Mechanics in Motion

storyGUIDE_final

Designing a game as a series of missions, sub-missions and atomic challenges, composed of interactive choices that lead to an overall goal─ then aligning these missions and challenges with plot satellites and kernels─ form the basis for the StoryGUIDE model. In order to introduce this process, three diagrams are presented: a narrative flow diagram, a nonlinear interactive structure diagram, and a game events diagram. These three diagrams are then overlaid into a final StoryGUIDE diagram that illustrates the key idea of my thesis (see attachments below). Although story flow, game flow and decision points all move in a harmonious, overlapping direction, they represent three different structures that must be graphed independently before they can be combined. The game diagram is the more open, flowing model allowing for the “sandbox” feel of many games; atomic missions can be experienced in an open order, but alone they make no real story. The narrative diagram appears linear because plot and story events are linear─ the narrative graph is much more of a flow of events and happenings that can be seen or experienced, but when combined with the interactive diagram, only overlap at the key decision points. The interactive diagram is the one diagram that shows actual logic paths that are followed by the player and where the decisions lead.

Making these distinctions is important; otherwise, the designer might easily confuse the forward moving story logic of the narrative diagram with the way a level itself must be designed. This could easily lead to a linear level, when in fact the level can be quite open and nonlinear in its game events. The only real location where all diagrams must converge is at the kernels and key decision points. Thus a designer could make a level that was open in its game structure with lots of mobs to fight, NPC to talk to, or the like, but the eventual way might be barred by a gate that need a key to get through, and the key was part of a narrative where the opening of the gate aligned with a main kernel in the story.

This is a very simple application of this principle and designers can and should be much more clever and inventive. The important point here is that the model allows for very open ended game play that need only converge with story and interactive decision points in specific locations, and these locations do not need to be abundant to be successful.

The Process

The complete artistic implementation of the theory presents some problems based upon the current limitations of game engine technology and the sheer amount of effort and people needed to create a video game. Usually the actions are limited to fighting, healing, using “buffs”, collecting resources (pickups), or interacting with an NPC bot via a chat window, or listening to their pre-recorded dialogue. None of these really involve the social reasoning necessary for good story, but they can provide goals that can then be used for missions, sub-missions and atomic challenges, leading to a few meaningful choices for the player (and finally to several different endings).

There are several ways to approach the problem, but they all involve going back and forth amongst the elements of the system and refining the interactive story-game. You may want to start with the story in mind first. Look for key decision points along the way to use as plot kernels. Design the story so that the players make the decisions themselves to align with those goals. Use these to determine the possible outcomes (endings) of the story. Create plot satellites that point toward these multiple endings. Many of the satellites can point to multiple endings, while some will only point towards one of the endings. Try and account for the “probable” outcomes, which are probable because you have designed the interactive story that way, along with your missions, sub-missions and atomic challenges. Sometimes you may know the kernels and key decision points first; sometime you may have a few endings in mind. In any case, design the system going back and forth comparing the outcomes to the satellites and kernels to the decision points.

The gameplay options are the other half of the equation, and many designers may want to start with traditional game play elements. Either way, remember that the story must be integrated into the gameplay and that gameplay must always remain your priority. Design quests that give the player goals, and incorporate your satellites into them. This is done with dialogue, props or whatever you have available that follow narrative principles. You are setting things up so that as the player follows quest chains, he is developing his own goals and ideas about how he wants to solve the quests, missions, etc. The satellites are giving him these ideas, guiding and suggesting things, so that he thinks it is something he is entirely coming up with on his own (which he is with some guidance). Ideally then the flow of the game-play is: The player enters the world, sees the environment and the satellites. He then explores the world, and begins to develop goals and objectives and curiosities (“I wonder what’s in that dark tower, or if I can get in there?”) He may encounter atomic challenges, which he continues to experience all along the way. Then he encounters a quest-giver (this can be an NPC, a note or anything). The quest lets him choose if this is a goal he wants to do, or instead go on to develop new goals and find other objectives. The player eventually completes a sub-mission, and gets a reward that reinforces his behavior and his choice, and he begins to come up with new goals until he develops an overall long-term goal. All of this needs to be tested─ this is a second order design problem, and as such only testing will show how correct you were. Watch for emergent behavior and outcomes/endings the player expects or wants that you did not predict. Throw out extreme statistics either way in the case of improbable player outcomes; you are looking for the most probable outcomes. Try and determine what satellites led them down that path and why they may have missed or ignored your other satellites. You will also need to study whether or not players feel forced down a path, or if it seems there is an obvious “answer” everyone chooses. If so, try and balance things so that people choose a more even distribution. It is likely that there will always be a majority path, and that is fine. What you are looking for is to find any options that no one seems to ever choose, or ones that everyone chooses, and try and make the decisions tougher and more meaningful. If you do all of this well, once you are done players will almost always choose the goals you to which have guided them.

In summary, the method (in no particular order) is to define the points that have to be experienced where critical story decision are made, create the desired multiple endings, and fill in the game with interesting narrative elements where desired along each story path and making sure that they reinforce that particular path. If done in an artful way, players can experience the story on multiple levels or and engaging only the key decision points and whatever else they choose along the way, and never even be aware of the subtleties of the plot. They might even later talk to other players and be amazed at what they missed, their experience seeming as if it was not even the same game.

