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[PATV] Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 6: Competitive Storytelling
Probably would have been better to save this question for after those games release. Would have been useful to see examples of steps being taken in a positive direction.
I agree, I'm actually wondering why this topic was brought up NOW and not after the NDA expires. I mean, sure you can generate discussion about the topic, but if the next episode of this doesn't come out for a while, the buzz that's generated will die out.
A little off topic, but still about something discussed in the video: I'd really like it if FPSs did more things like what was discussed with leaving the stages as-is. My problem is the same that's been discussed about almost all FPS games and games like Resident Evil.
Here's my rocket launcher. It can destroy Helicopters, but explodes harmlessly on that wooden door. I personally think maps should be 100% interactive (as far as destroying goes. Then you could replay maps (like most strategy/objective-based matches do) and flip sides.
Now you are on the side and all the stuff is still broken. Best case scenario would be that it would deter camping (especially if the area risks collapsing). It might also deter bottlenecking
Perhaps instead of over-arching narrative, you instead have multiple mini-narratives. To go back to that multiplayer arena analogy, instead of having an overarching story that unlocks with the new content patches, each playable character has their own backstory, subtle personality quirks and so on. When you fight a match and something in that match met a specific criteria - they fought a particular enemy champion, they used a specific combo to land a killing blow, they unlocked the beginning of a new special attack tree - the player gets a short cinematic based on it that informs them about the character they're playing.
A couple of example. Let's say you can level up a mage character to specialize in a particular element (water, fire, darnkess etc). This gets reflected in the narrative as you progress down the tech tree; perhaps after you've levelled up the basic water attack past a certain point, you get a cinematic where a mysterious hooded sage steps out of the shadows and says "you seem to have an aptitude for this... if you decide you want to pursue the mysteries of the aquatic arts to their fullest, come find me, I could teach you much..."
Alternatively, perhaps your ranking and stats get referenced in other cut scenes - if you're still in Bronze League, NPCs treat your character like an unimportant scrub, but then give you due deference and respect once you reach the higher tiers. Alternatively, if you finished off an enemy champion with a particularly brutal critical hit for a four-figure damage amount, perhaps NPCs say in hushed whispers as you pass "careful of that one, did you hear what he did in the arena 3 weeks ago? Turned that guy into paste."
And then there are little non-specific things you can add, like the item store owner taking note of the fact that you're having a losing streak and saying "having a bad time on the field eh? Don't worry, it happens sometimes, you'll be back in form before you know it."
For the MOBA example, what about letting players to opt into the event, choose a side, and then play games for their side and instead of kills, its games won that advances lore favorably for that faction? In a League of Legends example, Noxus vs Demacia. Players lock into and join a team. Then queue into games where they are only allowed to pick characters from their country of choice. At the end, find out what team won more games and give everyone on that team a special skin or something.
Obviously this would take some tweaking as one side would almost certainly be at a disadvantage based on the limited champion pool to select from, but Riot already did something similar once and added in a couple champions to fight for that side to balance things out. I know I'd be very excited for something like this.
Different alternatives I've seen (apologies for my naming, if there is a more common term for something feel free to bring it up):
-narrative pushback
As one-side pushes the narrative more and more down one path of the narrative, the opposing narrative system itself increases the efficacy of the push back towards a central narrative. MMOs like this system.
-narrative sandbox
EVE Online/Dust 514. Problem is the systems in the sandbox have to be so fleshed out that the world could seem more like a second job than a fun pastime with narrative. It does allow for some of the more awesome stories in any competitive game.
-larger narrative window
You aren't the hero, but you dive in and out of the one narrative timeline witnessing key and not so key events. Your actions look like they contribute to the overall conflict, but whether they do or not is left up in the air. Not the best, but I'm unsure if I've seen a popular competitve game take this route (Titanfall might be the one, but its not out). The singleplayer games that go this route have to work extra hard on the narrative to make this work (White Knight Chronicles a rather so-so example of this failing).
-invisible hand narrative
What I want to see more of. Basically narrative sandbox, with an overseeing presence making sure things stay balanced or interesting. MMOs (MMO balancing and retconning, mainly) and L4D spring to mind, but there are lots more ways this can be explored.
Still, this episode felt like a lot was left on the table because of the mentioned NDA. I even think the teaser of more subtracted from the video, as rather than providing an overview of the topic and saying you'll go more in-depth when you have the time (quite literally as you couldn't post until the NDA lifted that you could explain in that future episode), you instead tease that the depth is lacking because you are required to not talk about it. A matter of wording, but an important one in presentation.
