I just finished reading this interesting Eurogamer article about the dearth of good plots that make sense in a video game context.
While it was interesting to read about the experiments in "emergent narrative" that are ostensibly the focus of this piece, I can't help but have a few quibbles. Namely, that video games have generally succeeded in the plot department best when they are relatively linear. Some might say that this damages the need for it to be a game, but as a number of commenters have pointed out, games in general are best at creating the ludonarrative – that is, the narrative created outside of the game by the players. If you can create a great straight-ahead narrative (I'm thinking of something like Grim Fandango), the ludonarrative naturally follows, and you also get to have a great story.
The problem is the periphery role that most video game writers take, and the fact that there's such an aversion to risk in the mainstream gaming climate right now. No one wants to push the boundaries of gaming narrative (and I mean really push, none of this Heavy Rain or Mass Effect 2 or Red Dead Redemption nonsense), so we're left with too many games that have to force their game bits on you in protracted, momentum-killing and gratuitous violence. That's unfortunate. The Social Network, for instance, could really work as a game, but no one would make that game because no one knows how to write or sell that game, and no one in the games industry is even half as talented as Aaron Sorkin (though some are almost as egotistical).
I just want games to have better writing in general. The idea of emergent narrative is interesting, but I can't help but feel that the industry has so many other problems that maybe they should focus on the baby steps first.