A Sample Mission Designed with StoryGUIDE

The sample mission has been kept relatively simple and straightforward in order to illustrate multiple concepts, and so that its corresponding diagram can be more easily read. The Mission involves the ultimate goal of the recovery of a powerful necklace which is desired by two NPCs in the game. The NPCs, Maelis and Telari, are both in the starting village of Edis, a place in the Arcanoria world that is overrun with undead, its living inhabitants all fled or killed. Maelis and Telari have an old rivalry, and both know the other is meddling in their plans and seeks the necklace. The necklace is known to have the power to control the undead in the area, and Telari is sure that Maelis must have it and is responsible for the undead attacks in the area. Maelis however, knows that he does not have it, and suspects that it is in a nearby catacomb. Maelis isn’t going to bother telling Telari that he isn’t responsible for the undead, much less reveal the possible location of the necklace to her. Enter our traveling player hero, who comes to the small village in the middle of this turmoil.

The player starts off and is presented with several satellites that all indicate the grim situation. The villagers are gone, a few of the trees seem to be dying, angry wolves prowl the area in the opening view of the player and an undead can be seen near an open house. The player will find the house is empty except for some turned over furniture (common throughout the village) and may decide to engage the skeletons and wolves in combat. Eventually the player will head off, probably down the road, where at a fork in the road they may be able to see the tavern in one direction and a church with a graveyard in the other. The player will likely choose one of the two NPCs to speak with, entering the first kernel of the story. Diagram 5 illustrates the quest using the StoryGUIDE diagram. The player decision paths are indicated by the blue dotted lines, and the player can go back on the lines at any time, but once a decision point has been passed, the player cannot go back to anything previous to that decision from a narrative standpoint. Game-play activities can repeat over and over, but their context as satellites changes based on the advancement of the story.

Note that in the diagram, it is possible that either encounter can serve as the first kernel. At this point, the player will be given a sub-mission by whichever NPC they choose to speak with. They may choose to complete the quest or not, but will not advance to the next sub-mission until completing one of the given sub-missions. After speaking with one of the two, they may either complete the quest and speak with that same person again, or they may choose to go and speak with the other NPC to whom they have not yet spoken. In other words, the events can happen in any order, but the game has been programmed in such a way that it does not matter. Events can occur in a nonlinear manner and the dialogue will respond appropriately. For example, the first sub-mission that Telari gives is to go and kill some of the skeletal undead in the area. However, by the time the player speaks with Telari, they may have already chosen to go around the village and kill enough undead to meet the quest requirement. If this is the case, Telari will recognize this and thank them, and give them their first quest reward. The same goes for Maelis and his quest to kill some of the wolves (Maelis wants to keep the skeletons around if possible, and knows that Telari can speak with animals and is likely using them as spies).

Once the first quests are completed, the player, having earned a bit of the NPC(s) trust, will be given a second quest, in which they obtain more information concerning the story itself. Maelis will mention Telari and how she cannot be trusted, and Telari will reveal that she thinks Maelis is responsible for the undead. The goal of the mission they give is to obtain the necklace. In truth, the Orc Shaman in the catacombs has the necklace and is responsible for the undead attacks in the area. It will be up to the player to decide whom to give the necklace. Each NPC will give a reward in the form of skill ‘boons’ (a traditional advancement concept in RPGs), with the idea being that the decision the player has made has now put him on a future path towards advancement within the ranks of one set of skills and/or faction. In other words, the player by his own decision has chosen whether or not he will be an ally to the Necromancer Maelis and learn his skill set, or whether he will ally with the Healer Telari and choose her as a teacher. The game represents just the introductory new player level of a larger game such as an MMORPG. In this hypothetical larger game, the stage is now set for deeper story information to be revealed about the nature and history of the conflict between Telari and Maelis as well as the factions they represent.

The ideal model for storytelling in games will bring together common points of overlap in narrative structure, interactive systems and games. To do this I will examine the role of user choice in interactivity and compare this with the choices and goals made while playing a game. The resulting parallels will show common points that can be integrated into a unified structure.

Interactivity and Player Choice

Crawford’s definition of interactivity is, “A cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks, and speaks.” He of course means these terms metaphorically, since in the case of a computer these things are not done literally; they process input and return feedback. This input and feedback process is the core of what is understood as interactivity. He sums it up nicely, “Interactivity depends on the choices available to the user.” Crawford goes on further to suggest that the quality of choice is also highly relevant, “The quality of interaction depends on the richness of choices available to the user.” He breaks down quality and richness in these points:

• “The functional significance of each choice”. This refers to the choices available that will satisfy the player’s expectations, desires and interests. For an MMORPG, this quote is particularly relevant, as Crawford refers to, “those games that offer the player the opportunity to wander all over a huge region—but nothing interesting happens in the huge region…sure, the game offers zillions of choices in terms of where the player might go, but none of those choices is functionally significant.” The opposite problem is created by too many choices, when few of them offer any real practical use. Instead of the illusion of “I can do anything I want to”, we get a reduction by the player to the most relevant options. This happens in character-creation methods all the time, where players label features as “wallpaper.”

• “Perceived completeness: the number of choices in relation to the number of possibilities the user can imagine.” Crawford makes it clear that its not how many choices that are available, it is the number of choices compared to what the user might expect as reasonable options. “If the user has reached the climax of the story and must choose between leaving his girlfriend for the war or shirking his duty, having only two choices doesn’t detract from the power of the interaction; it’s difficult to imagine other reasonable possibilities.” In other words, the designer of an interactive narrative does not have to account for every possible choice, only the most probable of choices expected by the player.

Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman have a general approach to interactivity that emphasizes the anatomy of choice. “An interactive context presents participants with choices. Choices can be micro-choices of moment-to-moment interactivity or macro-choices, which concern the long-term progress of the game experience.” They then break down interactivity according to actions and outcomes. “The basic unit out of which interactive meaning is made is the action > outcome unit. These units are the molecules out of which interactive designers (including game designers) create larger structures of designed interaction.” They offer a five step process for designing interactivity based on cause and effect, or actions and outcomes. “As the game progresses, each new moment of choice is a response to the situation onscreen, which is a result of a previous string of action > outcome units.” There are five stages in this process. They are defined as a series of events that flow back and forth between the game system (internal) and the player (external) events.

1. What happened before the player was given a choice? (internal event)

2. How is the possibility of choice conveyed to the player? (external event)

3. How did the player make the choice? (internal event)

4. What is the result of the choice? How will it affect future choices? (internal event)

5. How is the result of the choice conveyed to the player? (external event)

This breakdown of interactive elements as events offers a useful link to narrative structure. Story uses events as actions and happenings; in an interactive system, a player makes a choice and does something (action) and then examines the system to see how it has changed and how he is now affected (happenings).

Crawford strongly emphasizes the connection with choice and story, “Ultimately, stories concern the choices that character’s make. Indeed, the entire point of many stories is revealed through a key choice the protagonist makes.” He uses the examples of Neo in the Matrix deciding to sacrifice himself; In Star Wars, Luke’s decision to trust the force; in Macbeth, the decision to murder for ambition. “In each of these examples, the entire story builds up to or revolves around a key decision.” In all three of these cases, the choices are limited, but meaningful, and based upon the designed elements in the story that led up to the decision.
Combine this with Crawford’s former examination of the quality and richness of interaction offers an insight into one of the first harmonious elements between plot and interactive storytelling. The designer of an interactive narrative is looking for a few quality, probable choices as opposed to a list of all possible choices. This aligns very well with the earlier notion that probable actions of a plot slowly narrow over time and Aristotle’s concept of verisimilitude. In a designing a non linear story, it is not necessary to create an infinity of endings, only a few relevant and meaningful endings based upon a sum of decisions that have been made available to the player throughout the course of the story.

Games and Challenges

In Fundamentals of Game Design, Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings present a method for organizing a game in a “hierarchy of challenges”. The challenges break down into three levels: atomic challenges, sub-missions and missions. The term atomic is used in reference to the smallest unit of game-play—the moment to moment interaction the player experiences. “During play, the player focuses most of her attention on the atomic challenges immediately facing her, but the other, higher level challenges will always be in the back of her mind. Her awareness of the higher-level challenges creates anticipation that plays an important role both in entertaining her and guiding her to victory.” Driving all of the missions, sub-missions and atomic challenges are goals, with the long term goal always in the player’s mind, what Adams and Rollings call the ultimate goal─ completion.

In Crawford’s work in interactive storytelling, he also uses the term atomic to break events into their smallest form; what he refers to as the atoms of storytelling. He calls the atoms of storytelling substory. “A substory is a single dramatic step; it’s an event or change. It can be described in a sentence that specifies an event…this event can be tiny (“James sidestepped the descending sword swing and swung to his right”) or big (“James killed Thomas in a swordfight”).” Thus, missions and sub missions are the story events of a game.

Narrative Events

Parallel’s can be drawn between Chatman’s breakdown of events into actions and happenings, and various game-play dynamics. Actions should viewed in terms of the first half of the Action > Outcome sequence in the form of missions, sub missions and atomic challenges. Happenings are those Outcomes that are generated from the character’s decisions, and can show up in the form of quest rewards, storygates, or even in a change in situation to a more or less dangerous one. In this way, The Action > Outcome sequence may be used to mimic the cause and effect principle in plot.
Kernels and Satellites can also play a role. Chatman’s statement that kernels involve “…branching points which force movement into one of two (or more) possible paths” seem to indicate that kernels best parallel decision points in a nonlinear story graph. Every player must experience them, and in traditional narrative they would probably be key points where writer’s presented the audience with the important decision made by the characters. In nonlinear interactive narrative, they are decision points for the player. For the bulk of game-play that does not revolve around critical decision-making, satellites seem more appropriate. Chatman says, “Satellites entail no choice, but are solely the workings-out of the choices made at the kernels. They necessarily imply the existence of kernels, but not vice versa” These “minor plot events that are not crucial to the story” are very similar to the multitude of possible game-play options that a player might enjoy, but that are not critical decision points of the game. Satellites lie along the paths that connect decision points in nonlinear structures. Though they do not need to be experienced, clever design of plot satellites will probably be the difference in what makes a believable and immersive story in a game. They offer a great opportunity for a designer to add depth to the game that does not have to be forced on the player, something that will appeal to the types of players who like story and those who just want to get on with the action.

Satellites have a useful though subtle application for games. In a story, the satellites imply to the audience many possible endings for the story, but in truth there will be only one. The possibilities become more and more limited until the possible becomes the probable and the probable becomes the fixed ending. In an interactive narrative model, this can be a strength—these imply multiple endings by unreliable satellites can actually be real possible endings. This then makes all satellites that point to any possible ending reliable relative to that ending. This can be very powerful, for it means that everything the player saw that pointed to one ending could be correct for them in their own version of the story.