The CCG for the "Legend of the Five Rings" IP uses the incremental transitions as you describe. The metaplot of the game and setting for the next RPG edition is set depending on the deck of the winning player at the global championships. Although, this has led to some weird stuff, such as the super honorable lion clan having a faction that summons evil shadow monsters due to the winning player noticing a mechanical synergy between the two factions despite there being no thematic justification for it. Fair play to the developers though, they rolled with it.
I think the easiest possible thing would be a managed meta-campaign.
So basically anything like Planetside 2 or Global Agenda where in there is a large map (whether graphically represented or simply nodes that represent a vague area) and factions compete. Narrative can come in from having given time periods of play between which the devs transition the story and state of the world to effect the game.
So say you have three factions: Traders, Zealots and the Navy. During the past month of play the Navy has being dominating the board due to significant fighting between the other two factions. At the end of the month the developers start up again with immediately creating an event for the zealots in which a religious figure (in the form of a strong NPC) has emerged and lead a new crusade against the Navy. Maybe instead you could simply declare certain zones between traders and zealots as under a DMZ agreement for the next given period to curb their aggression (and then maybe go on to have one of the two factions break that agreement).
In both situations the events not only shape the narrative in some way but also allow for the developers to balance out a currently dominate faction with in the game while providing new content (either trying to stop the NPC or dealing with the new map flow created by the DMZ).
But that doesn't really solve the issue put forth with more standard multiplayer games where persistence is ultimately undesirable.
.... So you're basically saying that the single player campaign of games like Battlefield or Call of Duty which don't have these restrictions for their campaign mode just flat out suck because contrary to what you said, the dev teams just don't think narrative's important and/or they just flat out suck at writing a story? Cool.
@Specula
I'd call the multiplayer and single player sides of those games completely separate games in their own right. This episode doesn't mention them because they're looking at telling the story through multiplayer play specifically, instead of through a handcrafted, directed, cutscene-filled experience.
So did anyone play Chrome Hounds? I thought it was fun how you were placed in an army and then every match you played counted for your "country" The war would reset every month or so and you would join a new side. It was kinda cool and was the first multiplayer game I found that did something like that.
Looking at this video, I'm inclined to bring up Assassins Creeds multiplayer. Say what you will about the franchise but, flawed as it is, I still enjoy it. The multiplayer-experience kind of lucked out in how it fits into the games mythology, where the Animus' MP is "training" for Abstergos agents much the same way that the singleplayer was training for Desmond.
Now, the overall storyline with Desmond in the present was pretty lacking throughout, but the notion of rising through the ranks of Abstergo in the multiplayer (unlocking story and extras as you level up) made it more engaging for me to keep playing MP. I dunno how it all ended (like I said - I don't play a lot of MP and grinding to cap just for the story wasn't worth it eventually) but conceptually, it seemed to work better than I had expected it to going in.
Obviously it can't be used a s a "template" for integrating narrative into traditional match-based multiplayer, but it's still worth having a look at when we're on the subject :P
That's not really narrative. That's more mechanics meshing well with the theme/setting/sense of place of the series.
The issue is that narrative is made by putting events in an order to create a story, which goes entirely against standard MP set ups (you raising your Abstergo ranking doesn't change the story or events of the MP game at all).
Which is why I'm really curious what the NDA'd solution was.
I'm a big fan of contextual voice lines building narrative. Now, that might be because I played a lot of Team Fortress 2, but the domination, revenge and even just straight contextual voice command voice lines do a lot to build up the surrounding storyline and develop the characters and relationships in that game. And as much as "NUUUU WEPONNNN" became annoying, it's also a good way to tie in content updates into a thematic lore.
This was a bit confusing. I assume you must be talking about how story ties into the multiplayer aspect itself. Because otherwise, a game can still have a great standalone single player campaign, regardless of how the multiplayer is structured. Halo, for instance. Even if you don't like the story, the single player was heavily focused on narrative, and the multiplayer was symmetrical, competitive, and successful. These are two different things.
If you really are talking about how the multiplayer ties into a real narrative, that makes more sense. I think Mass Effect did this pretty well, though that isn't competitive. AC: Brotherhood has an interesting tie-in. I think Hybrid did a good job of presenting a world where it makes sense to have perpetually reoccurring battles in the same spaces. Frankly, competitive multiplayer shouldn't be about story as much as creating setting.
Battlefield 1942 had zero story, it just utilized some of the history and settings of the war. One of my favorite games of all time was the original UT, and that had almost no story at all. It didn't need a story. The environments hinted at a larger fictional universe that was probably more interesting in my head than anything the developers might have tried to tack on. I don't think a good multiplayer game needs to spend time on narrative. All it needs is to put together a good space for stories to happen in.
