Making Stories in Video Games is No Fun

David Jaffe, the Game designer behind "God of War" has said, "I don’t want to tell stories with my games anymore." It seems after completing this particular game he has not enjoyed the game making experience as a whole and is reluctant to work on another story based game. "Since God Of War, I have lost interest in the genre of single player action/adventure games. In fact, I’ve really lost interest in making any kind of game that does not fully and only embrace interactivity in the most purest sense." He goes on to say, "As I player, while I am really loving the action-adventure genre, I also find myself spending more time playing pure games." As to what a pure game is I am struggling to get a definition. All games feature some form of interactivity. Whether there be a story behind the premise or not. Pure games, I think, by his definition would be games like Tetris. Something mindless which requires some form of interactivity (which still seems to cover most games that I can think of). However, how he defines these as being "pure games" specifically, I am not sure. Since gaming began the action of the game has been thinly veiled behind some sort of story. Space Invaders had a very loose story behind it. While he says that he has lost interest in single player action/adventure games he clarifies that is in making them and not playing them.

It is a shame to see Jaffe take this point of view. Unfortunately, making God of War must have been such a negative experience that it has left some sort of bad taste in his mouth.

Check out the full story in Jaffe's blog. All quotes are from David Jaffe's personal Blog: Game Design.