David Freeman proposes a way to take advantage of this concept with a technique that he calls “idea mapping”, in which he suggests “taking the character through a variety of viewpoints, usually inconsistent ones, during the game”. He gives an example of a monster game, where at one point the character would feel the humans are good and the monsters bad, but later this viewpoint would be reversed (monsters good and humans bad) and at another point, make the player think he was a monster. He gives the film example, “…in Bladerunner, where at first we feel that the replicants are inhuman monsters. By the end, however, our opinion has changed and it seems clear that some of the replicants are much more ‘human’ than those trying to destroy them.”

Goal-Based Narrative in Games

All games consist of various goals the player is trying to accomplish. Most of these goals are created by the designer, though this does not mean that a player cannot make his own goals. It does however, generally mean that the game’s intended rewards will come through completing the goals the designer has put into the game. In first-person shooters the player is after kills and health and pickups; in RPGs they are usually after gear and power items, consumables, or increased skills and abilities. Some goals need to be stated directly, while others should be discovered or even invented by the player. “If you give the player nothing to do except follow explicit instructions, it doesn’t feel like a game; it feels like a test. Part of the fun lies in figuring out—whether through exploration, through events in the story, or by observing the game’s internal economy—what he’s supposed to do.”

Can goals be used to integrate narrative into game play? Neil Sorens, CEO of Dancing Robot Studios, offers some excellent insight into this question, “The Sims 2…an example of a game that has made some progress in the area of story creation, is also notable for another positive trend in sandbox games: an assortment of concrete goals (aspirations) to achieve. These goals, which are noticeably absent or unstated/unrecognized in many older sandbox games such as the original The Sims and Sim City, are beneficial for multiple reasons, as intuition or any basic game design book will tell you.” Sorens suggests, “Of particular value in the discussion of story formation is the application of goals to the formation of dramatic structure. If designed with this structure in mind, goals can form the pillars of a sandbox game’s dynamically generated stories: incitement, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.” Salen and Zimmerman also point out this connection, “One fundamental building block of narrative game design is the goal of a game. Goals not only help players judge their progress through a game (how close they are to winning) but also guide players in understanding the significance of their actions within a narrative context… The goal describes the nature of player interaction within a narrative context, making the interaction meaningful.”

Thus, the ideal form of narrative in games is a story driven by goals. These goals form the basis for plot kernels and satellites. The goals are then defined by missions, submissions and atomic challenges. Therefore in order to integrate story structure and game, story must be in alignment with goals. There are certainly aesthetic values to story in game (to create immersion, to help the artists create an environment which tells the story and is believable) but what is key here is that the narrative’s integration into the game’s mechanics and dynamics, not just aesthetics. The result is that the story does not seem patched onto the game, but integrated deeply within it, and if done well the story may almost seem invisible. In fact, games that often win story awards seem to follow this principle better than those that do not (such as Bio Shock and Half Life2), and the irony is that many players are left saying “story, what story?” Ken Levine, lead designer of Bio Shock, had this to say, “What are you going about in Bio Shock—act 1, find the sub and get out. Well, the sub gets blown up. So you go find and kill Ryan…If you stop Indiana Jones in any scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and ask him what he’s doing, it’s ‘Looking for the Ark’.” This is goal driven narrative. It is interesting to note what Levine has to say about game story in general, because I think it hits at the heart of the problem of the common misunderstanding of the proper use of discourse in games— “I’m not really a fan of game story. The first big secret is, the bad news is for storytellers is that nobody cares about your stupid story… no matter how detailed or lovingly you craft it.” This apparent paradox comes from a designer who really understood that narrative has to be integrated into a game in an invisible sense. He trusted his own instincts and threw out the notion that other forms of discourse from film and traditional narrative must be imposed into game (“Levine thinks that non-interactive cut scenes are dead.” ).

The story ideally will be used to inform the player of something about his goals, or better yet, be crafted in such a way as to help the player define his own goals. An example is in Half Life 2, where the player has no weapon and must suffer through an oppressive, bleak, alien controlled setting. By the time the player gets a gun, he understands entirely what he wants to do. He has seen the tower, understood that there is an underground resistance movement who will help. These are satellites that direct the player towards the kernels and the story ending. In Half Life 2 however, the story is basically linear and does not contain multiple endings or even multiple paths to the same ending, other than failure to complete the overall goal.

By drawing several key parallels between the structure and components of games, interactivity and narrative, a foundation is laid for integration into a unified system. The Events occur in story to create plots in the form of actions and happenings; interactivity deals with internal and external events; finally, games have events in the form of missions, sub-missions, atomic challenges and rewards. All three use existents in various forms such as characters, props, settings and story-worlds. Finally, goals in games tie all these events together and give them purpose. The following table illustrates the parallels in all structures:

Game Structure

I wish to clearly state from the start that although this paper focuses a great deal on story, good game design should never be compromised for the sake of story, and this paper is ultimately about exploring the design problems associated with the mixing of the two. The goal is an effective way to integrate story into games in a successful manner that does not take away from play experience, but instead adds to it. With this goal in mind, a breakdown of the components of games is helpful to determine just where narrative (a term that will be more clearly defined in this paper) belongs in the context of game as its own medium.

The MDA approach is useful in this regard, for it presents a model for a comprehensive framework for understanding and designing games as a three component system: mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. These three components parallel rules, system game-play, and fun, respectively:
“Mechanics describes the particular components of the game, at the level of data representation and algorithms. Dynamics describes the run time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs and each others’ outputs over time. Aesthetics describes the desirable emotional responses evoked in the player, when she interacts with the game system.” This breakdown gives the designer an indirect way to design “fun.” Mechanics define the system rules that when set into motion, interact in dynamic ways to create a general feel when playing a game. If this feeling is generally positive and challenging, we call it fun. There are different types of game-play that create different types of aesthetics, and thus different types of fun, which will appeal to different types of players.