I don’t think meta-narrative is really interesting.
The more players you have, the less each player has any influence on the narrative.
It would be more interesting to try to integrate the narrative into the core gameplay experience. In FPS's or any game where the player respawns after dying, it should start with finding a real justification to this respawning.
Does the game take place in a real war, where soldiers are cloned as soon as they die? Is the respawned character different from the one who died?
Or are characters playing a game themselves, in some sort of futuristic sports tournament?
This last options could easily lead to the adjunction of some basic narrative elements: this player killed me several times, my characters begins to hate him, he is now my rival and I get bonuses if I kill him, or if I win a game against his team.
I played several games in the same team as this other character, he is now my best friend and I will have to avenge him if another player kills him.
Ths sort of things.
It's been mentioned at least once in the comment thread so far, but I'd like to again bring up Legend of the Five Rings as a great example of this. Specifically, the ability for that incremental change to take place without affecting gameplay by removing the direct targets of that focus. In essence, in order to prevent players from meta-gaming based on the narrative, they have to not know how their actions are going to affect the game at large.
The problem with doing a character-based story comes with death. Assassin's Creed, as mentioned above, circumvented this problem by making it a simulation, but most games don't have that luxury. If Chell falls into a pit of goo and dies, we say that version wasn't canon, it didn't really happen. The real story of Portal is the one where she wins.
But in a multiplayer game, do you actually die, or was that just a noncanon version of events? If Garen kills Poppy, it's fine for Poppy's story to say, "that didn't happen, try it again and win this time". But for Garen's story, he killed her and it's not fair to take away that victory. So you end up having to have a story where death is temporary, or simply not addressed, which can make the story increasingly shallow.
One game that, for all its flaws, did a pretty decent job of an overarching multiplayer story was Brink. Each map was a different part of a story, you could even play through the story in order. And there were two branches of that story, one where each side got to win. So even though your player actions didn't affect the story, you still got to experience a persistent narrative. That's more than you could say for a lot of singleplayer games, so I'd call it a win.
I think there's something valuable to negative elements stemming from a rivalry. In stories, vengeance is hardly ever a healthy motivator and leads to poor decision-making.
The issue at the core of a negative element from one player pursuing their rivalry is that everyone has a group goal which is tied to that player. If any player ever has an individual goal at conflict with the group goal, then in some percentage of games, the group will be dissatisfied.
Since we cannot allow the group to be dissatisfied:
An individual should not be given the ability to retain both group identity and individual identity. They must be given a very clear choice in combat situations, a direct question asking them whether or not they want to pursue that story element or cleave to their compatriots. We only give them points for committing acts of vengeance if they choose that path beforehand. Otherwise, we just consider it to be incidental.
If they "go off half-cocked", we then start creating games where each side has some number of "rogue elements", and we balance with these rogue elements in mind.
We don't put players in a 4v5 situation, because we know that one side is going to have 4 players from the start.
Or if we do put one side into a 4v5, we offer benefits commensurate with the increased challenge of the game. Basically we try to balance around asymmetric gameplay.
To be perfectly honest...I don't WANT story in my multiplayer games.
I don't play them for the same reason I play my singleplayer or co-op titles.
As much as I enjoy the ongoing lore of League of Legends, and consider it a part of the LoL culture, when I hit the rift myself that all flies out the window. The champions are no longer their lore-filled selves but avatars for other human players, and all I care about is playing the game. A victory or loss isn't about Damacia and Noxus, it's about me and my personal rank.
I could care less if there was some story going on that was the result of each match because I would be too busy wanting to get into the next game to raise my rank even more.
The only way I could see myself being vaguely interested is if there was a cool cutscene with my summoner being congratulated when I reached a new plateau in the ranked system, and becoming more of a hero to his country. But that's exactly the thing, it has to take place in a vacuum related to my personal "single player" achievements.
Because ultimately, competitive multiplayer games aren't ABOUT the game. They're about the people. We didn't fill the Staples Center because of anything regarding story, we filled it because we wanted to know who the best real people in the real world were at a game.
It's much like "real" sports in this regard. Soccer/Football has no plot. Basketball has no plot. Boxing has no plot. Professional Poker has no plot. Because the stories are about the real people and their ability to play a game.
Professional multiplayer games aren't videogames in a traditional sense, they are sports.
I immediately think of tabletop gaming in Warhammer 40K. One squad would get a really lucky roll that wipes out a superior squad; after the game, I would paint the squad with an emblem on each squad member that destroyed the superior squad. This marking would always let me remember that one game.
