Jeff Grubb Quotes

The most important thing in games isn't the designer's narrative, but the story the player creates through his experiences.

I would say I'm a storyteller first, but game making is very wrapped up in how I think of story. If I were to have a story idea, and I decided to write a novel with it instead, I'd have to very consciously de-couple it from gamedom - for example, deliberately add in things that could not be represented in a game scene.

Stories in which the player doesn't inhabit the main character are difficult for games to handle.

I believe that even today we can only tell a simple story without really interfering with gameplay. But in the future, I think it will almost be a requirement of all storytellers when they create games, how they can tell a more complex story without conflicting with the gameplay.

The thing about games is, players often say they don't care about story, but then if you took the story out, what would their reaction be? If no one cared about story, we'd all still be playing Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with Pac-Man, but the point is, there's a genre of games in which you want to become part of that world.

Playing a character in a video game is different to other performances because your character can't lead the audience of players in one direction.

We're growing into an entertainment medium as opposed to 'We make games. We make Mario jump.' We no longer have to focus so hard on the technical hurdles and can ask, as a player, why am I doing this? Why am I making these choices? Games that don't have that strong foundation stumble.

The way games are designed is you create a story, and then you create an obstacle course inside that story, and the player has to endure it to see more. So it's artificial. Game designers are so intensely worried about people getting bored that they pile on busy work for players to do.

It's about players making choices as they play, and then dealing with the consequences of those choices. It's about you telling your story, not me telling mine. It's about you.

Sometimes it's less about the character and more about the story for me. I'll play a rock in the background if I think the story is fantastic and I can be a part of it somehow. That's what I look for.

Acting allows me to tell a lot of stories, you know start at the beginning, finish at the end, and tell everything in between. Modelling is just an image.

I don't know how video game narrative works.

All the stuff I love most in game storytelling is never the big-picture stuff; it's the stuff that feels like curlicues, stuff that's just there because it's a game and because you can do it.

Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game.

I still like to play games that have a beginning, an end and a story.

On my long list of hates about RPGs, one of them was, I always felt it was an unnecessary chore to make you care about a world when, in fact, what most players care about is their own personal experience.

In papergaming, players can look at a character sheet of their own creation and see all of their skills, right there, in black and white.

I just like a good story. I want the story to be good and I want the character to be different than the last one I played. That's not always possible, but that's what I want.

I had always been intrigued by the emotional aspect of adventure gaming-the fact that people get so personally involved.

Role-playing games are just an organic improvised space for storytelling.

I play a lot of role-playing games on the computer. And I always have.

Most games end up with quite caricature scripts because they are just here to serve the game-play mechanics but not to trigger any emotional response.

First of all, I don't dislike direct storytelling - people seem to think that about my games! Actually, the truth is, I'm just not good at implementing direct narrative in my games.

I don't differentiate game design and script; it is one and only document. I think that one of the biggest problem with storytelling in games is that people tend to separate story and interactivity. Both should be conceived as one entity, each using the other.

The technology for radiant stories in 'Skyrim' is phenomenal. We tried and pared it back.