In your opinion, what's the best game genre for telling a story or building a world?

would you mind sharing your story? I would be very interested in hearing it so I can judge all your mistakes. no just joking but it would help with your question since not all stories fit all genres.

Oh I don't have any story yet, just bits and pieces of unrelated stuff that I haven't been able to put together into a concrete whole.

I've just been playing games since forever and always wanted to make some of my own but I'm either too lazy to finish anything, or I get bored with whatever I'm working on. Knytt Underground inspired me a lot, both creatively and technically: it showed me that it's possible to create a realistic world in a simple genre, and the clever use of solid-black foregrounds etc proved that you can have gorgeous looking scenes without investing too much time coloring pixel-art or 3D textures or anything.

So my ideal game if I ever make one is going to be something like KU, and if it has a story it'll tell it like Machinarium does: through pictures.

machinarium like every point and click adventure makes use of 3d environments. I don't think you'd get as good result in 2d because it would be flat, perspective will only show you one side, the side the player stands against. point and click makes use of point-perspective with most often 3 sides. but maybe you don't mean you'll do point and click in 2d platformer? either way i like your approach 'no talk' just tell story through pictures. but that could be lots of hard work. for example instead of having a conversation you'll have to make animations etc. to create a scene.

either way i like your approach 'no talk' just tell story through pictures. but that could be lots of hard work. for example instead of having a conversation you'll have to make animations etc. to create a scene.

Yeah, I can't draw or animate like those talented people at Amanita, so it'll probably have to be like the creatures in KU (the Epsilon?) that talk in symbols.

This is an old thread, but I figured I'd throw in my two cents since this is something I've thought about a fair bit.

I think that the main thing to consider about games as a medium is that they're interactive. This has been touched on by others in this thread, but my point is: how can you leverage that interactivity as part of your storytelling? We've started experimenting with that already; any game with multiple endings or a morality system can attest to that (even if both those mechanics are currently severely limited in the best cases). In those cases, you've affected the ending by your own play.

But we can go a little farther than that, I think. Take OFF, a French RPG where you control this guy called the Batter. The game makes the distinction very clear: It's not that you are the Batter, you control him. It's a quirk of the game's fourth-wall-less storytelling (which, at the risk of introducing spoilers, becomes more important to the story at the end of the game).

Now, I have some things I could say about OFF and the way it handles its own gameplay in service of the story. :U But if you can get past the first boss (sigh), the story really does leave you with a lot to think about regarding your agency in the game, and I think that angle is one that we could explore a lot more in game stories.

...
Aside from all that, one of the things that's been brought up (and which I REALLY enjoy) is when the game has a story that it leaves you to discover on your own. That's really just interactivity leveraged in another way: rather than feeding you the story all at once in a particular order, you can find it out on your own, at any pace you like. In some cases, you can even ignore the story to complete all the challenges, if that's your style. You're just put into this world and can enjoy it at your own pace. And that's what I, at least, really love about games: the potential for exploration, the ability to just take in a setting and infer from it what you will. Is that a lot of work, as Salmoneous said? Yes, but creating something that's good and worthwhile is nearly always a lot of work.

Aside from all that, one of the things that's been brought up (and which I REALLY enjoy) is when the game has a story that it leaves you to discover on your own. That's really just interactivity leveraged in another way: rather than feeding you the story all at once in a particular order, you can find it out on your own, at any pace you like. In some cases, you can even ignore the story to complete all the challenges, if that's your style. You're just put into this world and can enjoy it at your own pace.

This is EXACTLY what I love about Knytt Underground!

It's also what prompted me to post this thread: How a single developer managed to create such a deep (literally and figuratively) world in a relatively simple genre.

Nifflas has convinced me that 2D platformers can go beyond arcadey coin-collecting stuff and can tell a story just as well as any other game style, if given the proper atmosphere (good music makes a huge difference!)

OFF looks cool too. Gonna have to check it out.

I think that the main thing to consider about games as a medium is that they're interactive. This has been touched on by others in this thread, but my point is: how can you leverage that interactivity as part of your storytelling? We've started experimenting with that already; any game with multiple endings or a morality system can attest to that (even if both those mechanics are currently severely limited in the best cases). In those cases, you've affected the ending by your own play.

i've been thinkign about that. u make an mmo rpg game built around empowering players to change the world. we're not quite there yet are we? havent played them all dont know half of them. but the idea is to have a dynamic world over a static world where u just occupy space, the saying 'ur actions have an impact on the world' is real. player make own quest would be something easy for them to develop in the game but works on the same level as a prescripted quest. go to point a > kill enemy > find loot > bring back; so the player make their own script with own conditions. im also thinking something like market economy be an easy thing to incorporate with real economics and payers run their own businesses and have workers. it wouldnt be too hard to make, the game dont need much more over the usual rpg. its just knowing how too build it right. something like u and ur group take over an enemy outpost, this outpost becomes urs and the game knows this so the enemy knows it and a quest becomes to retake the outpost (or even take as many outposts as possible for more control of the world). an outpost can provide safe travel routes and automatic rescource gathering for ur kingdom that boosts the economy. idk just shower thoughts.

edit: not be like actual traditional rpg but an rpg borrowing elements from other genres. like the one i mentioned before i got idea from battlefield conquest games. the point is that most actions should have an effect on the world directly or indirectly. to build a world ythat respondss to actions. if u have 2 kingdoms at war with each other u can have variables like how many npc soldiers each kingdom have, the number is increasedby the amount of territory is held and how many soldiers not dying. thats just one example but i think dynamic mmo games  is the logical next step forward.