This would work best in a first-person shooter. When your killed, you get the video of what you did and you choose whether to record the video or just keep playing without wanting to record the video. If you chose to record the video, the game would do a basic analysis of your play through: Did you use a tank? what weapon did you use? what opponents did you kill? what type of opponent? what kind of opponent? kill death ratio in that sequence? whenever I am finished playing, I go back to the video. I choose one category that I was most proud of in that video. The game would then load art assets to choose from and then you get to place a badge on your character or make an aesthetic change to a weapon based on the category chosen in the video. The number of badges and changes to the character would be limited based on leveling systems already in the game. If your level 10, you get to keep one badge or aesthetic modification. At level 20, you get an extra badge placement or weapon modification. This is also interesting because players are self identifying something they enjoy about their play. if you are a sniper class, does a nice shot matter or was controlling a part of the map more important? When a player answers that question, people will now know what kind of teammate they have.
I'm really basing all of this on creating an internal storytelling within the player's mind. It doesn't matter if the whole world resets after every match. I did this interesting sequence of events and my character shows that interesting sequence of events through a symbol. I don't need the world to change around me to tell a story.
Planetside 2 is a notable example of competitive multiplayer that does not reset between plays. Territory ownership is persistent, so if one team owns 3/4 of the map, you have to take it back from them. It incentivizes players to play on the "losing" team by awarding greater experience bonuses to a team that is at a disadvantage on the map.
I liked the way Mass Effect 3 integrated the multiplayer into the singleplayer narrative, having each participant rack up abstract "points" that would (supposedly) affect the outcome in their SP campaign. It could've been broadened, though, as the video suggests - organized MP events that would determine what kind of DLC was to be released next, etc.
In general, I'm not sure this really works as a concept. Quality narrative takes time to develop, usually in an isolated environment. Interactivity and constant dependence on player input would likely hamper the writers and result in rushed, poorly thought-out fanservice of some kind.
I think, in order to include narrative in a multiplayer setting, the narrative has to be about the multiplayer aspect. In order for this to be fair, the game developers would have to create a game in which the story is flexible enough for those who choose Team A to experience a persistent story with every victory or defeat, while allowing Team B players to do the same.
The only way I could see this happening is if player choice of Team A and Team B were locked after character creation. You would always be playing with your same allies, and your opponents would only ever be fought once.
Such a game would end up creating a story akin to a season of a sports game, but played out online, and I can't see the narrative being all that deep either.
Even in MMO's, as they were mentioned in the video, aren't able to integrate narrative with competitive multiplayer. World of Warcraft's story isn't played out by one faction or another being victorious in the carefully (or not so) scripted events, and the game's competitive arenas had absolutely no bearing on the narrative of the game.
From what I recall, Dark Age of Camelot was an MMO that was all about faction v. faction v. faction combat and there was no real narrative to be found in the game. I didn't actually play it, so it's possible I am wrong. Anyone who has played it, feel free to correct me.
Overall, I think a majority of gamers would agree with @CSDragon. Either they play a single player game for the narrative, or they play a multiplayer game for the thrill of competition.
What if you made it so the hypothetical FPS game didn't change any of the mechanics of the maps, but instead changed the cosmetics? What if the game kept track of where buildings had been shot most by players, and added bullet-hole decals on the wall at the start of the map? Or scorch marks where rockets had hit?
Series of location sort of ala Battlefield style maps. Narrative styled as a combat sim, or a campfire retelling of the event. Except, there is a rogue AI/psychic possession/Posttraumatic Stress made manifest that keeps the player from telling/completing the story correctly.
Each player in game, then sees the other player as some sort of enemy force/monsters and their own team as human/army guys.
Once a player completes enough achievements from a map, the story unlocks and moves forward in a out of game, single player capacity of some sort. Solo missions, cutscenes, et cetera.
The overarching narrative of the game would be to revisit each story/memory and tell/complete it again until the player manages to get the 'correct' telling of it. Thus, banishing the rogue AI/spirit/psychosis and freeing the player.
A thought comes to mind; I really like the way DOTA 2 does it, with the little contextual character interactions it has. It's small, but it suggests relationships and that there's more going on than just the battle we're seeing. (I really like when this is used for teaching purposes too; I remember Ursa shouting about coming for Roshan when he got an item that let him solo that character. I thought that was immensely clever.)
I'm sure there's some way you could work up a narrative that fit around the idea of a perpetually resetting battle. I know Demigod had the plot of, well, demigods fighting for the right to become a full god, if I recall right. I almost wonder what would happen if you combined status in ranked modes with narrative consequences....no, ranked mode is uptight enough as is, hah.
