I love a lot of games with deeply thought out lore, and I recognise how that contributes to a deeply involved world and fleshed out setting, but I don't really care about the lore itself at all.

Like with one of my most favourite games ever, Morrowind, I can navigate Balmora and the surrounding areas from memory, tell you you're a filthy swit (n'wah) and swear by the nine like the rest of them, but if you ask me to name the nine divines, I'd only be able to name one (okay, I got even this wrong, I thought Vivec was one of the nine :D).

I just find the actual details of lore to be mind-numbingly boring. Perhaps it's how I find real-world mythology to be absolutely boring as well (I don't care who popped out of whose head fully formed, or who chopped off whose penis and created the tree of life, or who Jesus's 12 disciples were or whatever) but I recognise the importance of all that in creating the world we live in- why people could randomly say "Jesus Christ!", why certain religious buildings are shaped like crosses, and certain ones have domes and minarets, etc. And I understand it is similar for world-building in games.

I don't usually read the books in these games :P. And thankfully, the games (and most games with deep lore) don't really expect me to, but they include a lot of detail for those that do, it seems, and that bleeds into making the world seem real and established.

So, as the subject line says. And in what ways do you express this care?

I think that good universe building can greatly enhance a game experience, with interesting lore being a part of it (next to music, art style and general vibe). But I don't find that the lack of it necessarily gets in the way of enjoying a game. Unless, in some cases, if it's a noticeable downgrade from great lore that preceded it. Then it depends on how attached you are to the game universe.

For example, 40K games like Dawn of War and Space Marine I think is immensely more enjoyable for me than it would've been had it been reskinned games set in another universe that I knew nothing about. I love reading up about the lore of 40K, even badass characters from the games like Gabriel Angelos and Davian Thule. Won't really touch fan books though since I seriously doubt their quality.

Starcraft on the other hand takes place in a universe I find less appealing by comparison. It's still great and I love the games and the atmosphere to bits, but I'm less attached to the world and by extension the lore of the Starcraft universe. Which is why I find the incredibly cliched and uninteresting SC2 story, compared to SC1, an easier pill to swallow than someone who I'd imagine to be as big a SC fan as I am a 40K fan.

Something like Mario, Zelda or Rayman doesn't have much in the way of lore by contrast, but all three have amazing game universes to lose yourself in, which is enough. You can almost imagine there being deep lore of some kind, probably too crazy or otherworldly to follow, so you're content with just visiting the universes instead of trying to make sense of them.

The only game universe which I fear has been ruined for me personally lore-wise to the point that I've lost interest in the game is Warcraft. Warcraft 3 created one of the most fascinating game worlds I've ever seen and filled it with lore that, together with WC1 and WC2, amounted to something truly special. WoW I saw as an opportunity to actually explore that world from ground level, and I jumped at the chance. I ended up playing for 5 months, and especially enjoyed the vanilla zones for their distinctly WC3 feel.
However any plans of revisiting the world years later was squashed when I decided to read up on the lore, only to find that, to my mind at least, it had been butchered. A seemingly inevitable consequence I think of ballooning the lore in an mmo setting.

I used to moderately care. Not reading the whole of Morrowind, but still, wanting to get the background, to know what was going on in that universe, to give a meaning to the referenced gods and mythological events that popped up in texts or conversations, and to get a feeling of who was who in that pantheon.

I really can't be arsed anymore. Feels like a waste, assimilating all of that for a universe so insignificant as a videogame's, while there is so much to grasp in the so much richer, more complex, more meaningful world of genuine humans. Knowing a videogame's fictional mythology while still hardly knowing anything about Sufism or Alevism, which are actual belief systems that actually shape real people's real lives ? Learning Vvinderfell history while hardly knowing the independant trajectories of the different african States ? Being familiar with Tamriel geography yet mixing up Paraguay and Uruguay ? It would creep me up a bit.

Even Cultist Simulator, its flavor is cool to read, I love its strongly evocative writings, but I still skim through it, I don't try to memorize or map it out as a coherent mythology. I would probably have, long ago, as some sort of jigsaw to complete. But occult beliefs that actual people have actually believed in (or still do) feels so much more precious to grasp, in comparison. I'd be ill at ease for the effort put into understanding the ins and outs of a world that only exists inside my little computer when I launch this or that software.

So yeah. I mostly freak out about how big our world is (geography, history, ideas), and how limited our grasp and awareness of its multiplicity. Clogging our short attention spans and assimilation abilities with the flourishing lores that get created daily for simple gaming background purpose (and hardly illustrate anything about humanity) feels very odd. So, I kinda lose the required patience and interest.

