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Storytelling In Games and the Use of Narration
MarkN writes "The use of story in video games has come a long way, from being shoehorned into a manual written for a completed game to being told through expensive half-hour cut scenes that put gameplay on hold. To me, the interesting thing about story in games is how it relates the player to the game; in communicating their goals, motivating them to continue, and representing their role as a character in the world. This article talks about some of the storytelling techniques games have employed, and in particular the different styles of narration that have been used to directly communicate information about a story, and how that affects the player's relation to their character and the degree of freedom they're given to shape the story themselves."
http://xkcd.com/462//
Many games spread out their chunks of story like breadcrumbs for the player to follow, in between somewhat repetitive sessions of gameplay; the continuation of the story serves almost as a reward for getting through more of the game.
When I read this, all I could think was "Assassin's Creed". Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the game and are eagerly the release of its sequel, but it was ridiculously repetitive.
Games need to be 'told' like a story, and follow similar rules of development, plot structure, and the like. One problem developers face is that while changing a few lines in a written story are easy, changing a scene in a game can be quite an undertaking. So, the narrative of a game needs to be fairly mature before you start building scenes from it.
Game can 'jump the shark'.
Probably the most famous jump-the-shark moment in gaming (for me at least) was when we rented a copy of Daikatana to laugh at ._. for the N64. The opening has the main character jumping up and balancing on an out held sword. *shakes head* Romero, wtf were you thinking? It's cheesy every time they do it in anime too.
One of the biggest strengths of games is the ability for choices to mean something, and for alternate endings to bloom. Chrono Trigger is a big one for me, to go back and play it through all over again, the story is rich and wonderful, and experience a few different endings here and there.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
If you want to have a read of something a bit more meaty, try this thesis (title: VIDEO GAME VALUES:
PLAY AS HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION):
http://www.pippinbarr.com/academic/phd.php
Not quite the same subject, but it does deal with narrative a tiny bit (e.g. section 5.3.3).
p.s. this guy managed to score an Xbox and PS2 for "research purposes", which were (and probably still are) enjoyed by many in the graduate lab.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
TFA makes it sound like nobody thought storylines were important initially; but in the days of Donkey Kong, were non-superficial storylines even possible? With such repetitive gameplay, could good storyline exist?
Maybe the more creative out there could enlighten me. Can you make a good storyline for Donkey Kong?
(Oh no! Kong found more barrels! Again!)
I found the most enjoyable game storytelling technique in Torment. The hero is himself unaware of the story (has amnesia), and the player discovers along with him clues to his own past and the story behind the game setting. I loved how I got a first glimpse of what's going on and then the plot was progressively clarified.
That is all.
Portal had what I felt was an interesting way of telling the story. The "narrator" was mostly there to explain the rather quirky gameplay. Only in the later levels did she become part of the story.
Much of Portal's story is in objects you find in optional areas of the game world - secret rooms you find behind walls. You only see the objects in the 3D world and have to read them yourself to understand their storywise meaning; nothing with them is directly narrated.
In the end, your knowledge of the story is entirely inferred from vague clues and events you find throughout the game.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
In the early days of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Jumping Jack had a narrative delivered in a non trivial way. You would unfold a poem, line by line after completing each level. This is how it was delivered through gameplay, and this is the whole poem. (I'd never seen it complete before today! Thanks for making me remember).
Is a limmerick a non-superficial story? The only thing I know, it did get you wanting to know which was the next line...
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
the best ever Game Story started like this:
You're a marine, one of Earth's toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action. Three years ago, you assaulted a superior officer for ordering his soldiers to fire upon civilians. He and his body cast were shipped to Pearl Harbor, while you were transferred to Mars, home of the Union Aerospace Corporation.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Although it was not mentioned in the original article, some games have been very successful by *not* telling the story, and leaving the player-protagonist to work it out. In Half Life 2, the player wakes up on a train, arriving at 'City 17'. There is very little information about what this is or why he is there. All you know in the first stages is that the environment is very hostile, and there are very few people who help you. You explore a town that has clearly been retrofitted with advanced security beyond it's original architecture, but no-one explains why or by whom. Civilians you meet are mostly in despair or injured, and there are clear signs of recent conflict (ruined homes, destroyed buildings). Most of the time, you can see a huge structure towering in the distance, which seems like a focal point but whether and how you'll get there is a mystery. The result is that you feel (or at least I felt) lost, confused, and quite alone at the start of the game, and intrigued to find out more. This builds up a bond with the character you are playing, and makes the arrival of friendlies (Barney, etc) much more significant. Providing the full setting of the story can detract from the realism, as it provides a perspective on the situation that a real person in the equivalent real-life situation would not have. I can only speculate about the armed forces having never served, but I suspect that in a real life battle, a front line soldier will probably not be aware of the full context of the setting, or it's strategic importance. They just carry out their duties such as a patrol, and all of a sudden one day, there's an explosion and someone starts shooting at them. They then have to figure out what's going on, survive a battle, and most likely only later think about why it all happened. I think there exists a balance between telling the story and not. Give too much information, and the story can become boring. Give too little information, and the player does not feel intrigued to play, and interest can only be sustained with gameplay. When done well, game designers will strike this balance well, and provide a good compromise between narrative, confusion, chaos, and action, all of which can be compelling.
Famous quote attributed to John Carmack: "The plot in a video game is just like the plot in a porn movie -- merely an excuse to get to the action."
Each time I read something like that... I can't help getting the picture of someone with his head so far up his rear end that he assumes that he's not just a representative sample of 1 for the whole gamer population, and indeed world, but verily _the_ prototype from which all others were moulded. And if, god forbid, they happen to like something else, they must be deluded in some way.
Guess what? We all play games "as a funny way to spend time." You're not revealing some great wisdom to anyone, you just reveal your own disconnect from the real world. The idea that someone actually tries to play games as some form of art _as_ _opposed_ to actually having fun, and to the exclusion of actually having fun, is a delusion that exists only in the imagination of fanboys. Again: we _all_ play games "as a funny way to spend time."
We just find different things fun. Some like to read a book, some like to watch a movie, and some like their stories in a more interactive form. And then some others seem to genuinely like mindlessly mowing down gazillions of NPCs just for score/level/whatever. (And who am I to say there's anything wrong with it?) Different things for different people. That's all.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.