Personally, unless it is very good and not overly verbose, I find story, beyond what the player actually participates in during play, to be obstructive and annoying. I want to play not sit through a movie or page through a short novel.

I guess it depends on the game. Can not imagine playing Tetris with a story, and can not imagine playing a good RPG (like Baldur's Gate) without one. The story should not be pushed in your face, but gently provide context and purpose of your actions. 

It's no secret that I'm a JRPG fan.  The story is always a huge part of a JRPG,  so I think it's safe to say that I prefer games with a fairly involved storyline.  That being said, there are plenty of games I like with little or no story.

I agree with vk saying that it depends on the game genre - arcade games or puzzles rarely need a story.

That being said, I do appreciate stories inside RPG and RTS games, though I don't like them if they're too complex.

For example, I've played through 'The Witcher' a while ago, but I personally found its complicated and involving story slightly confusing at some points. I was all time like: "Hmm... Am I doing it right or am I making a huge mistake which will trouble me later?".

Someone might say this is like in real life, but I don't like having to worry as in real life while playing.

On the other hand, I really loved the way some kind of background plot was given in 'World of Goo': it was not relevant to the gameplay and I didn't have to make important decisions, but the story - given through short messages, the signs and things like those, including the final dialog with MOM - gave a wonderful surreal mood.

Yeah.. depends on the genre.  I'm kind of having this same conundrum with my game.  I think if you choose to make a game with a storyline you have to make it entertaining and non-demanding. A fun way to do this is have scrolling text/voice-overs while a person is walking or grinding through monsters.  This way the player isn't getting sick of repetative game play and you have to provide little to no extra content.  If the player has to sit through a minute of boring talking scenes they'll probably quit playing.  Let them multi-task if they don't care about the storyline.

Most people don't care about a story and always click through the annoying  texts and cutscenes, I do that also.

But it really depends on the genre or kind of game, if it is something like quake-arena or unreal tournament, not much story is needed, since people only want to shoot each other up, but if you make an adventure or roleplay game a good story may be important.

One thing you should not do as a developer is to force people through the storyline by forcing them to watch cutscenes or make them click through endless messages, let them chose.

I would caution you not to say "most people" unless you have a survey with a decent sample size.  :)

That being said, the point you make is a good one.  If someone wants to skip story scenes and go right to gameplay, they should be able to do that.  There's no reason to force someone to watch story scenes if that's not why they're playing the game.

There was a big hit shooter game on kongregate, cant remember the name. It was all about story and the story made it a huge success. Infact it was so crappy shooter, the only thing made me finish the game was the story. On this point its almost safe to say that if you have a killer story, the game type really doesnt matter. Crappy stories doesnt add up to an arcade game, it can be better off without a story. But a really good story will make it better. For these matters, you can try to extract info from kongregate, as it has a huge user base and tons of games. I found the game:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/xdanond/rpg-shooter-starwish

Good luck giving a setting-mishmashy arena game a story.

@leilei: David Franzoni might have a problem with that statement.

Depends on the game.

Single Player Streamlined RPG and Point and Click Adventures: All about story. So I don't just want one I want a good one.

Single Player Exploration/Open World RPG: Story is definetly needed to point to places if the world is super big. But rather than an overarching storyline (mainquest) I love well thought out side quest lines.

Shooters/RTS/Platformers/Jump and Runs/Action Adventures: Give me some background. Nothing more needed.

I prefer a plot to most games I play. The only exception is to sencless violence games like Left4Dead, and even that has a minimalistic plot to it.

I enjoy good gameplay, and I enjoy good story, but generally attempts to do both at once end up doing neither that well, or at best one well, and the other an annoying diversion from the good part.  I think it's important to choose which one you want to focus on, and construct the experience around that.  There's a good reason why designations like "interactive fiction" and "visual novel" have cropped up that distance themselves from the "game" concept.

I could ramble on about this, but that's the short version.

I think the main part of the game is what is considered to be the main part of it :)

There are games centered around the gameplay and there are games centered abot the plot. And of course, there are different mixes of both.

Pacman/Mario/Doom have (almost) no story. They are centered around gameplay.

X-COM/Alone in the dark/Might and Magic series have a small story. Their main aspect is gameplay.

Space quest/Day of the tentacle/TES have a story which is an important part of the gameplay.

And some games like Mass Effect/interactive movies are centered around the story with gameplay being 'a bad addition' to it.

Each concept has its pros and cons. Each has its own 'followers'.

I wouldn't speak about game genere, because there are jump-n-run arcades with a huge background story (like Aladdin), and there are RPGs without one (like Eye of the Beholder 1). While the story tends to be more 'important' for quests (but even here there are exceptions, like Gobliins 1 & 3), it is 'not important' for arcades or puzzles. More specifically, the story may be or may not be a part of gameplay and this is what influences its (non)importance.

I don't want be offensive or seem like trolling, but just to make sure no one gets a bad impression, Might and magic is all about story. I still remember the names of important characters and places and all the details of the stories from MM 6 (1998) & 7 (2000) and heroes 3. Cant say the same for the newer installations, I quit after 8 failed to deliver.

Ooops... my bad... I've meant M&M 4-5... Forgotten to specify the chapters...

While I remember several names of npc characters, but still all the story (at least the one presented in the game) excluding story-irrelevant sidequests can be described at about an A4. However, this is IMHO, of course.

I love the Might and Magic games (and was also saddened by 8's failure to deliver... and 9's feeling of being only half finished.) I think those games had good gameplay AND good story, but the story didn't push itself in your face. On the contrary, I had to go looking for the story... which I very much enjoyed.

Obviously a game with good gameplay AND good story is the most desireable, but it is rare and difficult. Usually both features suffer because that goal is ambitious.

"One thing you should not do as a developer is to force people through the storyline by forcing them to watch cutscenes or make them click through endless messages, let them chose."

I am a bit conflicted about this because although I agree players should be able to skip boring text, I also feel like many games should be enjoyed for their story. Skipping through cutscenes and dialogue as fast as you can, then saying "meh, this game wasn't that great." is unfair to the experience the game designer is trying to provide.

The Final Fantasy games (especially the later ones) is pretty much ALL story with game play as an afterthought, but I still like them because the story is very interesting and I feel more connected to the characters than I do in a movie. However, I think these games still offer some way to speed through cutscenes and text to some degree, which is still a good feature even if your audience is the story-lovers; I must've played the beginning of Final Fantasy 6 like, twenty times. I don't need to see all the story elements because I have them memorized. *SKIP*

The corolary to skip-story-stuff-so-I-can-get-back-to-gameplay, is skipping gameplay components so I can get back to the story. In gathering ideas for my game project, I discovered nearly 40% of the target demographic that I spoke with would prefer to do away with that tedious combat and loot collecting nonsense and just get to the next chapter of the story. Another 40% wanted to skip past the stupid story garbage and get back to game play. Only the last 20% liked both story and game play.

This was by no means a large sample set (16 people?) so it may be statistically meaningless, but something to think about. If the designer feels both story and things like combat mechanics are components of the game as a whole, why is skipping story elements more valid than skipping non-story elements?

I personaly dont like games where you "see" the story but rather you play through it, now that said a well placed cutscene can do wonders for a game ($^@*% sephiroth leave aeris alone!)

However most games take it way one way or the other, basically you typically end up with a game that is jump and shoot chick, with missles! or you get the cutscene heavy im going to flush out 20 years of metroid games all in one go!

Basically neither is better, the combination is best.

The rule of thumb i usually use is "if I didnt care about the story would i be button mashing" if the answer is yes then rethink your design maby.