The games that last dont need a good story.

Warcraft II and Quake 1 are over 5 years old, but LOTS of people still play them everyday multiplayer. And these people are hardcore and dedicated to their games. They are playing because of the incredibly deep gameplay, not the story.

But you need to look at what your aiming for. If you are making a single player game, then you''ll need a story.

Multiplayer games dont need a story. Look at Counter-Strike, the most played Online game right now... theres no story at all, they dont even pretend there is a story. Its just a game.

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Ratfest.org

To answer the AP stating that lasting games have no story:

I surmise you must be quite young to make this kind of statement
since you base your opinion on multiplayer games and the period
of observation is less than five years.

I think that games that last are fun to play and do not need the
latest top computer to play:

1- as an old timer, I used to play with many computers (from ZX series, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Commodore, to my PC) at many
games. Some of them had a driving story (think Crafton & Xunk set
in a futuristic world or the text based adventures) others had no
story but could be played up to four persons on the same computer
(two to three on the keyboard, one on the joystick). All were fun to play and had a high replay value.
But you could not share with everyone since all the domestic computers were different (at one time I had an Amstrad while my neighbour had an Amiga) and most of the games were not developped cross-platform (except some coin machine titles like Tempest)
Worse, when the computers disappeared, the games were forgotten (eventhough few were reedited, they did not last really long on
the european shelves).

2- most of the games that were sold five years or ten years ago do have a second life in the economics series: games like Fallout, Starcraft, Doom or Myst are still sold downpriced. If you look at the sales figures since the first apparition of the
game, you could be surprised (look at Myst or Tempest for
example). The reason of their success is threefold:
- they are fun games that everybody recommend and have
- today, all computers can run easily these games
- they are downpriced and can be bought by young players

3- multiplayer games were born with the development of Internet.
I will not come back to the advantages (opponents in the world, fun games developped specially for that medium) and drawbacks
(phone cost in some countries, bandwidth bottlenecks).
Internet is in a context of professionalisation (spelling ?) and
segmentation of computer games. The games mainly played on
Internet are mostly FPS or realtime strategy: they are based on
the reflexes of the player. The player must be young and have time to fully enjoy the games. When he/she gets older, he/she
wishes for another experience: games that can be paused, forgotten to be played back some time later (one week, one year, ...). When speaking of lasting game, you must now analyse for which market segment (youngs, adults or seniors ?).

4- eventhough a game is not multiplayer, it can be enjoyed by many people and create a community of mind. In every schools, kids are exchanging game experience: what do you do to retrieve the ocarina ? At what level are you ? Where is the third secret in the level X of Tomb Raider II ?

To conclude, the success or life duration of a game is not based on whether there is a story (or graphics or music) or not. It is
based on the gamer''s experience: the more fun and replayable the
game is, the more players will ask for it. Besides, we still have
to beat all time bestsellers: Chess, Draughts, Shogi, Gomoku,
Awari or Cards (they all have a story eventhough it is forgotten, and they are played all over the world and on
Internet).

Red. <-- I think I will reinstall M&M 4 and 5 to play.

In my post above, I am answering to Ratman and not an AP as I
originally wrote. Apologies.
Red.