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[Servant Corps]

I want to basically test something. I want to test how storylines are important in gaming. Does stories actually increase people's enjoyment of the game?

I want hard data. I don't want opinons though. So I have an idea, inspired by a friend of mine, Neko. Sadly, I don't know how to pull it off.

You have two games. Both games are the exact same clone of Asteroids. The difference is this:

The game without plot: Destroy asteroids without being hit by them

The game with a plot: You are a space ace, a veteran of a war between the planets. A dimensional overlap has caused the creation of immense asteroid fields at the edge of the solar system, headed inwards. You are sent to scan what the asteroids are made of, but you get caught in a field, then must survive and escape. This gets you system-wide renown, and you are sent to destroy various asteroid fields which areheaded towards various colonies, until eventually you have to clear a huge asteroid field which would otherwise destory Earth.

The gameplay is the same, destroy asteroids and not me destroyed yourself, but with the addition of a plot the motivations change.

The game with plot will have full motion cutscenes, long speeches, and otherwise be an awesome story. But the gameplay will be the exact same, just with an addition of a plot.

We see which games get more good marks. The one without the plotline, or the one with the plotline.

The only problem is I don't know how to make Asteriods, much less package it with a story and without a story and then place it on websites and see the results.

[JoshuaFH]

What you need is a testing environment!

You don't need to reprogram asteroids, you just need some clever improvisation.

This is what I'm thinking:

Just have two booths, with a good distance between them, with a machine that allows the user to play asteroids.

Have speakers attached to one booth, with some friends in the other room watching what that player is watching. Have the friends read from a script to the player as he his playing and explain the story to him that way. Even add interject story-line stuff during gameplay ala Star Fox 64.

Have a bunch of people play the booth without the speakers, and the booth with the speakers, and ask them how much they enjoyed it afterwards, and gauge results.

[eerr]

why do you want to test storyline importance to gaming?

[Servant Corps]

Because if I don't, then the argument over if storyline has an importance to gaming or if it doesn't will continue endlessly.

People who write stories are usually not paid very much, because they are considered not to be that valuable. If stories increase sales of games, then it shows people who write stories for games are important, but I can't argue for the importance of storylines without any sort of, you know, proof.

[Rilder]

Background story to give you something to fight for/immerse you: Good. "The asteroid shooters are an elite group of spacepilots protecting space from rocks"

A linear storyline in the the entire game revolves around: Bad. THERE ARE 20 ASTEROIDS COMING, QUICK YOU MUST GET INTO YOUR METEOR KILLER 3003 MK9 AND SHOOT THEM WITH Mk12 LASERS, CAREFULL THAT ONE ASTEROID IS COMING RIGHT AT YOUR CARRIER!! YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO DESTROY 200 ASTEROIDS OR WE ALL DIE, ALSO THAT ONE ASTEROID KILLED YOUR FATHER.

[Duke 2.0]

 If the second example was frantic enough, I would actually enjoy that. A sort of satire on game plots.

 But yes, I say find some game development forum and package two games under different users: They won't be the exact same except for the plot or else people will notice and vote the plot one up because it has more content, just some basic recoloring and graphics swapping. Otherwise, identical. Hopefully two generic sets of graphics won't hurt the results.