Narrative or Gameplay First?

There tends to be a fairly obvious difference between games that were created to tell a story and games that have a story after the gameplay was established. A game like Darkest Dungeon, for example, has great mechanics and a very intricate gameplay loop, while the story itself lends well to the mechanics without being much of a focus. Yes, they tie very well together, but one is certainly stronger than the other. We've all heard long spiels about how brilliant Darkest Dungeon's mechanics are, but I hadn't even known what the story was about until I played it. I didn't even know what the general theme was other than "spooky."

On the contrary, you have games like Death Stranding which used most of its marketing and branding to show off the actors, story, and visuals. Clearly, this game was created to tell a story, and gameplay was considered afterward. That doesn't mean the gameplay is good or bad, it just means that the focus was on a specific narrative that then tied into its own gameplay.

Many narrative-heavy games require simpler gameplay mechanics because anything more dramatic would take away from the narrative, such as Nathan Drake massacring people with a rifle before delivering lovable one-liners about treasure hunting in Uncharted. Likewise, many mechanic-driven games suffer from overly complicated plots that detract from the gameplay, like the hundreds of hours of dialogue in an otherwise shooter RPG like Anthem.

This is to say there isn’t a “correct” way to make a game. If you are looking to tell a good story, go full steam ahead and make a good story. The warning comes from the fact that genres tend to have their tropes and their audiences. If you want an emotionally invested, story-rich game, you may be hard-pressed to implement it in your Match-3. If you’ve come up with a brilliant game mechanic that will floor audiences with how fun it is to play, don’t spend the majority of your marketing on the plot. Really just boils down to what you want the end goal to be.