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So, sales figures are all that matters now? Sales != quality. Also, while they may not outsell some Wii games, games like BioShock and Mass Effect sell like CRAZY. In the MILLIONS. Proof that games with stories sell just fine, thank you.



Games shouldn't have stories? Why not? You're basically saying - why do we need Radiohead or The Velvet Underground when Lady Gaga and Kesha sell so much better?



You clearly haven't played things like Mass Effect, Dragon Age: Origins, and so on.



Things with story and emotion can't be fun? Wtf?



You do realise that modern RPGs and even some modern shooters offer A LOT more freedom and direction-less gaming than Wii games, right? Your argument makes no sense.

It's the most common way to measure "success" in the market, yes.

You're just not part of Nintendo's target demographic Thom.

The story IS about Nintendo's dropping sales and you bring up the point that Nintendo "fails to deliver" on the games. You made the association between sales and "quality" in your post.



He said "games don't _need_ stories" to be good. Not that they "should not have stories". This is reads alot like intentional misunderstanding i.e. trolling.



Same point as above. Games should be fun. Games with stories can be fun. Games without stories can be fun. At least this is my understanding of what was written .. :o

All of this reminds me of a few friends who always said that games have to be more realistic to be fun. Its like they remembered one game years before that was really good (e.g. CounterStrike, I can't remember exactly) and after this game they had it stuck in their head that realism == good game. Then when a game like Quake3 RocketArena game around they couldn't accept it because it wasn't real enough (ok maybe Q3 RA is not a fair comparison to the awesome HalfLife). I agree with the original poster in that the _only_ thing that matters is fun. Everything else is (realism, story lines, whatever) is a means to an end.

Edited 2011-04-27 05:57 UTC

God, I hope you are trolling.

This is just wrong. Videogames may have abysmal stories, direction, acting, etc but they're pretty crucial in the modern industry. Downloadable dual-stick shooters and racers don't have enough legs to prop up the whole industry. You seem to be pleading gross ignorance in an attempt to merely contradict Thom.

Right, there's no emotional dimension to gaming. Competition, novelty, non-tangible reward seeking, entirely dispassionate pursuits, right? One wonders why a big boy like yourself would waste time gaming, associating yourself with pansies and troglodytes.

Never mind that this premise is false, by your own reasoning, a game without a story is abjectly directionless. I suppose you don't drive, either, given that there's only a finite number of places you can drive to; you'd rather stay in your basement.

Nintendo has clearly chosen their target aiming at a wide, simple audience. I fit well in their target: I play just once in a while at some friend's place, the more people participating the better. Which implies that I suck using "real" controllers now. Don't play an FPS on a console with me, I take half an hour just picking up the controls

My hobby and part of my job is realtime computer graphics. But to play Mario Party or what-it's-called I don't really care... Players like you need more hardware, more investment and frequent novelties. You need to be big, whealty, and to compete in a crowded market. Nintendo choose (and did so long before the Wii) to catch another market.

So it's perfectly fine for you to not like or enjoy anymore their products, but try to think if it's because of the company or because of you changing interest, growing up, changing your mind! Would you still love Super Mario, or become a fan of Pokemon today? For how useless we think it could be, if we were 8 we'd probably be into it. Realize that it's you who changed, more than they did - and it's much more interesting!

Sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with Thom on this one. Take a game like Final Fantasy VII. It had a great story, quirky but fun dialogue, and amazing visuals (for its time of course). Strip away all of that, and you still had an RPG that incorporated elements of RTS games, as well as a great magic-combination system (materia) that kept the technical gamers happy, along with fun little mini-games. It was the best of both worlds, and sadly that philosophy is missing from most of today's games.

Granted, there is a place for mindless platformers and story-less sports titles, and I've enjoyed those games in the past too. But not everyone is exactly like you; we can't all be happy with strictly twitch-gaming like you seem to be.

Variety is never a bad thing, and if we only allowed a particular type of game to be made then only a fraction of the gaming populace would remain, and that would be bad for the entire industry.