It takes one kind of craftsmanship to make a compelling story, and another to make an engaging game. It takes a third kind to align those two elements up against the border between fiction and metagame, so that they form two halves of a whole.

I think there is an inherit conflict between the game part and the story, and that in order to make the player become part of the story, one has to lessen the gaminess. And this is pretty much one of the main stuff of notgames.

I get at what you mean, that (as Michael also said), different people will have different thoughts on what kind of things feel right to do in a certain situations. Again, with the shooting-wolf example, the player might not think the loved one is worth saving and hence does not feel the same way the protagonist does and fail to sympathize and feel immersed. However, I would like to say that this is a problem between interaction and story, not between game and story. I actually feel that the game part is a detracting force that pulls away from the story and even immersion to some degree. So if you want to increase the "frama", I think that you need to think of it less as a game and instead as creating interaction that the player feels part of.

Now the problem of making player feel part of the interaction is very interesting, but as I said above, I would argue that it is a problem to try and fit in a game into it as well. To get the best possible story and player immersion, I think one has to disregard game elements and only focus on creating an experience. Of course game elements can still be very useful, but they should come from the wish to tell story and not be a base to build from.

Is your goal to tell the best possible story, or to blend story and game in the best possible way? Because I think the two are quite different problems.

Why does the protagonist's goals needs to be so separate from the player's?
In your "shooting wolves" examples, does the player and protagonist not strive to achieve the same goal? Is it not better to let the player be part of the drama and not just an outside observer trying to achieve her own goals?

It seems to me that by separating story and game from the start, you are sort of creating the problem you are trying to solve? Perhaps I misunderstood something?

I really liked it!

It is so refreshing to get a impression on a game without the usual bias that pretty much all gamers have!

I am curious if you got these feeling after actively searching for a meaning, or did they come naturally? If it was an active endeavor, what was in your way?

"Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud is a really interesting for designer for any medium (and not just comics). There is a lot of good stuff in that book!

A plot that is meant to be thrown away by the player after use?

Hmm, that is a hard question, but in a way: yes. When I get to it, the events is not what is important to me in a story. It is what these events means, what they try to convey. I think the narrative is only useful during the experience and afterwards it is not as important anymore. I see it as a vessel for deeper things. Of course, this does not mean that a narrative with little meaning cannot be a nice experience, but it is not something that I feel is a worthwhile memory, as the memory of concepts and the actual experiences. I am not sure if I am over-analyzing your question here, but I think certain things are only interesting as long as they last and then become obsolete. I do not like the idea of only living in the past though and present experiences are just as important as memories, but I think some things do not go beyond a momentary experience. When I ride a roller coaster, I do not remember how the slopes and so on where designed, but I remember my feelings and these are way more important to me. I think that a plot (events in a story) is similar to this.

The fights and the """meaningful choices""" are not interesting to me at all. But to be able to kiss your son on the forehead interactively, or rock a baby to sleep. Now that's impressive!

This is exactly what makes me want to try the game out! Something that is really lacking from games is these more tender and "precise" interactions. As I said, I think they are very hard to do in the medium, but that it might just be a matter of finding the right kind of interaction. Looking forward to the blog post! I am interesting in hearing how your connection was different when giving input for these types of events compared to just being a passive observer (as in books n films)

Michael:
Some of my favorite books and movies are not about the plot (as in sequence of events), but of the concepts and/or atmosphere. For example, take the movie "Lost Highway", which is tells an extremely disjointed plot, yet I enjoyed it immensely because of the atmosphere, themes and those sort of things. It was more the experience than the narrative that captured me. Also, I was able to enjoy the movie Anti-Christ (well at least the first 2/3) becuase of the excellent photo and sound that really sucked me in. Narrative wise that movie did nothing for me.
Some movies and books can grab me because of the issue they raise and the concept that they show me. This is very common with fantasy and sci-fi where many stories feels engaging because of the worlds that they build and not as much the actual stories (The Diamond Age is an example of this).
Games seem very suited for these kinds of experiences.

Jeroen:

In short, I am wondering how you can apply this theory to far more interconnected events, such as picnicking with miniature bottles of wine

I am not sure what you are after here, but I guess you mean using situation and fragment based story telling on more limited "sets"? The type of story telling I rant about works pretty well in large scale stories like "lost in the woods" or "trapped in house" and I kind of see a problem to smaller scenarios. Perhaps it is just a matter of designing the mechanics correctly, but when the player needs to do fine tuned actions things get problematic. For example, a scene where the protagonist is eating is much harder to do than wandering about in at a party. When at the party the player can chose to interact with many different people, take a snack, etc. It is easy to fill the world with interaction. But when sitting at a table the protagonist needs to be stuck and cannot do much except eat and drink. Of course one could talk to various characters as well, but this would be done in a much more constrained and static matter (since all are at their seats unless something "major" happens).
I have not given this that much thought though, so sorry for the rantish structure

