At least according to Shigeru Miyamoto.

Pretty good article:

“I have never thought of games as a means of storytelling,” he says through a translator, “so while many people have approached me in the past and said ‘why don’t you make a movie?’, I had never been interested.”

These younger game creators, they want to be recognised,” he sighs. “They want to tell stories that will touch people’s hearts. And while I understand that desire, the trend worries me. It should be the experience, that is touching.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11201171/nintendo-super-mario-pikmin-tokyo-film-festival-mandarin-oriental-tokyo-sega-mario-kart-zelda-wii-oculus-rift.html

I agree with this - so many game try to wrap up a story through a cinematic cutscene at the end of the game and 90% of the time it falls flat. Introductory sequences can still do an effective job but endings rarely do credit to the rest of the game.

After downloading and playing a few hours the recent HD San Andreas release (and discovering my nostalgia was short-lived), I went back to finally finish the "Lost and the Damned" DLC for GTA IV.

*** If you haven't played it I strongly suggest you do - here come some spoilers **

GTA IV had excellent voice acting and the animations during cut scenes were pretty decent. However at the end of the TLAD DLC, after the clubhouse is burnt down and everyone departs, the last place you can make a manual save for your "Completed" save is at a recently unlocked save house. It's half burnt down, everything inside is wrecked and, to save, Johnny Klebits sits down in a poorly-lit room, on a grimy mattress, next to a gas-heater. As I wasn't playing any post-ending content, this was my last moments with the characters and seemed an incredibly fitting tone to end the DLC on.

Hmmm interesting. I think that games can learn from film, but that is highly dependent on genre. A racing game or simple platformer doesn't need or warrant a complex storyline. Let's be honest, Super Mario Bros was about a fat plumber rescuing a princess from the big bad. We didn't need to know how he got there, why Bowser was evil and how Mario was able to do half the stuff he did. We had a simple story and had fun running, jumping and killing.

On the other hand a game like Zelda, needs that story and needs the story beats and the lows and highs. The whole game style is premised on this long involved story. A game like Zelda would definitely not be as interesting without the story.

Without any story, games will be the same everywhere. With a great story comes great potential to create something amazing.
Just look at the Uncharted series, Last of us, Spec Ops: The Line, Beyond Two Souls. Without the story, it would be a mess and not fun.

Racing games and platformers would benefit less than other genres from good stories. The games I have enjoyed most and had the most fun in was those that gave it a cinematic treatment, had a great story and ended everything nicely. I really don't enjoy games that has nothing worth story wise and I tend to move away from them.

I'm happy if you give me a game that has a good story and has good mechanics.
Give me a mindless "fun" game and I shall move on.

Things like this article goes both ways. People respond differently to different things.

The Walking Dead Telltale's game had a brilliant story!!! The game was just a simple point & click, but the characters & story is what grabbed you!!
TLoU was very good as well, when it came to capturing the characters emotions!

A great game for me is one that uses the game play to access and enable the story. In most cases both are equally important along with music and narrative. I generally don't enjoy games where you just told to perform XYZ with no real reason given. Same with having a game just as a bunch of cut scenes chopped together. There needs to be a balance. It needs to feel like the players personal involvement is important to the progression of the game, but at the same time that involvement needs to have some justification to drive that progression.

Games with no real story may have been enough back in the day – Tertis, Pacman… But now those sort of games are merely passing distractions. The potential to become connected, absorb or invested in a game is much higher then with a movie. I think that, perhaps, is that “experience” Shigeru Miyamoto is talking about ? Saying games have nothing to learn from movies is a little short sighted. BUT they are certainly not the same thing and should never feel they need to be limited to what norms set by films. They can take the best from what movie making teaches us and add that user involvement to make it something more.

Saying all that - I am realisably addicted to Hearthstone at the mo and there certainly is no real storyline in that game. But does how addictive or distracting a game is make it a great game?

far too often Miyamoto speaks in absolutes; he doesn't know what he is talking about. Simple as that.

I, for one, am grateful that not every developer in the world has to be following these very linear ideals Miyamoto keeps talking about, and that we have developers trying different avenues to express what they want to. Because that is what gaming, like any other entertainment medium is about, expressing something (or nothing if you choose).

meh, if all developers went by his words, we'd never have depth in games and all characters would be soulless rehashes, we need to have those annual movie simulators churned out because that's what attracts people to video gaming these days

I think games should stop competing with films...if I want a Cinematic experience then I'll go to the cinema. Some of the best games I've played dealt more with the experience than shoving some convoluted narrative down your throat...

Still, having a story in a game is still great if its done well, and if it makes the player feel that they we're an active part in the narrative (Spec Ops: The Line, a large part of Western/JRPG's)...

So Miyamoto makes a great point in that games should be about Involving the player more, and sucking them into a virtual world where they can do stuff as opposed to dragging them along, and asking them to press a button every once and a while (For a great deconstruction of this play Stanley Parable!)