Furthermore, MDA breaks down aesthetics into eight sub-components: sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression and submission. Each of these sub-components may be emphasized in varying degrees in individual games, thus creating the different experiences players enjoy in games. As one of these is narrative (defined by the MDA authors as “game as drama”) , the model accounts for the design goal of a specific type of fun as one component of games. The MDA authors say,

“From the designer’s perspective, the mechanics give rise to dynamic system behavior, which in turn leads to particular aesthetic experiences. From the player’s perspective, aesthetics set the tone, which is born out in observable dynamics and eventually, operable mechanics.”

Thus the player’s window into the game is the aesthetic experience. The designer usually knows what sort of aesthetic experience they are trying to create, but the route to accomplishing it is a second order design process. Thus designing ‘narrative fun’ requires first designing game mechanics that will in turn produce functioning system dynamics, which will in turn produce a narrative aesthetic experience. Since the goal of StoryGUIDE is this narrative aesthetic experience, the structure of narrative components must first be analyzed in order to discern how to translate them into game mechanics.

Narrative Structure

Appendix A and B cover some of the main elements of traditional story-telling and narrative structure. My focus is the structure of story that can be abstracted from any specific medium and applied to games—for where there is structure, there can be design and programming. Chatman says, “…transposability of the story is the strongest reason for arguing that narratives are indeed structures independent of any medium.” In order for narrative to be considered a structure, it must be a closed system, and follow its own set of laws. By its nature it cannot accept elements outside the structure. In essence, like all structure, we recognize certain patterns and elements and laws, which if missing will not feel like narrative, game or no game. Thus a game can have a rich world and a detailed set of content, but if there are not solid narrative principles, then it does not contain actual narrative. At the same time, if the structure is present but not aligned with game as its own system and its own form of discourse, we wind up with the story that feels either forced or “tacked on” as a separate piece. If narrative can be examined as its own structure, then such an understanding would be very valuable to drawing parallels and incorporating narrative into the system of a game.

The work of Seymour Chatman is particularly useful, because Chatman is concerned with form and narrative structure over any specific medium. He examines in detail Structuralism, a theoretical framework derived and put into practice by the French academics, specifically Gerard Genette. Chatman tells us, “Structuralist theory argues that each narrative has two parts: a story (histoire), the content or chain of events (actions, happenings), plus what may be called the existents (characters, items of setting); and discourse (discours), that is, the expression, the means by which the content is communicated. In simple terms, the story is the what in a narrative that is depicted, discourse the how.” This very important concept tells us that story is only one part of narrative, and that discourse, the implementation into the specific medium, is the other. This immediately suggests that a game is a different form of discourse than film or literature; it stands to reason then that most of the confusion and failure to integrate story into game has the fundamental problem that designers and writers have had to force story into game with discourse from another popular medium. Game as its own form of discourse needs closer examination and evolution in order for story to be repeatedly added into game without compromising the principles of good game design. Most successes come from designers who intuitively understand this (or got it right through trial and error). One clear point is they achieved a balance by recognizing game is its own form of expression, and that story must be delivered with its own how─ not by tossing in story as it behaves in other forms of discourse like movies and books.

The concept and role of discourse is less familiar to game designers than that of story, and this may offer a clue as to why games are struggling with the implementation of story. Chatman tells us, “The events in a story are turned into a plot by its discourse, the modus of presentation. The discourse can be manifested in various media, but it has an internal structure qualitatively different from any one of its possible manifestations.” One of the problems then with translating story into game is that game must be examined as its own form with its own discourse. Implementing story in the classic way of other mediums such as writing and film has some success, but it’s missing the point that games are a different medium and are not story. I see three major issues of concern regarding this point.

The first point is that discourse concerns itself with narration. Both Plato and Aristotle distinguished between two forms of narration: mimesis and diegesis, or what we commonly know as “showing and telling” respectively. One is direct, and involves communication from a narrator, like an outside voice telling a story. The other is communicated by means of action. “Direct presentation presumes a kind of overhearing by the audience. Mediated narration, on the other hand, presumes a more or less express communication from narrator to audience.” In a video game, both forms have been used, but actual game play throws an interesting twist into the mix; the viewer largely controls the diegesis, whereas the game largely controls the mimesis (although the player can choose not to listen to or look at anything the designer intended). A lot of environment design is based around the concept of directing the attention of the player towards relevant game elements. This is a form of mimetic narration, but the audience (player) might choose to ignore it or miss it altogether, because unlike a film, the player indirectly controls what the camera views. The player takes on both the role of audience and to some degree, the narrator. Therefore traditional narrative forms need re-examination since they assume a narrator that is separate from the audience.

