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[PATV] Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 20: How To Start Your Game Narrativ
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
This week, we explain why settling on a story before you've started your game may be a bad idea.
Come discuss this topic in the forums!
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1) RPGs that are focused on the story - JRPG type things, even stuff like Mass Effect where the story and the mechanics are largely disconnected.
2) Adventure games.
Though really, by "exceptions" I mean "You still probably don't want to try for a 1:1 translation as that is dumb". You have major events you want to hit on and an overall story flow, but really, in both of those game types, the gameplay is really largely disconnected from the story you're telling.
You don't say.
From what I've read, the almost cartoonish linearity of final fantasy 13 came out of them not wanting to bog down the story with too much exploration/etc. Draw your own conclusions from that, I guess.
Sounds good, I often get stuck thinking about a novel mechanic or story element I'd like to use.
Theme first, would be a good integrator.
There's quite a few parallels here with what I've read from Ayn Rand's "The art of Fiction".
Well, each extra life requires about 100K points, so you better get cracking and bring plenty of quarters!
To Seek,
To Learn,
To Do.
-QFG2
If the speed of light is faster then the speed of sound, is that why people always appear bright until they speak? o_O
Well, each extra life requires about 100K points, so you better get cracking and bring plenty of quarters!
To Seek,
To Learn,
To Do.
-QFG2
If the speed of light is faster then the speed of sound, is that why people always appear bright until they speak? o_O
Welcome back, EC.
Pretty much this.
Look, if you start a game with the story, then you don't really want to make a game. A game is all about interactivity and giving players tools to experiment with on the game world. But if you're looking to tell a really great narrative to the gamer, you pretty much have to wrest control away from the player and point them at the message you want to convey.
This doesn't make it a bad piece of entertainment, but I'd argue it does make it a bad game. For example, The Walking Dead was a brilliant piece of entertainment, but, let's face it, it was a choose-your-own-adventure movie more than a game. Your base gameplay mechanics were: walk around a lot, find the appropriate hotspot to continue, click the zombie and tap the appropriate button fast. These aren't the best or even very good mechanics as they were largely binary pass/fail and were able to be instantly retaken until a success was achieved, so from a gameplay perspective, there is little to no learning here or achievement from success.
Instead, these mechanics are only in there to reinforce player attachment to the story, and to the choices which the player made within the story (Turn to scripted event 50 if you save Doug, Turn to scripted event 65 if you save Carly). The quicktime events attached you to Lee, connecting you to his plight by directly affecting his safety through your actions. Walking is very powerful at this (I control it so I am that guy). The puzzle solving sort of does this too, but breaks when the player has trouble finding the correct solution (Shooting a zombie is "quiet", why is shooting the window not? Obviously that guy is not me), but this gets trimmed in Episode 2 onwards, so that solves that.
The Walking Dead is a prime example of a game that knew from the get-go what it was going to say. It had to be based off the books in tone and theme. As a result we got a "game" that tells its story really well, and is rightfully highly acclaimed for this, but which only allows the gamer a very passive role in order to do so.
So I think there is a lot of bleed between film and game in this region. You can make a good narrative and then put it into a game which uses mechanics as a method of heightening viewer engagement with the main characters. But I think it will be more film than game, and if you want to make a great game you have to put mechanics first, and then build the narrative around that.
Take a look at the core storyline of Mass Effect. You are a normal person set out to save something against impossible odds. Through sheer determination you are able to stop what others couldn't and didn't even believe was threatening them.
This is Hobbit/LotR with Bilbo and Frodo, this is Star Wars with Luke, this is the same basic storyline used in most things.
Now, look at the non-gameplay mechanics of the game. Like everything Bioware, you make decisions that change the way the game plays out. Whether it be minor stuff like whether you kill random guy x or take him in to the authorities or major stuff like "do I doom this entire race in order to save another?" you are constantly changing the story.
They started with a core idea, normal person vs impossible odds, added it to a 3rd person shooter rpg, decided that this idea would work best with a futuristic setting, and then fleshed the story out from that.
The most obvious sign that this wasn't a case of "write the story first, then make the game" is that the major details of the story can change (and have hundreds if not thousands of branch off points). Now, does the overall story change? No, you still fight Reapers in order not to die, but you do so with certain party members, certain people hating/loving you, etc... You know, the real bread and butter of a story.
@Shushewakka - my favorite game ever is D.O.T.T., but I'm not seeing any exception to the rules here. The mechanics are simple, find item A to give to or use with person/item B who gives/drops/does item/task C to effect plotline D. It's the same mechanics that were used in the most primitive of videogames (the text-based games).
