Same here.
IMHO
No. When I first started playing video games, Pong, Space Invaders, Asteroids, etc.
none of them had a story. And I had a blast playing them.
A story helps, to be sure, don’t get me wrong, I love a game with a good story. Red Dead Redemption, The Last Of Us, Area 51, etc. (Too many to mention) But, for me It’s not necessary.
Give me a cool world to explore, some enemies to kill, with some collectables. and I’m happy.
Cool world to explore doesn’t just happen. A lot of work goes into crafting cool background lore for it, thus creation of the story happens.
The only reason you had blast with Pong and others simply was due to lack of any alternative 
As soon as more advanced games came to be, good ol’ pong and other games were shelved.
Just to be clear, I don’t say that games need stories. But my personal preference is to play a game with a story.
It really doesn’t matter, in my opinion.
It is not my belief that they are irrelevant, but rather the developer signs a contract to deliver a new experience to the player. This experience must attract and maintain the player’s interest. Whether this is achieved by novel game mechanics, appealing visual aesthetics or quirky background music is just a case detail. I’ve enjoyed playing many games which solely focussed upon interaction, whilst recently I’ve spent a large amount of time watching others play games, such as The Last Of Us, for a number of reasons which did not include the short interval between successive head shots.
Nevertheless, such elements must not go as far as to become self indulgent. We will all have likely experienced games which force you to use a certain mechanic for its own sake, or storylines which remind you how painfully desirable a “Skip dialogue” feature would be.
I hold the opinion that there is a balance, however. After a certain period, we look for reason behind mindless button mashing, or adrenaline filled sequences to escape the heavy-weight storyline. Finding that balance might be the most difficult of tasks.
There can be narrative in your games without a story. A narrative of action.
Creeping around the disused missile base you find a locked door in the basement, after searching around you discover a secret panel, after opening it with a screwdriver you found on a corpse earlier you find a complex circuit. You spend about ten minutes trying to understand the puzzle before suddenly having a brain wave and checking the back of the panel that you removed. There’s a circuit diagram! You fix the circuit and open the door, but it leads to an empty lift shaft without a lift. Hmmm… how can you you call the lift so you can ride it down to the next level?
There, you’ve just taken part in a “story”. Later you may think back to this event especially if you find another door panel somewhere, and you may remember what happened as if it was a real thing that happened to you.
IMHO all the best games I’ve played had a narrative of action. Others also included some textual narrative, like audio logs or emails or books or files or whatever, but without narrative gameplay you just can’t engage with the story.
Gameplay is what matters in a game, it doesn’t matter how fancy the graphics are, how brilliant the storyline is if you’re forced to do something boring in order to get through it all then it just isn’t worth it. I actually have a really good example with this and that’s The Old Republic MMORPG, that could have been a relatively interesting story but because you’re forced to do boring and repetitive grinding in order to progress through it all it becomes so tedious that you don’t even care about the story anymore.
Storylines when they’re written well in a game accompanying great gameplay make a game really good, but gameplay should always be the priority. If you want to have a game that focuses mainly on story then a visual novel would probably be your best bet or just skip all that and go make a movie instead or something and learn some animation skills.
In terms of importance, the story should always remain secondary to the gameplay. In terms of quality, it should be good but it should be there to support the game and the game should be top priority. It’s like sauce on a meal, if there is sauce it should complement and be good, it can make or break or even ruin the main course. Sauce by itself is not a meal.
There can be too much story in a fun game. I used to love Onimusha until I played Onimusha 3…
oh boy… when I got to the french guy back in the past, there was this 10 minutes long non skippable movie. I turned the game off and never played it again. It was like eating pasta drenched in sauce.
This perfectly illustrates the fact that we are all unique in our preferences! I love paste with copious amounts of sauce. I cannot say the same for cereals, however.
I don’t agree with the previous comments that gameplay trumps all other hands. As I’ve said, it’s not unimportant by any means, but I’ve played a lot of games as much for the look as I have for the game play. Ugly graphics really enervate me, as though they’re sucking the life out of the game. I enjoy Minecraft, for example, a lot more after the texture updates of late. Everything sits much more harmoniously.
As said the entertainment is what counts. It does not really matter if it comes from game play, story, graphics or sound. What matters is how it fits together to deliver the entertaining experience.
Finally it also depends on the personal taste. Not everyone likes the same books. Some prefer novels, some prefer thrillers, others prefer to wait for the movie.
The flexibility of games allow very different ways to tell the same story and - as that is what counts - very different ways to entertain. Not everyone can be entertained in the same way. I think this thread shows it.
If a game needs a story to be entertaining? I guess this depends on the game itself.
ie metal gear solid? 
Sorry, Mario, your story’s in another castle.
Well said.
If a game has no gameplay, it’s no longer a game. Noodle soup isn’t pasta, it’s soup. A cup of coffee that’s 85% cream and sugar is coffee flavored cream sugar. So no, games do not need any story. Solitaire, checkers, those games are timeless and storyless.
I agree with what a lot of people have been saying about using actions and events to tell a “story”. The best thing you can do is make the game such a great experience for the player, that the player ends up telling stories about the game to other people.
I could go to Canada in real life and have a great time and tell stories of my trip to friends. What If I play a game that has me go to Canada? It looked cold and the AI was very polite. Whose story is that?
It depends how you tell your story.
For example solitaire is a story in its own. It tells how you find a way to complete the stacks. Simple story - entertainig for quite a while and a different story each time you start again. Surely you would not write book on that … But hey there are even books on how to complete a game ;).
What about a story telling game challenge?
Phase A) submit a short story. -> vote for a story.
Phase B) create a game of any type to tell the story. -> vote for a game
I think Phase B should be Phase A when it comes to a game.
Story is an engine of its own. Having one helps direct a game, definitely.Almost like a script of its own and a set of rule.I personally want to take games like Ace Attorney to the equation and some Linear RPGs because without the lore and universe itself, it lacks a rward of its own.