.

Stories were essentially invented so generational wisdom could be passed with little degrading. Games were invented for learning before academics as a process was formalized. The two go hand in hand, and serve each other well, and not should be considered one as more important than the other. but as two tools that only the mediums of game can show the best of both. Mass market games will not become a reality until story is properly used as the hook to bring in the multitudes of non-core gamers into EB or SoftEtc. This is an opportunity, not a dillemma or competition of valuation.

Of course, you''ll need to be a good writer to tell a good story, but that is just another skillset. As if we don''t have enough to do already. According to some great writers, great writing comes from great experiences.

Is somebody going to pay me for this?

I tend to prefer story over gameplay mainly because as I mentioned in my post about games being a means or an end, I think players think to much about the goals of a game, and not enough about immersing themselves in a game world/story. I thinkt the advantage that computer programs have over books and movies is precisely that they can tell such a more immersive story.

This point has been argued before, but what really is a game? Is it a sport? Is it a competition? Is it a simulation? Is it just something you do to escape? It is all of the above and more. What may be a "game" to you may not be a game to someone else. I personally hate sports, but most people tend to view them as games.

When you think about it, if all you want is gameplay, then why not just play chess, backgammon, mahjhong, go, mancala, poker or countless other classic "games"? We play computer games almost precisely because they are supposed to have a story...something other games simply can not do. Not sports, not card games, not board games, not even the real thing of whatever it is you are trying to simulate.

Even something as rudimentary as Quake3 has a game setting. But what makes shooters more or less popular is in great deal determined not just by the gameplay, but whether the game world is something the players would be interested in.

I think the point that really needs to be asked is: Why do people play games? To escape? To compete? To learn? To have fun? All of the above? Once you find that out, you''ve found your target audience, then you base your gameplay and game story around that.

I totally agree! Whenever people post something like "Great Game Idea!" It ends up being a story and not a game idea. It bugs me. . . I usually don''t think up a story until I know what kind of game I want to make. In fact, half the time I end up thinking up how the game''s camera should work before even thinking of a story.