I'm not sure that some of the people posting are understanding exactly what the episode is saying. It's not saying that games aren't written well and that the mechanics are what causes it to be a good game. EC is saying (or at least I interpreted it as) that having a fully fleshed out storyline is not necessarily a good way to make a game.
Look at about 99% of the movie/book-based videogames as a perfect example of this. So many movie/book-based games are horrible. Now, you could argue that they are bad because the developer probably doesn't give a crap about the game and is just trying to capitalize on the popularity of a movie by pushing out a game with the same name. And yeah, that's probably true for a majority, but I don't think that it's true in all cases. If not, then the only thing I could think of, as to why the game was so bad, is because the storyline is already written and the developers are simply trying to flesh out the game.
I think of it like this. The game play is the skeleton of the game and the story line is the flesh of the game. If you start with the flesh, you then have to force the skeleton in. It might fit perfectly, but it might also be too big or too small and then you aren't supporting it correctly. Now, if you start with the skeleton, you can add as much or as little flesh as you need. This isn't exactly a guarantee that it'll work, as there are certainly games that have followed this guideline and are bad, and there are also games where they follow the storyline -> game that work as well. But I'm guessing that a GREAT majority of games that are good follow this idea.
For example, you wouldn't create a tactics-style rpg game if you were telling a visceral, blood-&-guts Gears of War story. Sure, you choose which set of game mechanics you feel would best emphasize the main quality of the story that you want to tell, but that doesn't mean you can't flesh out your story first. After all, if you don't flesh out your story how will you know what kind of game mechanics you need in the first place?
I think everything the EC guys said about being married to a story is equally true about being married to a particular set of game mechanics, or even a particular style of game-building.
Games are stories. Stories are games. Do whatever you need to do to get a quality product out there. End of line.
You're comment about movie/book based games is actually quite accurate. The same holds true for other disciplines (like animation for example :P). You start off with the underlying structure of whatever character you're trying to animate and then try to flesh it out from there. The same is true for the backgrounds, other assets, and the movie/game overall. I honestly think that if a developer had the creative leeway to make a sort of "side story" based on the book or movie, we could see a whole mess of better games based on movies and books. The best example i could think of is "The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay." I could care less about a movie starring Vin Diesel but when I actually picked up the game and started playing it, I was surprisingly engaged throughout the entire experience. The developers still kept the feel of Riddick's universe while telling a story outside the arcs of the movies. They were also given the creative freedom to deliver on the kind of experience they wanted rather than being hard-lined into a plot because the game had to be EXACTLY LIKE THE MOVE. Both approaches to making movie based games have their ups and downs but I would love to see more games approached from a "what can we add to this universe" kind of standpoint.
@thewaever
An idea like that only truly works if you have all 3 Aesthetics of Play of a game in mind so that they form around each other into one cohesive and complete experience (look at season 5 episode 9 of this show, talks about Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics). Its how truly great games are made but it's also one of the hardest things to do. You can start out with one of these but it's unwise to continue forward in your game without first considering how it will impact the other two. Otherwise you'll come to a point in development where lets say you have a level in mind that simply cant be rendered with the technology you have or that simply goes against the mechanics of play you're delivering on. But this level is imperative to the story, a core scene that ties EVERYTHING together. You wouldn't want to half ass a section like that would you? You could have avoided this in the initial conceptualization while considering that you couldn't pull this off considering the mechanics and could have reworked the story to still deliver on the experience that you wanted to. True, games are stories, but they're also experiences.
Your examples are flawed in many ways. Bilbo/Frodo and Luke are unlike Shepard in many many ways, and for different reasons. Bilbo is an important character because he's surrounded by greater men, which makes him forgettable or unnoticeable to the enemy. That's his major advantage. And when it comes down to the end, he's the one who brings those greater men back down to reality. In a Roman Triumph the General, and later Caesar, would ride in a procession displaying his wealth and the grandeur of his entire army, as well as the spoils of his conquest. Seated right behind him was a mere slave who held a wreath above his head and whispered into his ear "Momento Mori"; "Remember that you are only mortal". That was Bilbo's role.
Frodo's role was actually relatively minor, he wasn't the hero, and he wasn't especially grand. He was the tool of the ring since he put it on. He wasn't the hero who overcame everything, in fact it was Sam and even Gollum who regularly overcame the difficult challenges for him. The trilogy does have a good analog for Shepard, though. Aragorn is the personally powerful individual who succeeds not just because of his own abilities, but because he surrounds himself with people who support and augment his own traits, while negating many of his flaws. He doesn't win through his own power, and he isn't one person fighting the greater enemy, he's a great leader and inspiration for those around him and that's his greater ability.
