To all you modders out there!

[Adrianis]

Spoiler below!

Okay about this whole story vs. gameplay thing - after I went through game school I can totally understand where she's coming from there. Keep in mind, she's not saying that story is always, in any case and without exceptions less important than gameplay or whatever - she's giving advice to students.

And I can't count how often I've met students who were all like "Yeah i got this awesome game idea! It's about this angel who was cast out from heaven in this alternate cyberpunk reality where technology has replaced blah blah blah..." and when you asked them what kind of game they actually wanted to make, they were like "oh... kind of an action-rpg-adventure open world shooter thing...with melee combat!".
Needless to say, their projects always failed, unless someone shook them violently and forced them to first think about stuff like engine and core gameplay mechanics before writing the story. Because a game without story is still a game, but a story without game is a book at best and you're not in game school to write books.

So yeah, I think that's what she means there. And it's sound advice if you ask me

Totally, which is why I added the caveat that the sentiment of that sentence makes some sense in the context of her being a university lecturer. But what's happening there is that there is an attempt to define what makes a game and what doesn't make a game - story driven games that are increadibly linear with little to no player agency and mechanics that amount to a single click to interact have existed and continue to exist in the format of Adventure games, and they have been and will continue to be (fairly) popular.

They are still games, Dear Esther is still a game and attempts to cast it as something else amount to people not liking the format - that's fine, you like what you like and she doesn't like that. What should not happen is game design students being told by people in a position of authority that a game idea that starts with a story is not a game idea, that is clearly bunk, and will discourage a future generation from exploring certain avenues of design.


I would also like to re-iterate my support for Palistov supporting me for supporting his comment, in order to see how long that chain of approval can feasibly continue for.