I love exploring the world(s) and history of each setting, even more than actually playing the games, so I often look up wikis and whatnot to read about the lore while outside the game. Of course, I also enjoy seeing the game actually adhere to said lore, and find the game more enjoyable when I understand a reference to the world's history and can connect the dots beyond the game mechanics.

It really depends on the game. In some games I find it essential, like in RPGs; a solid lore makes everything feel more "real" and substantial, making you experience a world with its customs and traditions, thus greatly enhancing the roleplay experience by forging a past you can build upon.
In other games I really don't care, like in shooters - still, when done well it is always welcome.
Some games are surprisingly deep considering their genre, like the excellent Hollow Knight.

I always prefer if there is some story/lore in the games I play. Even in FPSes and such. That is why pure multiplayer games have almost zero appeal to me (one singular exception would be Unreal Tournament, but even that has a single player ladder).

The process I do with games is usually the same as with things in history. I find a mythos/topic that interests me the most. So for example, I am quite knowledgeable about Norse, Egyptian and Greek mythology (many thanks to Age of Mythology among other things), but know almost nothing about modern religions. I'm not going to learn about something I have no interest in just because it's a popular topic.

Dawn of War 1 was what got me into Warhammer 40K and I've been a fan ever since. Diablo has a pretty decent story (1 and 2) and that made me read up further on it. I can name you Angiris Council or the Prime Evils on the spot, tell you the fates of the characters from Diablo 1 or roughly retell the events of Horus Heresy but ask for anything from the Bible and I would not know.

WoW? I couldn't care less as it has been bastardized for the sake of multiplayer. The moment when anything I like starts including time travel, alternate universes or phrases like "This important character was slain by a group of adventurers/heroes." it is usually a signal for me to abandon ship as it starts to become an incomprehensible mess in 99% of the cases.
But I know pretty much everything about the events of Warcraft 3 + expansion.

So yeah, I value good story/lore a lot in any game. For me not to care about it, the gameplay has to be extremely good to counter it. Either the story has to grip me or the gameplay. There were even cases where it was only story that made me finish a game as the gameplay was horrendous (Mass Effect 2).
But of course it's best when both are good.

I'd say I'm probably in the same boat as the OP. I like to know the lore is there, and can read bits of it if I want, but generally I ignore the hundreds of random books in RPGs as I'd rather spend my time playing the game than reading its history.

A well designed world doesn't always need to dump all its lore on you for it to feel deep and interesting. Zelda I think is a good example of this.

But it does bug me when lore is inconsistent. It's not a game, but I recently watched the TV series Grimm and while I liked it I found the fact that they introduced but never fully explained a whole host of lore deeply unsatisfactory.

I care enough that it frustrates me that we don't know how many days are in a Hylian week or what major holidays are held as sacred. On the flipside, this is why Majora's Mask is so enjoyed, because so much is fleshed out for a universe you only spend 4 days in.

I'm not obsessive, but as Matewis, a little worldbuilding goes a long way. Giving things a cohesion helps oneself immerse into the depths of the world, to help you connect and give motive towards doing your quest in it. Things like timelines are stupid, unless they were planned from the outset or cohesive overall. A game like LOZ where thousands of years can pass between the games doesn't need one.

It's especially strange for a series like The Legend of Zelda to have only some loose guidelines, whereas Doom had a design bible before it was even established. (It also amuses me to no end some of the poor excuses that occur when a designer tries to lore a dumb design decision; such as why the protagonist of LOZ can't be female, why Samus was a whiny lodestone in Other M, and so on.)

In my experience, a prerequisite for me enjoying the lore or plot in games is that I have to already enjoy the game's gameplay. Hence, when a game bombards me with plot before I get to experience the gameplay, I find that rather frustrating.

Another thing: I find that I am usually in the mood for one or the other. Hence, it works best when I can experience the lore without having to progress through the game, and when I can progress through the game without having to deal with the game's plot or lore. At least when it comes to Elder Scrolls, I actually prefer to read the books outside the game, on wikis or other web sites.

(Also, remember that "it's" = "it is"; use "its" if you need a possessive. Of the three instances of "it's" in your post, two of them should have been "its". Sorry, but this mistake bugs me. (I recently ran into this mistake in Kirby Super Star; if a game's text has a mistake like this, it really detracts from my enjoyment if I am paying attention to the text (for example, if I am reading an in-game book).) Interestingly enough, I believe that Link was originally designed as gender neutral, with the Japanese manual not using gendered terms for him. Also, Link has been spotted wearing a tunic, of all things, in some Zelda games (clearly Ocarina of Time, where the menu explicitly calls what he's wearing a tunic).