Luke is the sole main character of the movies, with the others quickly taking the role of simple support. It's a linear Hero's journey, but Shepard's story is not. Luke doesn't gather support, the rebel alliance has already been around since before he joined. He doesn't gather his friends, actually Obi and Han do that for him. For most of the first movie, there's a lot going on around him, and little that he himself contributes until the end, in the second movie he spends much of it far away from the rest of the action, and in the third he's again on his own. If there's one thing Mass Effect is constantly hammering in, it's that there's no way Sheppard can complete his goals, or even stay remotely stable in the case of the last two games, without support.
In fact we know that the Mass Effect story works well in other series out of the simple fact that Bioware had already done it in Dragon Age: Origins. The main character, after fighting a losing battle against a new enemy where the fight turns after a betrayal, searches for information to help defeat this newly risen enemy, and once they know the full extent, rallies the support of the different races and far flung kingdoms by solving their problems and fighting their enemies to become a person worthy of following in the eyes of the people. In doing so gains the trust and friendship of multiple people who help guide the character on their path and inform their decisions.
The Shepard character is not entirely defined by that one character. Shepard has a background, and is already a fully fledged badass before the games even start. There's no possibly way to define Shepard in any parts of the games as simply a "normal person". The character is constantly defined by the actions they choose to take, how they choose to react to different situations, and who they surround themselves with. This is what allowed the company to tell a powerful story without starting with a bland character or with a fully fledged script. They allowed the player to tailor their backstory and look before the game even began, and then allowed the player to further tailor the story itself in an asymmetric gameplay experience that let different players have different experiences.
"They were also given the creative freedom to deliver on the kind of experience they wanted rather than being hard-lined into a plot because the game had to be EXACTLY LIKE THE MOVE."
This nails the issue on the head. I think if you aim at an "experience", reverse construct repeatly, you will likely get the effet you are looking for more closely. Because if you think about it many things .. are just "too complex" to be reduced .. just like prime numbers.
In reverse construction it is more likely you will be able to figure out which are too complex for the experiences you are interested in and give precedence to those effects which are most interesting.
You might say in a game like Portal ... there is a certain precendence of interaction and ideas at different points .. of you might concede they are simply two ideas taking turns in your mind .. both good both valuable.
So if we have peanut butter and pickles is that a bad thing? I think the context in which we use peanut butter and pickles and how it is represented to be the utmost importance. Whether I prefer my idea/interaction to be more peanut butter or pickles is another matter .. the "mastery" comes in emphasizing which spices, flavors, texture in which they are delivered and in how elegantly or inelegantly they are PRESENTED..
"So you are saying that the stories of games need to be malleable enough for any facets that would be impossible to put in a game due to time, budget and technology restraints can be removed without jeopardizing the purpose of the product. Sounds reasonable, but is it not just as important for the game play to be malleable enough for any mechanics, levels or areas that cannot be put in the game due to time, budget and technology restraints to be removed without jeopardizing the player's experience?"
Exactly correct! This is normally why designing not only just a good game but a great game is so difficult. Considering the three aesthetics of play all at once to deliver on a single experience is difficult enough for one person. Now imagine that person having to work with multiple individuals and then having to explain the decisions made in the overall design due to how the aesthetics work with one another.
LittleBlackRainCloud definitely summed it up best;
"Whether I prefer my idea/interaction to be more peanut butter or pickles is another matter .. the "mastery" comes in emphasizing which spices, flavors, texture in which they are delivered and in how elegantly or inelegantly they are PRESENTED.. "
"So you are saying that the stories of games need to be malleable enough for any facets that would be impossible to put in a game due to time, budget and technology restraints can be removed without jeopardizing the purpose of the product. Sounds reasonable, but is it not just as important for the game play to be malleable enough for any mechanics, levels or areas that cannot be put in the game due to time, budget and technology restraints to be removed without jeopardizing the player's experience?"
Exactly correct! This is normally why designing not only just a good game but a great game is so difficult. Considering the three aesthetics of play all at once to deliver on a single experience is difficult enough for one person. Now imagine that person having to work with multiple individuals and then having to explain the decisions made in the overall design due to how the aesthetics work with one another.