Jeroen:
I agree that when you just set up playground and let the player run around you loose a lot of control. The player misses a gaze from character, a shadow moving across the floor, etc. When you have very scripted experience, like books, movies and many games you force the reader/viewer/player into seeing this and getting it across as directly as possible. This is why the structure we see in games is so used, because many tricks from other media stop working otherwise. I also feel this way too at times, but I think it is a sort of bias in that we have experienced these wonderful moments in other media, and then realize they do not work in the game we are creating, we might think that we have some huge flaws in our media.

I think part of the problem is because so few have really tried to not copy other media and because of this it is very hard to judge what can be done. Like we have talked about earlier, I think a way to go is for the game to react to the player and not just force the player to go on a certain path (or just let them free roam without any motivations). I like how Left 4 Dead has done it (although it is simple and inside a very linear game) and I think your idea with doing this to plot is very workable and something I would like to explore!

And Michael, I like that you always push that we should not be stuck at stories. It gives me a lot to think about!

There is more I want to write, but the I am tired and need to sleep! Might add more tomorrow!

God at play:
Thanks for the description! Will need to try it out when released!

And I thought it was really fitting that the game that won Nuovo had the most banal and boring gameplay elements of any game entered.

What extra elements make it so interesting? I thought it was "just" a kind of platformer that used strange visuals to disorient the player?

Interestingly, the framework for the new design is a book (it's called "The Book of 8"). And the linearity of a book implies a story. I'm hoping that we can use this to our advantage by simply relying on the player's familiarity with the format of the book, which might allow us to take more liberties with the interaction design.

Care to eleborate on this? I am very interesting in analyzing the way books are built up. It might be because I really enjoy books, but I draw a lot inspiration when designing from how books are read. For example: footnotes -> extra content that can be skipped. Chapters -> scenes.
Also, a reader often chose to read certain things more or less detailed. For example, when reading a book by Neil Stephenson, his world descriptions can be very hard to get at times and sometimes needs to be reread extra carefully to be fully grasped. However it is okay to skip and focus on other things instead. The same can be done with world detail and the player can choose to explore certain things at varying extent.
Also reading requires an effort and the reader has to do a lot more then when watching a movie (read the text, parse it, conjure up mental images, etc) and has a very simple input-output feedback that I think is worth exploring.

(Of course games have a lot more stuff that books do not have and books do not provide all answers. But there still may be a lot of valuable stuff to pull out by exploring)

But doing something that makes sense, and that maybe tells us something about the character's personality, is suitable. I don't think it has to be gameplay, it doesn't need to be problem solving or facing challenges (unless you're playing an inventor, perhaps, or a detective).

I agree! I think the key thing is get the player to "live" the character.

Not played it but considering getting the (although probably inferior) PS2 version.

The problems I have seen (reviews and videos) is that the game have very strong trial and error moments (the chases) and also use puzzles that are all about getting a key (with no relevance to story).

From what I can tell, several contemporary AAA games seem to really lead you by the hand by continuously telling you what to do. At least on easy mode (which is always my default choice). It's nice that they allow you to get through the game that way. But sometimes it feels too much like you're just following orders and you don't even know why (i.e. you're not really following the story).

Ye, Dead Space was that for me. I had no idea what the story was about because I always felt like a puppet. "Go there!", "Do that!", etc. If one has to figure out and make choices you get more immersed in the story too. I have to say some kinds hand-holding in terms of showing the right way is really good, because it is bad to be stuck. However, the game still have this challenge moments, where a  certain amount of skill is needed in order to progress and that is an even bigger problem to me.

Cheats does not feel like a solution to me and every time I have had to use it, any sense of immersion was lost.

I just found a pretty fun British show on Games, that actually had some worthwhile stuff in it.

What I found really fun and interesting was when Dana O'Brian discussed how he never completes games and how they lock away content from the user:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQK4Wp10qo&feature=related

Dana appears around 4.30 something.

The show is quite interesting and has some other fun moments like commenting on what kind of background stories enemies in an FPS might have. It also comments on how TV and other media usually view games.
First part here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjFiTd2nmI4&feature=related

If one has a specific story, what is the best way to tell it without resorting to the standard (and quite boring) gameplay->cutscene->gameplay structure that so many games have?

I have collected some thoughts here:
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/03/storytelling-through-fragments-and.html

How does everyone else feel toward storytelling in games?

It is also worth noting that I am firm believer of "meaning first", where one does not see a story as a chain of events, but as a combination of mood, theme, concepts and message that is to be brought forward.