To all you modders out there!

[rtjhbfvsrry]

Hilarious that you resort to belittling me while not actually responding to anything I said but to some strawman you created instead. Extra Credits supports what I'm saying, in fact the MDA paper I linked earlier I got from them.

This will be the last time I acknowledge you in this context since I tire of being insulted by someone who cannot have a civil discussion, but first off:

Translation =/= adaptation. The books that have been adapted into games are vastly different on account to being in a completely different medium and having to confirm to the rules and available actions that the gameplay allows for. I challenge you to translate Mark Z. Danielwski's House of Leaves - a straight translation of the story, not an adaptation mind you. Every single aspect and detail and nuance of that story in game form.

I have also not said you cannot create a game with story in mind, but this story has to confirm to your existing gameplay. Your examples have this, both Half Life and Bioshock. Much of those stories are told by the player doing something, hence the only way to tell those stories is BY GAMEPLAY. If these stories were books, they would not be interesting. If Amnesia was a book, it would not be interesting. They rely on there being a person to play through them - if you're just reading about Daniel, you wouldn't be scared. The twist of Bioshock in fact relies on it being a subversion of gameplay in that your objectives in the game are you doing the villain's work - the only way for the most known twist in gaming to have worked is because it was based on gameplay. They rely on you experiencing these things through gameplay for them to work, not being a story that is told to you. Without gameplay, these stories are nothing.

You even say it yourself, by adapting a book, you would be creating a game around a story. You are literally saying here yourself that you will be creating gameplay (a game) to put the story inside of. No matter how good your story is, if you haven't created gameplay to put it in, you cannot make a game. AGAIN, Gameplay (what the player experiences) and Game Mechanics (how it works) are NOT the same thing. You can have a story before you have game mechanics (like I said before, starting with game mechanics is just as stupid as starting with the story) but it is impossible to put in a story if you do not have gameplay first. You can have a story idea in mind as you create the gameplay, but you cannot design the actual narrative until you've figured out what gameplay tools your player will have to experience that narrative, how it is delivered to them. In any and all cases, the gameplay will always come first because a game IS gameplay. If you do not have gameplay, you do not have a game, and you do not have anything to put a story in.