As the title suggests, I've always had this idea of the difference between "good" games and "enjoyable" games. Part of this came from my last year of uni where I had to convince my honours supervisor that games could even convey narrative (seriously, this is an issue that's up for contention in the academic world and video game scholars will snarkily call you a "narratologist" if you try to say that they can). And in trying to identify exactly HOW games can convey a narrative, I came across two real distinctions in how games operate. And it's really the difference between a game that is "good" and a game that is a movie broken up with incidental player action.
Just for reference, this post is going to be working with the understanding that a game's narrative is "any and all events which unavoidably must occur assuming the player successfully arrives at the creator's intended ending."
So for example, in
A "Good" game, I feel, is a game in which every possible Emergent Narrative feels as though it could be interpreted as a complete narrative. That is, cutscenes are unable to contradict the player's choices. Obviously older games especially have a million glitches and this can throw that out, and some issues with the gameplay/narrative integration can be pretty minor, like in the
The best example of story and gameplay integration I personally would say is
A "Bad" game is one in which the player's actions seem completely irrelevant to the story that plays out. Games like
My justification for calling them bad comes down to the nature of gaming. In a medium that is currently under constant public scrutiny for being mindless violence, and being written off in significant areas of the academic world as nothing more than mindless entertainment incapable of telling a meaningful narrative, I think it's important that we do see games which are able to give the player a meaningful narrative which actively benefits from the interactivity that is unique to gaming. Not necessarily through meaningful choices (as this is pretty impossible because you can't allow the player to influence literally everything (see The Stanley Parable Raphael Trailer) but rather by creating a reasonable "illusion of choice". You want to give the player enough choice to be engaging, but not so much choice that it allows them to go against the intended narrative and create canon or narrative errors (Like
Either that or have a few intended narratives/consider ways of recognising more unusual player choices, or construct a broad narrative which will allow the broad range of player options to not contradict the core narrative. Basically so long as someone can sit down in one complete play through and get a narrative that works, it's at least a passing grade.
This structure is only really useful in assessing single player games.
How do people feel about the distinction? Are there any games which you feel don't easily fit into this mould? Do you feel this distinction is too black and white? Do you think that it matters whether or not a game is bad on a theoretical level but enjoyable on a "fun" level? Do you think a similar distinction can be placed on multiplayer entertainment-focused games?
I think for me I find it interesting that I put