Story in Games
There is an ongoing debate about story in games, the debate of narrative vs. ludology. Well, I will openly say I think narrative is not even in the same realm of importance as solid system design. My off the cuff comment could be, “Story only matter somewhat in a few games and matters for nothing in most games.”
I am using “story” here as a catch all term, what I am really referring to is narrative, not so much setting or scenes, which I think are very important. What is the difference?
I view narrative as one complete drama that runs throughout an entertainment medium, be it movies, games or music. It runs from beginning to end and forms a cohesive and communicateable story.
Setting and scenes are built to evoke a certain emotion. Setting and scenes can be combined in a linear order (in any order really, e.g. Pulp Fiction) to create a narrative.
Scenes do not need to be combined to form a narrative. They can be combined to form a series of emotions (e.g. Lost Highway.) I believe this is what really matters in games, compelling scenes and settings, not compelling narrative.
Scenes are created to invoke emotions. Scenes are used as a tool to give player an emotion investment. Let’s look at a classic video game example of using two scenes to create a player’s purpose.
Give the player somewhere safe & happy and then destroy it!
You wake from your bed in your quite seaside village. “Wake up sleep-head,” cries your mother from the other room. “Your friends are waiting for you down by the docks!”
You wake up, talk to your mom and wander around this seaside village. It is obviously safe here. You were just sleeping peacefully without any fears. This is your home and you have old friends here. One of your old friends is probably a girl you care about, though you may not realize it yet. You wander around a bit until you feel comfortable and talk to all the townspeople who have known you since childhood. They all think you are a loveable scamp.
Now, without warning, the antagonist of the game destroys your town! Fire is everywhere! People are dead! You have no home! Your girlfriend was probably taken for good measure.
This is an overused device but the motives are very clear. You are given home, a place to care about where it is clear you are safe and have many friends. Now this place is destroyed and you can never go back. You and your remaining friends want to make the antagonist pay for what he has done. Your adventure begins.
Is this good narrative? No, of course not, it’s cliché. It is a very simple and effective way to give the player emotional investment in the adventure that lies ahead.
Give that guy a cool facial scar
Character design is often the first step in creating emotional investment with players, often before they even play the game. Just seeing a nice character design illustration can hook people. There are many stereotypes of characters used time and time again: the fresh faced youth, the cute girl, the young kid, the guy with a facial scar.
The fresh-faced youth is easy for players to identify with and he is our main character. Most players in real life are not battle-hardened combat veterans. They are just people loving a normal life and are embarking on an adventure, like our friend in the earlier example. These characters are often in their late teens or a bit older, the perfect age. Younger kids wants to be older and older people (like me) want to be 20 again.
Love is, of course, the most over-used mechanic to evoke emotional investment there is, hence, the girl.
The younger kid is there to give you someone to protect (your girl might be kidnapped most of the time.)
The guy with the facial scar is older and battle hardened. His is your mentor. He has the strength and wisdom you hope to one day posses. Players immediately know this guy is a tough fighter with a story to tell. Did I mention that cool facial scar?
Make the world depressing
Setting is a powerful in creating emotion and mood. The setting should reinforce the core emotion, the emotion evoked most often throughout the game.
Set the players in a dark depressing world and give them the hope of changing it for the better or make the world blissfully happy and blind to the injustice that lies beneath.
Make the world an expanse full of monstrous enemies at every turn so the action is fast and intense. Make the setting a claustrophobic house with few enemies so the action is suspenseful.
Make the world full of friends for people to protect or make the world bereft all of all other people so players feel there is no one to help them.
Some examples
Looking at “the best story driven games” will support this. Final Fantasy, the most popular console role-playing game in America, has the most convoluted stories I have ever seen. The over all narrative makes very little (or no) sense but the scenes are fantastic examples of evoking emotion. Scenes of peace, confusion, anger, action, love, danger, loneliness, fear, triumph and resolution are wonderfully communicated. Then all the scenes combined and the overall narrative they create is a distance second to the individual scenes.
Scenes can be used as modular components to invoke the emotion needed to nudge player at the right time in the right direction or keep them hooked into the game. If your settings, scenes and characters are strong, it doesn’t really matter if all the scenes add up at the end of game to form a cohesive story.
I am using “story” here as a catch all term, what I am really referring to is narrative, not so much setting or scenes, which I think are very important. What is the difference?
I view narrative as one complete drama that runs throughout an entertainment medium, be it movies, games or music. It runs from beginning to end and forms a cohesive and communicateable story.
Setting and scenes are built to evoke a certain emotion. Setting and scenes can be combined in a linear order (in any order really, e.g. Pulp Fiction) to create a narrative.
Scenes do not need to be combined to form a narrative. They can be combined to form a series of emotions (e.g. Lost Highway.) I believe this is what really matters in games, compelling scenes and settings, not compelling narrative.