The second issue involves point of view of the audience. Video games use the term to explain the location of the camera, but the terminology does not accurately parallel the narrative use of the term. This is a complex issue that goes beyond the scope of this paper, but what is relevant is that the during the play experience, the player experiences the game from a narrative point of view as if the events happening to the character they are playing are actually happening to them. This distinction is important, because the audience is used to experiencing things indirectly in other types of discourse, and as a result entirely changes the experience. A lot of the problems of mixing story and game come down to the fact that most players really don’t want to experience the tragic and stressful things that happen to characters in many stories. The audience might sympathize—even empathize—with the plight of Frodo and his long arduous journey, but no one really wants to personally experience these things for recreation. In fact a game based around the trials of Frodo would probably be full of drudgery and boredom (“oh, the ring is so heavy—I have such a burden to bear—I am lost in the swamps of Mordor─ golem bit off my finger, this just sucks”.) If this was to be a good game concept, the designer would have to consider how the player would feel in the role of this character if he actually was the character.
In any interactive narrative then, it is unreasonable to ask the player to experience anything even close to what a tragic character himself would go through. What is needed is a milder version, a “hero-lite” version. If the designer makes the error of throwing the audience directly into the role of a character and then trying to have him experience everything the character would, the designer risks creating an experience that is far too intense and stressful, or more importantly not at all fun. Tone down the intensity level of the pain, and turn up the “fun” meter. This is generally understood in game design─ my point is that this is an entirely different form of discourse than film or literature, and needs to be addressed as such. In a game, the player is not only the audience but the character, and certain tragic circumstances cannot easily be translated into successful dynamics and play aesthetics.

The cause and effect relationship in plot offers some insight into the problem. Though the character in the story will not necessarily ever understand the cause and effect relationship in events happening to him in the story, the audience should eventually understand the consequences of the character’s actions as the story progresses to its end. Yet in a game, immediate feedback is required for the player to understand how his actions cause specific effects. This contradiction is best illustrated in the case of a group of people watching a friend play a video game. As the ‘audience’ watches the ‘character’ participate in the ‘plot’, they may accept consequences that the player will reject. Imagine a side-scroller adventure game where the player is trying to get past a chasm that requires swinging on a vine, but each time the player tries to jump for the vine he falls into the chasm. Viewers don’t need to know how to play the game or experience feedback from it to infer a cause and effect relationship. It is obvious the player is doing something wrong, and the result might be an amusing sequence of events where the player’s character keeps falling into the chasm. The player, however, keeps getting frustrated as he tries and tries again but cannot figure out what he is doing wrong. He can’t seem to establish a cause and effect relationship, and isn’t experiencing much of a story. In a game, the player is the character, and he should ultimately be able to establish a cause and effect relationship between his actions and their outcomes if the game is to feel like it has a plot.

The third issue of discourse deals with the contribution of the audience to the story. I am not referring to principles of interactivity here. Chatman explains, “Whether the narrative is experienced through a performance or through a text, the members of the audience must respond with an interpretation: they cannot avoid participating in the transaction. They must fill in gaps with essential or likely events, traits and objects which for various reasons have gone unmentioned.” Good environment designers understand this concept, and often suggest events and story through the appearance of the setting. Scratches on a car might lead one to guess at why and how they came about, for example. We are moving into a time when designers can create photographic textures and super realistic faces. Yet the game designer can sometimes accomplish more by not showing or telling everything. “The audiences capacity to supply plausible details is virtually limitless…” Early text MUDs and pixel games were taking advantage of this, whether intended or not. Chatman writes of the principal feature of selection as,
“…the capacity of any discourse to choose which events and objects actually to state and which to only imply. For example, in the ‘complete’ account, never given in all its detail, the ‘ultimate argument,’ or logos, each character obviously must first be born. But the discourse need not mention his birth, may elect to take up his history at the age of ten or twenty-five or fifty or whenever suits its purpose. Thus story in one sense is the continuum of events presupposing the total set of all conceivable details, that is, those that can be projected by the normal laws of the physical universe. In practice, of course, it is only that continuum and that set actually inferred by a reader, and there is room for difference of interpretation.”

In this case then what is not shown is as important sometimes as what is, and what is not told is often as important as what is. The player will fill in his own blanks. This is why too much exposition is bad, and too many “world details” can be uninteresting where not immediately relevant to the player− and even lead them to create false expectations of game play. There should be enough of these to spark interest and curiosity and spur the player forward to discover or fill in the rest for himself. This explains the response of players and designers who reject the idea of story in game (“I hate reading all that stuff”) and the overuse of text and exposition (“just give me the quest”). In the attempt to bring story into games, screenwriters and traditional storytellers use a form of discourse that has been highly developed in other medium such as film and novels, but is not ideal for a game.

A good example is the classic role-playing game quest text dialogue box. The player interacts with a non-player character and gets a long list of quest text. This is supposed to add flavor, but often the player skips the text and reduces it to the relevant goal. This is so true that most quest games like World of Warcraft and now Pirates of the Burning Sea have gone so far as to list the quest objective alone, since many players just skim over this text. It could be argued that removal of the extra text would remove the flavor and the illusion of the magic circle, thus reducing immersion. However, as of this writing, RPG engines largely rely on quest-based texts, and there are not many other options. Thus when forced to use text boxes, a designer should make sure that the text is meaningful and relevant to game-play, and well integrated into the narrative through plot satellites. By “training” the player that the text is relevant, soon the player might begin to pay extra special attention. Like clues in a mystery story, the little things that the characters say to the detective provide clues to the solving of the mystery. In this way, the dialogue is relevant to the goal.

The three issues involving discourse in games all center on the contradiction that traditional stories assume a narrator who is telling a story to an audience who will be separate from the characters in the story; yet in a game, the players are both the audience and the characters. The key difference here can be summarized by saying that the players have control over the story─ thus, there is both interactivity and plot.

