quote:And yet even at their best, graphic adventures have flaws. They try to provide an illusion of player free will, but ultimately they are linear stories. A player may have freedom to move about a constrained space and solve the puzzles there in a variety of ways, but the designers control access to the next story node. Graphic adventures try to avoid branching structures that require them to create media assets many players won''t see, for the obvious reason that budgets are limited; if something is on the disc, you want players to encounter it.
As I am at the concept phase of designing an adventure game, I''ve encountered this dilemma too. I have to agree with Tacit. I think that Costikyan is too extreme in his views. Look at what he says about emotion further down in the article. This is clearly someone with an appreciation for mathematics and order, but denying the fact that his enjoyment of music comes from the emotions it brings, whether it''s some bombastic Dvorak or the tempered cleverness of Bach.
Is story just a crutch for games that aren''t good enough to make it on playability alone? I''m insulted by those pushers of completely free RPGs, who say that you create your own story out of the things you do in the game. So what? Maybe I''m playing so I can be entertained by someone''s vision, not just pushing about variables in a world. You can''t just place an interesting medieval or dystopia setting and expect it to "generate" stories. Stories are crafted like art.