LittleBlackRainCloud definitely summed it up best;
"Whether I prefer my idea/interaction to be more peanut butter or pickles is another matter .. the "mastery" comes in emphasizing which spices, flavors, texture in which they are delivered and in how elegantly or inelegantly they are PRESENTED.. "
This is a great point, and the issue become one of predjudice. I think though some ideas have a necessary complexity which cannot be broken down. Try breaking down a prime number, or.9999999999999999999999999999 x infinity, or break down the idea of "good". Which is to say nothing of those things we don't understand by the most rigorously devout intellect ... or more where the rubber meets the road for most
So there is this subtle boundary where ideas become less tangible, and subtle boundary where ideas become less communicable. More often than not I would argue this discrepency will be in the realm of good story-telling. We have for the most part already covered up the vast majority of tangible materialism in "telling" the concepts.
So instead of saying the bathroom behind the gas station is just around the building, go through the door. I am obligated to say angle yourself to miss hitting the building but stay near this buildings outerwall and look for a 6' x 4' rectangular recess, at approximately 50% distance above ground level you will view a protrusion attempt to rotate this complex object at an approximately perpendicular direction to your facing, and apply force against the face of this object inside you will recognize what you are looking for. And of course it can be more complex than this, unnecessarily.
But by breaking these ideas of story telling down we can recognize what is important, not to the layman .. but to the user of the program.
when you recognize explaining somethign is touching at all possible points, it becomes a problem, or something much less tangible .. like say describing the sun.
Even so, having a story planned from the outset isn't the problem, really, but being so attached to the story, refusing to change anything about it, is. I think it could give a valid direction, one that could change over time. Also, having an overall story going in doesn't mean you can't change characters, rearrange plot elements, or rewrite areas.
It also depends on what kind of game you are making. A 2d sidescroller is not going to have the same story requirements as an Adventure Game. Neither is an RPG.
Designing a game around a mechanic doesn't really excite me... it is a valid design method, but I care more for what kind of story I want to tell and how best to represent that.
This argument can be equally applied to any department that wants to run roughshod over any other department.
A good story gives the entire team a road map. It's the place every department can look at and reorient itself if it gets lost.
And a good story must adapt to changing climate of development.
To me, this video makes sense if you're only making a game where story isn't a component you expect your audience to care about. You want it there to explain some mechanical aspects, but that's it. I'm not sure how you do a game where story us actually meaningful but it doesn't have an equal seat at the design table.
And this video doesn't seem to want to give it an equal seat.
The episode and its advice is really solid, though - at least in my opinion. I feel like so many small hopeful studios (and even some ambitious AAA productions) are destroyed by the follies warned against here.
In my opinion, EC missed the mark a bit. They have an episode titled "How To Start Your Game Narrative" and about half of it isn't even about good narrative processes, ~50% of the episode is about NOT starting a narrative. Thus a more apt title should be "When To Start Your Game Narrative" -- Note that When and How are two VASTLY different things...
What I like to do to start my narrative is world crafting. I like to come up with worlds that maybe haven't been explored (deeply) yet, and flesh them out into a compelling place to tell a story. Once the art style and setting are taking root, I ask "what important kinds of stories does this world lend itself to telling?" I don't hesitate to sketch out some stories in the world and if they don't work as a main narrative, they can always become lore. In creating the Lore of the world I end up naturally coming up with all sorts of political intrigue and possible story elements that can tie into a bigger more overarching story with lots of clues to possible plot twists -- Build the history right up to the present and the story to be told is simply what's happening "Now". Note: Much like real life, the narrative doesn't have to delve into every crevice of the world's history to be told -- You can omit exploring large swaths of the back story; Maybe save 'em for a sequel/prequel.
The great thing about this is that back-story is cheap, and we're not as invested in it; Most lore isn't set in stone so we can change bits to make the prime narrative work, or more deeply explore a new interesting game mechanic. Also, you can stop well before having a strong narrative and make a fairly open ended game instead, where the characters can explore the world and get caught up it its lore to create their own story from all the sub-stories and events waiting to be triggered.
Text based games have such a lower resource crafting cost than today's games with multi-million dollar graphics and voice-overs, that in my BBS's text adventure I was free to detail anything I wanted -- even the inside of a dead knight's eye socket -- and not care if anyone ever, "> Look Skull". I like today's games, but it seems like the artists and writers try to trot everything out in front of you during the course of play, as if to say, "Hey! Look at what I made!", and this can affect narrative too. IMO, if you love your game you've got to set it free and let the players discover some bits of joy on their own terms... Sadly, it's money not love that primarily drives the games industry (unlike some art-forms, like painting, or some indie games). If something doesn't directly affect the narrative then it typically gets cut from the budget -- there goes a bit of the world and it becomes a bit less engaging and "real".