By the way, if anyone has a non-English manual for the original Metroid, do you happen to know what gendered terms are used for Samus Aran? (The English manual uses he/him pronouns to refer to her.)

It depends on the game. I do try and understand most of the lore in games like Elder Scrolls, but I don't go to the extreme of reading every word of every in-game book or memorising different calendars. However, the fact that you can do that is what adds a lot to the depth and feel of the games as it adds to the feeling there's always a lot more there to explore.

I like it when a setting is really thought through, but I don't need to know all the details and I don't care for the game shoving all of its lore into my face. The ideal case is when the world feels believable without the player having to read walls of text or memorize all kinds of silly names. IMO most of the lore behind a setting should stay in the author's desk drawer. If the author just uses it as a backdrop for the story-telling and world-building and only hints at it occasionally, that's far more immersive than massive amounts of lore books in the game.

"Tunic" is just an old timey word for a big shirt, isn't it? I don't think it has any gendered connotations. And Link has been often portrayed in live-action (ads) by a female actor, so I don't think that's an important part of the character.

Interestingly, a lot of people here use "story" and "plot" interchangeably. To me, they're the difference between "You're a a guy transported to a fantastical land where you must defeat hordes of enemy creatures and rescue a princess" and "The Mushroom Kingdom is a magical realm deep under the earth full of all manner of creatures who are ruled over by the Princess Peach from her castle in Toad Town, where she is constantly fending off invasions by Bowser".

I think that's too fancy a plot. How about "you must defeat hordes of enemy creatures"? I would argue that that would be enough of a plot for a game, and it also avoids the "damsel in distress" trope (which your example of a minimalistic plot suffers from).

I'm just going to disagree with you here.

(Preface: I fucking hate "lore".)

I find real-world mythology absolutely fascinating. (The same goes for fiction based on real-world mythology and written by experts. La-Mulana is pure ecumenical awesome. La-Mulana 2 is themed specifically around Scandinavian mythology, focuses on characters and looks to be even more awesome.) It's not just that it provides some applicable knowledge about the modern real world -- it's that, having been formed by the real historical processes in the real world, it's a huge analog living organism.

Now "lore" is nothing like that, for these reasons:

1. For starters, very often it's not "what people believe", it's what really happened. Alexa and Zizek and Silly Sauce and whoever else are actual people in the Elder Scrolls setting that existed and did things. It's not myth, it's (shitty Great Man) history.

2. Writers suck. They're dumb and they suck. They're not etnographers, they often don't even have a sciences background -- as professional writers, what they're familiar with (and what they're judged upon) is the "canon" of English literature. Also, they work within a budget, within a narrow timeframe, and according to a shitty spec. Their understanding of what is "lore" si sourced from other games, and their output is twice-digested search-and-replace rabbit shit.

3. When writers try to tackle in-world fictitious mythology, they suck even more, again because they're not ethnographers and their tiny brains can't handle two levels of simulation/abstraction.

A good metaphor for myth vs lore is movie vs videogame frame rate. Movies can get away with 24 frames per second because each movie frame is effected by a real-life continuum, it has appropriate natural movement blur and whatnot all in a single frame. Videogame frames are discrete; there's no real life to source them from, and each frame has to be generated separately, expending computational resources. And no one has a team of ethnographer writers to task with "lore" when there's dialog and item descriptions and quests and lots more boring mind-numbing shit to write - and to have it done well, the experts need to write or at least edit all that other stuff, too.

Now, some writers/designers are so good they can fake it reasonably well. This requires artistic skill (or course), directorial vision and restraint. The best examples are instances of environmental storytelling in games other than RPGs, because (I think) 1. they need less text and can hire better people, 2. professional level designers are better artists than professional game writers, and 3. the RPG fandom, commonly understood by marketers to be the core audience, is a toxic tire fire.

TL;DR the disagreement:
- real-world myth is fascinating
- it's fascinating for artistic as well as practical reasons
- lore is nothing like it.

Depends on the game, and the way how the lore gets presented.

If the the lore itself is interesting and it can be easily consumed, and if collecting the lore doesn't degenerate into a "work-like" experience - it sure can add to the gaming experience.

But in cases, where these requirements are not met - I tend to not care about the lore.