Joe's really big on focusing on gameplay, but he's always been a modeler. I've gotten into many an argument with him about plots. He's basically of the opinion that if your game HAS a plot, you are wrong, unless it's blatantly obvious that your game is a RPG. In his blog he says he gets labeled as an "anti-story" guy, but hang around in IRC for a while and you'll see even that's a gross underexaggeration. Don't even mention the canon of any game, or he'll basically fly into a rant about it. Nice guy regardless, helped me out on quite a few occassions. Really, just about all of the GG crew is like that. That's why you see a lot of "kiddy games" coming out on the site, since it's all "focus on the gameplay" with no real story, aside from DH: Lore. They're trying to get back to the old retro motives for making games by just throwing together a bunch of nonsense around a gameplay element. "Plumber is trapped in a world of pipes and toadstools" or "Super fast Hedgehog fights mad scientist that turns animals into robots," that kind of thing.
There are a lot of financial benefits to storytelling. There are sequels to games either because 1) people like the gameplay, and want to see it done with new technology or 2) they want to see something in the previous game's story concluded or elaborated on, or both. In Tribes' case, the gameplay was very niche in its appeal, and it either had no story or it had a stupid story. No appeal.
