Is it possible for a flash game to have a good story?

Almost no flash games have good stories, in my opinion. I think the only flash game that had a story that intrigued me was The Breach, and it’s kind of a clone of Dead Space.

Originally posted by GameBuilder15:

Almost no flash games have good stories, in my opinion. I think the only flash game that had a story that intrigued me was The Breach, and it’s kind of a clone of Dead Space.

Yes, i agree bro.

I disagree.

Its possible to have a really good story in a flash game, it all depends on the person who writes it. And how the story is presented. And how much story is presented.

Ppl don’t seem to understand, creative writing is a different field from programming.

It’s very difficult to have a good story in a game. Games are dynamic systems that respond to player input. Their narrative evolves based on the players’ choices. Stories have a fixed narrative and must obey literary conventions. The two media are almost entirely at odds.

There are ways around the problems, but they are not completely satisfactory. First, one can dissociate the story from the game, as was done in Diablo II, for instance. There, the cutscenes tell a story which is different from, but related to, the player’s. They follow two protagonists who are otherwise never seen by the player while, in the rest of the game, the player is given all the play elements they need to create their own narrative. It works, but it creates a disconnect between the two storylines which makes the cutscenes seem superfluous at times.

Another way to alleviate the problem is to give players ‘choice points’ at which the story branches. The problems with this approach are immediately obvious: the earlier in the game a fork is located, the more significance it has on the player’s experience, but the more work it creates for the developers. In the extreme, a fork at the very beginning of the game would immediately double the workload. Worse, any further branching of either path doubles the workload again on that path. The complexity quickly becomes overwhelming, and for quickly diminishing returns. On the other hand, choices in the late game, for what basically amounts as different endings, can be rightly viewed as gimmicky. They bring nothing to the game itself, which is basically over. Additionally, players may feel constrained rather than liberated by the limited number of options, leading to the impression that one is not playing the game as much as reading a choose-your-own-adventure book.

Finally, and this is my preferred option, it is possible to trust the player to create their own story, by giving them background elements and a sandbox to play with. This approach requires that the game be ‘smart’ enough to respond to players’ inputs in a reasonable way, and open-ended enough that players’ choices actually do have an influence on the outcome. Civilization-like games can provide a very good basis for this type of player-made narrative. The trade off, of course, is that the developer loses control over the story, and must accept that every player will experience the game in a different way.

tl;dr: Pre-made stories are good for books and movies. Games are dynamic systems and require dynamic narratives.

You’re looking in the wrong places. Have you ever tried Alice is Dead, Reincarnation series or The Ocean Around me. Those are some series with stories, although TOAM is just beginning.

Of course it’s possible for a flash game to have a good story! It’s possible for any type of game to have a good story. Just as FlashGrenade and Ace_Blue saud: It depends on the writer/the writing.
But you also have to ask yourself: Is it NECESSARY for a flash game to have a good story? For example: If you’re talking about an epic Action-RPG kinda thing, then yes; a compelling storyline and believable characters are a must-have. A fast-paced FPS may benefit from a good story, but good level design is much more important. And a puzzle mini-game that’s supposed to be beaten in half an hour during lunch break may not need a story at all, but for example funny dialogues.
(These are all just examples, of course.)

Originally posted by acedragon64:

You’re looking in the wrong places. Have you ever tried Alice is Dead, Reincarnation series or The Ocean Around me. Those are some series with stories, although TOAM is just beginning.

He was asking if it’s possible for a good story. All of those have bad stories, especially TOAM.

The Reincarnation games have terrible stories. The Ocean Around Me’s story isn’t so great (no offense to my buddy Moshdef). And I don’t know what TOAM is.

TOAM = The Ocean Around Me

Originally posted by TheKaveman:

TOAM = The Ocean Around Me

Oops, of course.

EBF3 has a pretty good story. Of course, by ‘good’ I mean I enjoyed it. It’s pretty subjective what makes it good or not. Personally I wasn’t into The Breach that much and I have a feeling if it wasn’t a shooter game it wouldn’t be mentioned in this thread at all. On the other hand, the Reincarnation games are well written and solidly presented – but the themes they cover are quite dark, and the games tend to be crass and borderline offensive in places, and I find them distasteful enough that I skipped a few of them entirely. However, there’s a big difference between “I don’t like this story” and “this story is objectively bad”. I would argue that any game where players are into the story has at least a decent story, though you’re most likely to see that with RPG and longer point’n’click games.

It doesn’t help that the prevailing attitude by many programmers is “we don’t need a writer” even when they aren’t a good writer themselves. A lot of games have a good basis for a story, which is let down by horrible writing. Paladog seems to suffer from this, although I’d guess the programmer’s first language isn’t English (at least, I hope not), which is some excuse. The story is pretty much just tacked on, so it doesn’t matter much, but with sharper writing it would have been more meaningful than “Help I am being chased by the kicking monster”.

IMO, Company of myself has a pretty good, albeit minimalist, story.

Mardek has a good story.

Stawish.

And of course, there’s the epic narrative of You Have to Burn the Rope.

Originally posted by saybox:

Personally I wasn’t into The Breach that much and I have a feeling if it wasn’t a shooter game it wouldn’t be mentioned in this thread at all.

I like shooters and sci-fi horror so The Breach is right up my alley. A few things could have been improved; for example I think there should have been reloading and the game should have been harder. I guess the storyline isn’t fantastic, but I like that kind of stuff.

Alice is dead story is mindblowing.

Originally posted by GameBuilder15:

Almost no flash games have good stories, in my opinion. I think the only flash game that had a story that intrigued me was The Breach, and it’s kind of a clone of Dead Space.

Mardek RPG’s story is good, Clarence’s Big Chance story isn’t good, but it’s funny. Raider’s story is pretty nice.

There are some other ones that I played on different sites, but that was so long ago that I can’t remember the names nor much about them.

In my opinion, games are probably the hardest form of storytelling, that’s is why so many suck.

Originally posted by qwerber:

Alice is dead story is mindblowing.

In the sense that you’ll blow your brains out if you spend too long trying to understand it, as it quickly becomes obvious that every minute you spend on that is one minute more than its writer ever did. Seriously, you couldn’t pick a worse example for good writing. The story is not told as much as left for the player to piece together, but it does not form a coherent whole. It contradicts itself in some key aspects, which makes it cross the line from mysterious to nonsensical. You have a better chance at guessing the animal from a piece of mangled roadkill than of putting this story back together because at least all the animal parts come from the same beast and they did fit together at one point.

Short Answer: Yes.