The Plot vs. Interactivity Conundrum

Plot is concerned with the actions and happenings of a story. These events are not simply thrown together haphazardly; care must be taken to see that they are orchestrated in a way that creates an actual plot. Screenwriter Robert McKee? offers this: “…event choices cannot be displayed randomly or indifferently; they must be composed, and “to compose” in story means much the same thing it does to music. What to include? What to exclude? To put before and after what?” This is very much the same principle basic to all good design. Story-telling can be thought of as plot design. And like all design, there must be design goals and creative direction. So where then do we find goals and purpose in narrative design? Chatman emphasizes that events in narrative are not simply sequential and linear, but causative in nature. Rather than just an arranged series of events, plot requires some cause and effect. Even if events do not seem related early on, the audience expects to later understand this relationship. If it is never made clear, story breaks down.

The events in the beginning of a story do not need to have an obvious relationship, but as the story moves along, these events begin to move towards an ending that makes that explains their inclusion in the story. Chatman quotes Paul Goodman, “…in the beginning, anything is possible; in the middle, things become probable; in the end, everything is necessary.” Thus in designing a plot, the designer needs to know where these events are heading, or at least that the audience is expecting them to lead somewhere. “The working out of plot (or at least some plots) is the process of declining or narrowing possibility. The choices become more and more limited, and the final choice seems not a choice at all but an inevitability.” Aristotle called it verisimilitude, “ancient appeal to the probable, rather than the actual.”

The basic idea behind interactive storytelling is that the audience has some ability to alter or write the plot themselves. Designers have been struggling with the apparent contradiction of carefully structured plot and the concept of the viewer having the ability to change the plot. Chris Crawford has examined and thoroughly outlined the nature of this problem, “A plot is a fixed sequence of events that communicates some larger message about the human condition. In interactive storytelling, plot is replaced with a web of possibilities that communicate the same message.” Furthermore, “The plot is the storyteller’s predestined plan for the story’s outcome. Free will is analogous to interaction, for how else can players interact without exercising their free will?”

Crawford uses the interesting analogy of God as a game designer, in total control of the universe, yet who allows his subjects to have free will. The idea is that God sets the rules but doesn’t micro-manage every detail. He creates the laws that put the universe in motion, but free will is where the decisions are made. “If you’re a process intensive designer like God…the characters in your universe can have free will within the confines of your laws of physics. …instead of specifying the data of the plotline, you must specify the processes of the dramatic conflict. Instead of defining who does what to whom, you must define how people can do various things to each other.” Thus a game has rules, but a plot specifies events. Therefore he says “plot and interactivity are incompatible. However, there is something higher, more abstract than plot. Call it “metaplot,” if you like. It’s something like a plot, only it’s specified by rules, not events.”

Thus plots are carefully designed so that all the events are heading towards an orchestrated ending by an author, but in an interactive system the audience is given the ability to change that outcome, and thus “ruin” the plot. “The problem is choice,” as Neo says in the Matrix— incorporating narrative structure into an interactive model means finding a way to incorporate user choice and still maintain a plot structure. Herein lies the common error in understanding discourse in games and interactive storytelling. This can be explained in this very simple way— the author is making the decisions for the characters in a traditional narrative. In an interactive story, the ‘audience’ makes the decisions, and thus the audience becomes a narrator. In an interactive story, there are two narrators working together, the player and the storyteller.

In order to resolve the contradictions between plot and interactivity, it is necessary to examine parallels in each of these structures and to and look for common points of overlap that can lead to a merging of the two. Aligning these commonalities with similar concepts in the structure of games can then lead to a single system that brings all three concepts together into one unified form.

The integration of story into video games has become a somewhat controversial topic in the video game industry. Too much story and players get bored or frustrated with gameplay that is constantly being interrupted; not enough story and the game becomes a dry exercise in mechanics. Certainly, a model that aids game designers in properly integrating story into games with predictable results would be quite useful. But where to begin? As with all things which have been translated to the digital world, it is useful to seek out examples in the analog world and create or refer to analog prototypes. Almost every video game has a parallel in the analog world whose mechanics have been closely examined and tested, whether the designers are aware of these foundations or not. Most game designers are aware of the roots in tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, and the ‘tabletop’ environment is often seen as the Holy Grail of interactive storytelling, for it allows a truly open ended story that can change at any time in response to the decisions and actions of the players. Yet it is this very open-ended quality that has made discerning any real computer based model for interactive story-telling a daunting and nearly elusive task.

There is however another area of interactive storytelling that has been curiously overlooked in any detail by authors seeking a workable model—the genre of Live Action Role-Playing games (LARPs for short). This is probably due to its perceived lack of mainstream success and the fact that it represents such a niche market that no one seriously considers it worth examination. Yet it is in LARPs that interactive storytellers have been systematically hammering away at the problems of combining story and game for over 30 years . There are now hundreds of organizations played internationally, with thousands of participants. Many of them run multiple chapters, such as NERO International (New England Roleplaying Organization) which had over 50 chapters recorded in 2005.

LARPs are in many ways the analog predecessor to Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). The closest models seen in the digital world were MUDs (multi-user dungeons) as far back as the first MUD created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex University . When MMORPGs first appeared, it seemed only a logical and anticipated next step to those already involved in LARPs and MUDs. The results, though exciting, were somewhat disappointing on the narrative level for those LARP players who were used to the more developed, interactive and adaptive storyworld. I myself watched as the online games like Everquest wrestled with all the same problems that LARPs had been dealing with for years: player versus player combat, ‘griefing’ and ‘respawning’ problems, the dynamics of player economies, game-wide scheduled events, and group isolated questing (now called “instances”). If any of these designers had studied LARPs (and Kudos to those who did), they may have saved themselves a lot of time and money instead of completely re-inventing the wheel.