Scenes are created to invoke emotions. Scenes are used as a tool to give player an emotion investment. Let’s look at a classic video game example of using two scenes to create a player’s purpose.
Give the player somewhere safe & happy and then destroy it!
You wake from your bed in your quite seaside village. “Wake up sleep-head,” cries your mother from the other room. “Your friends are waiting for you down by the docks!”
You wake up, talk to your mom and wander around this seaside village. It is obviously safe here. You were just sleeping peacefully without any fears. This is your home and you have old friends here. One of your old friends is probably a girl you care about, though you may not realize it yet. You wander around a bit until you feel comfortable and talk to all the townspeople who have known you since childhood. They all think you are a loveable scamp.
Now, without warning, the antagonist of the game destroys your town! Fire is everywhere! People are dead! You have no home! Your girlfriend was probably taken for good measure.
This is an overused device but the motives are very clear. You are given home, a place to care about where it is clear you are safe and have many friends. Now this place is destroyed and you can never go back. You and your remaining friends want to make the antagonist pay for what he has done. Your adventure begins.
Is this good narrative? No, of course not, it’s cliché. It is a very simple and effective way to give the player emotional investment in the adventure that lies ahead.
Give that guy a cool facial scar
Character design is often the first step in creating emotional investment with players, often before they even play the game. Just seeing a nice character design illustration can hook people. There are many stereotypes of characters used time and time again: the fresh faced youth, the cute girl, the young kid, the guy with a facial scar.
The fresh-faced youth is easy for players to identify with and he is our main character. Most players in real life are not battle-hardened combat veterans. They are just people loving a normal life and are embarking on an adventure, like our friend in the earlier example. These characters are often in their late teens or a bit older, the perfect age. Younger kids wants to be older and older people (like me) want to be 20 again.
Love is, of course, the most over-used mechanic to evoke emotional investment there is, hence, the girl.
The younger kid is there to give you someone to protect (your girl might be kidnapped most of the time.)
The guy with the facial scar is older and battle hardened. His is your mentor. He has the strength and wisdom you hope to one day posses. Players immediately know this guy is a tough fighter with a story to tell. Did I mention that cool facial scar?
Make the world depressing
Setting is a powerful in creating emotion and mood. The setting should reinforce the core emotion, the emotion evoked most often throughout the game.
Set the players in a dark depressing world and give them the hope of changing it for the better or make the world blissfully happy and blind to the injustice that lies beneath.
Make the world an expanse full of monstrous enemies at every turn so the action is fast and intense. Make the setting a claustrophobic house with few enemies so the action is suspenseful.
Make the world full of friends for people to protect or make the world bereft all of all other people so players feel there is no one to help them.
Some examples
Looking at “the best story driven games” will support this. Final Fantasy, the most popular console role-playing game in America, has the most convoluted stories I have ever seen. The over all narrative makes very little (or no) sense but the scenes are fantastic examples of evoking emotion. Scenes of peace, confusion, anger, action, love, danger, loneliness, fear, triumph and resolution are wonderfully communicated. Then all the scenes combined and the overall narrative they create is a distance second to the individual scenes.
Scenes can be used as modular components to invoke the emotion needed to nudge player at the right time in the right direction or keep them hooked into the game. If your settings, scenes and characters are strong, it doesn’t really matter if all the scenes add up at the end of game to form a cohesive story.
posted by Brad Merritt at 4:37 PM
3 Comments:
I see what you're saying and certainly most games don't bother to develop a full-blown narrative that could really interest anyone. They just create a set-up and shove you into the action. But I think there is a place for games narrative in games. The Bioware games are what I think of, like Baldur's Gate, KOTOR, and Jade Empire.
A little story arc is really all you need though. As much as I loved Jade Empire, the dialog trees did start to wear on me. It's hard for a story not to fall into cliche quickly in a game.
As another example, I'm playing Indigo Prophecy right now. It's so story-driven that the gameplay is sometimes not even there. They're upfront about that though and right in the beginning tell you they're creating an interactive movie. To be honest, it's only interesting because it's different.
Games may be the wrong medium to attempt to develop a complex narrative. Just as movies can't approach the complexity of a novel, perhaps games need to stop reaching for even movie-level stories. Scenes, settings, some simple emotional hooks, maybe they're enough.
I totally agree that story isn't important in the majority of games, but man, I really love it when a game has an interesting story. There are a lot of games that I only finished to find out the conclusion.
I don't really understand what you mean when you say,
"Is this good narrative? No, of course not, it’s cliché. It is a very simple and effective way to give the player emotional investment in the adventure that lies ahead."
Are you saying that it's ok to have a crappy narrative, b/c it does the job?
Yeah, that is pretty much what I am saying.
The opening scenes of the game (hero's town getting destroyed) isn't going to win any writing awards but it does the job of giving the player a goal and hopefully an emotional investment in beating the bad guy.
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