Stories feel shallow when they don't have a deep back-story full of lore that's driving the plot -- Think about that. Our history is what's driving our own world; It's a large part of what makes us who we (characters) are and what gives the world its solidity and meaning. Wipe out all history and there'll be a bunch of people (esp. soldiers) standing around wondering why they're where they are and what they're supposed to do (much like in some games).
For instance: It's the World's History that drives the story and gives it meaning: Without the past conflict between the houses of Montague & Capulet, Romeo and Juliet makes no sense! Any world their story is told in must have a conflict between two segregated groups each with loyal members -- You can arrive at that story if you first craft a world torn by conflict, but you can't start with that story and craft a peaceful world full of tolerant people.
Not that I'm saying EC is wrong, it's just that there are MANY MANY MANY ways to arrive at the narrative for your story, and the "Let's Convey A Feeling, then focus on Mechanics" approach is a good one, but it's only ONE approach. To not touch on any other approaches in an episode that proclaims to describe "How to Start Your Game Narrative" is a bit silly. I'd have cut that 1st part about NOT starting a narrative down to two sentences, and explored all the other options if it were me... IMO, what James sees tearing teams up could also simply be the results of inflexible overly specific narratives, not necessarily the product of having a good story to tell up front.
You don't have to abstain from story writing: If your story is flexible enough to be like Romeo and Juliet then don't worry about adapting it and conveying the conflicts and emotions in whatever game world with whatever mechanics you end up having. There's more than one way to arrive at a narrative. If you're stuck on narrative, then I suggest focusing instead on world crafting / lore building and you'll naturally create many starting points for a story. E.g.: James implies the mechanics should be selected to convey the emotion, but it's just as good to craft a world and derive mechanics from it, or select cool mechanics and craft a narrative / world around it (see also: Portal).
I think the important thing is to have everything flexible at the outset, including narrative, and iteratively refine the world and characters, mechanics, story, etc as you go along. If any thing is set in stone from the outset that will likely be your stumbling block for the entire project.
TL;DR: How do you start a Narrative? If you don't have a good Flexible Story yet then start World Crafting and/or building the Mechanics and soon you will.
Edit: You might also enjoy this GDC talk about making Portal2 told from the writer's perspective. Note: Portal2 initially didn't have Chell, Glados, or even Portals...
His son, his sword in hand
Rides to battle on a winged,
Fire-breathing beast.
Star Wars
Along with the interactivity is the production that EC was talking about. A book is usually a single person's creation a painting is too, what the creator makes in his/her mind comes to life the way he wants it. However games take a large team and a lot more resources, what you start with will never be what you end with. That game isn't 1 person's sole baby its the creative concept of the team. So what James likes to do is to get the team focused together and to have relatively the same insights into a game's narrative as everyone else to ensure consistency.
This episode's message seems a bit different from the first episode's recommendation, which sought to avoid having art and mechanics constrain narrative by having narrative before they were "created."
While I don't disagree with the notion that mechanics can influence and affect narrative in games - and vice versa - I do disagree with the idea that you can't have narrative before gameplay. I do think you should keep an open mind on how your story will change as a response to mechanics and play, and really you should expect that regardless in any of the entertainment industries where an other entity has say over your output. However, I do believe the opposite is true, which means we shouldn't be too restrictive of where an aspect of design should lay in the scheme of development.
It has never been the case that a single person can not create a game. That said, the iterative process of create/design/write -> test -> revise -> repeat is just as good as advice when working in a team vs alone as an everyman.
A commonality I find among successful game designers is that they work like good idea reactors -- They can create new ideas and fuse them with other ideas from other devs, even filter on only good ideas and destroy some (art/story/mechanic) elements in the process of generating a great game. At some stage the dynamism and new ideas must scale down to allow things to stabilize and get the game released, but it's usually not best to start out with little or no deviation allowed in narrative to start off with -- Even if you're a one-man-band. IMO, everyone should just be the best idea reactor they can be, and willing to try new stuff and change things as the budget allows. Budgeting time and money is the tricky part, but it's not as bad if you realize a portion of the budget needs to go towards experimenting with things that aren't going make the final cut, i.e., factor dynamism into the budget.
As I've mentioned before, Quake was going to be an RPG, Halo was going to be an RTS, and the writing for Doom originally had male and female characters and stats, even some back-story (see: The Doom Bible). Yet Halo & Quake became FPSs and Doom's multi-character support was never created. The point is that there is a healthy level of dynamism, and iteration in most every good game's creation process, this applies not just to mechanics and art, but also to narrative as well.
FYI: Even book authors have "playtesters" (editors), and if you ask me, testing should be allowed to play as much a part in narrative (re)design as it does in every other aspect of the game.