So what is it that makes a LARP interactive storytelling model better than a tabletop model for examination? The answer is that in a tabletop game, the story is run for only a small group under the authorship and control of a Game Master—a single person who may very easily change the story with little logistical implication, save perhaps for a good weekend of writing. Some Game Masters never even go that far, running an entirely improvised, open ended story. LARPs are run by groups of people, called Plot Committees, Storytellers, Entertainers and other similar names. These groups quickly learned that any consistent, internally-logical and extensible story required coordination and communication in order to execute. This led to individual games generating their own models for storytelling on a massive level, in some cases for well over 100 players. For my own company, Legynds, I developed a method I called Storyline Charting. It is this method that served as inspiration for the design model I call StoryGUIDE.

Been a while since I have posted, crazy busy summer working on AIR and my first fall quarter teaching full time. I thought for a change of pace, I would show some of the work my advanced level design students did this quarter. Their goal was to emulate the World of Warcraft/Blizzard style; something students often do when they have the desire to work for a specific company.  Every texture is hand painted, every model and particle effect their own. I am sure they would be curious to see what everyone thinks.

Role Playing game systems have always been my personal favorite type of game design. They are, however, huge elaborate game systems with many interconnected sub systems, taking quite a bit of time to get right and fully realize. The downside of doing this sort of design is that while other designers have a regular stream of small games to show, the RPG and MMO system designer only produces one every few years. My latest project, the AIR Steampunk MMORPG, has just reached its first year of design, and is coming along nicely. Because I have the honor of working with an absolutely brilliant team of writers, this is the first RPG project where I have gotten to truly focus primarily on the system design and its integration into a storyworld being created in parallel. What follows is a summary of what the team has been up to.
Read the rest of this entry »

I rather enjoyed this presentation by Jane McGonigal.  Women in game design tend to have a much more socially conscious view, and  I always enjoy seeing conventional thinking challenged:

Gaming can make a better world

Listening to this talk brought up some old memories. Jane’s talk reminded me that once upon a time, I gave a crap about the world. As a kid, I remember the “Energy Ant” coloring books designed to help kids understand the energy crisis and do something about it. I remember that growing up, I put my young idealistic problem solving mind to the conundrums of society and how they might be resolved. Yet the more and more I learned just how screwed up the world was, I began to realize that there are very few people in this world who care about actually solving society’s problems. As a problem solver, I recognized that politicians didn’t seem to be doing it, they seemed to ignore all the sensible answers and care only about their mysterious agendas.

Read the rest of this entry »

Game mechanics can be quite technical and might seem like the dry boring part of the game. They don’t have the visual impact of slick graphics or the memorable journey we get from well designed narrative, and so they can be thought of as just another necessary component of a game. The truth is, they are the game. Misunderstanding on this point is what leads to long and tired arguments about story in games and whether or not games can be considered art. The mechanics of a game, once set in motion by the activity are play, become beautiful; they are entirely their own form of aesthetic. What makes games truly fascinating to me as a game designer is emergent complexity that results from a well designed system of mechanics.

Brenda Brathwaite is a designer who truly understands this concept, embodied in her series of games, “Mechanic is the Message”. The game in this series which has gotten so much attention,  “Train”,  attempts to explore the mechanics of the system of human on human tragedy carried out in the Holocaust. A true genius in her field, Brenda sees the world in terms of systems, and noted in her research that human on human tragedy is a result of a careful and deliberate system. She has said that in designing Train, her goal was to understand this system and figure out how to put the player into it. In doing so, the player gains new insight and understanding of an aspect of human existence.

When you design game mechanics, you are dealing with the same stuff that drives the universe.

I love collectible strategy games. I like cards with cool art I can hold in my hands, miniatures I can move around and paint in my spare time. I love cracking open a new rulebook to see what secrets it might hold, or design patterns it might repeat. I love that new feeling of a system unexplored and with the possibility of untold hours of exploration.

I’ve recently discovered a new one, Uncharted Seas. It’s put out by a company in the UK, Spartan games. Oh, its got all the expected cliché versions of the fantasy archetypes:  Bone Griffons (undead), various Elves, Orcs, “Empire” humans and some steam using races like Dwarves. The rulebook is a bit rough, not even completed, with continuing updates on the web site and pdf downloads just to allow you to play the complete game. The designers almost apologetic as they go to great length to explain how simple the rules are, and just how many expansions they plan to release. It’s got all the rough edges of a new game, but yet at the same time that is part of its charm. It gives me that new game feel, the hope of emergent complexity that arises from raw and pure mechanics ready to clash in the space of possibility.

What I especially like about Uncharted Seas is that a fleet can be bought for the price of around a new video game. They also can be painted pretty quickly. The mechanics are pretty clean, with a single dice pool ( 6 sided) where 4, 5, and 6’s score hits. The hits are added up and if they meet a target number, damage is scored. If a second, higher number is met, a critical hit is scored. This wraps up all the rolling into one pool, compared against one set of numbers. The really fun thing is that rolling a ‘6’ counts as 2 hits, and you get to roll again, allowing for chains of hits.

The company also seems to want to support the community, one of the most important aspects of a collectible strategy game. A local game store is running tournaments and has even apparently hired a representative for the area to help push the hobby. This is a key factor for the success of one of these games. So if you are looking for a fun collectable game that has all that new game charm, for a low price, check out Uncharted Seas.

www.spartangames.co.uk/uncharted.htm