I think ME3 did this well by integrating the multiplayer setup into the single player world context. They utilized weekend events to keep players interested with rewards for individual, team, and community achievements. Failure in these events had consequences for the next week's event, while success meant that you got new or improved equipment and sometimes an additional slot for health packs or missiles.
Of course this likely only worked because you were only competing within your team while cooperating with them and it was a horde gameplay rather than PVP.
Check out NationsAtWar.org, an old, defunct, Penny Arcade PvP minecraft server. Basically all of what you're mentioning; mechanic-based rivalries, persistent worlds, PvP based point calculations, story shift, meta-narrative, meta-events. All of that was in and being developed on that server.
Some persistent world games do it quite well, the one i remember is EndWar.
You pick one of 3 factions and cant change. The MP had a world map with each faction controlling territories and the borders would define where people can have battles. Then they used aggregate data for battles to see who claimed or defended the territory, and moved the battle line about once a day. This also led to battles over special territories every once in a while which gave special abilities to the side holding it.
For faction vs faction games where players can play on either side, how about a system where you have the central neutral area, then around that players that win matches change the map area, you can have a "canon" mode where maps are available based on where the fighting is relative to the neutral point. Wins and losses move that area (say 100 wins pushes to the next area). A "non-canon" mode for players who want to play specific maps. If one faction got ridiculously ahead and some maps were never touched you could gently push back to the neutral zone with dev based inflation of wins or a story event such as "new tech" or "resource loss". short version: giant version of team fortresses HYDRO composes entire multiplayer
- Customize player's home base: Not just with furniture they buy or trophies from past victories, but with other assorted little mementos. Newspaper clippings about that absolute rout last week or screenshots of your character's big crowning moment that you didn't even know the game was taking until you saw it splashed across a magazine in your bunker.
- Have a narrative that correlates to the game-state: You notice how in Borderlands 2, everyone on Pandora seems to have access to the same Respawn technology the players use? They haven't put too fine a point on it in any of the signle-player dialogue I've encountered so far, but when you can farm Captain Flynt 20 times per day, it's not hard to imagine that Handsome Jack was just re-assigned by Hyperion when he respawned on that Satellite after his death, not truly killed. Take that concept, and apply it to Team-based Deathmatch or Capture The Flag. Hell, Unreal Torunament already DID this throughout most of the 90's, right up until it stopped being a game franchise and started being an engine.
- Weave the narrative into the gameplay: Replace the decision "do I defend the choke point or try and gain ground here" with "do I abide by the Geneva Convention or insult my enemy's honour to try and lure them into a duel?" You're making basically the same tactical judgement call, it's just gussied up with the window-dressing of story. Hardcore players will ignore the story and just make the judgement call that suits their gameplay style, but let's face it, this will NEVER not be the case.
- Ambiance. Mood. Implications: All that world-building that goes into crafting a good single-player level can work just as well in multiplayer. Just because multiplayer levels need to be functional, recognizable, and easy to traverse doesn't mean they can't also have tone, personality, and scars of past events. It's just that these events happened before the players got here. They tell the WORLD'S story, not the players'. Maybe that's not the type of storytelling this episode was trying to talk about, but it bears mentioning. We HAVE some pretty effective tools to convey story through gameplay without player choice or persistence ever entering into it. Just keep using those.
- Sheer fucking pagentry: When the game state changes, make a big deal out of it. Trumpets, air-raid sirens, explosions in the sky. It started with the gas chambers in Team Fortress and it went all the way to Aistrikes in Modern Warfare, but these events need not effect gameplay. If they're triggered by gameplay, and they're highly visible, if they give everyone a moment in which to stop fighting and realize that they just won or lost a point, if they cause the players to fall back and regroup because they know they're not going to see another target for at least 20 seconds, that's a moment of sea change in the midst of multiplayer carnage. It can be surprisingly cathartic if you let it. Contrast with Natural Selection or Saturday Night Combat, where every nanosecond of gameplay feels vitally important right up until the bitter end, unless you or your teammates checked out long ago because you've decided it's a lost cause. These are all examples of emergent narrative, and smart game designers build for them. Again, this is an old solution that was in circulation back before we defined the problem, and as such it may not be germane to the conversation EC is trying to have.
I hope you'll revisit this once those NDAs expire, because I would love to hear what you came up with. Hopefully with examples because those same companies are now PROMOTING the projects in question, not furtively developing them in secret, hoping nobody scoops them during the vital 30 seconds after launch when the game is allowed to make any money.
Legend of the Five Rings, which has been stated twice already, is indeed a perfect example of how this can be done, however the biggest problem with this system (And all systems that have attempted this form of narrative movement in general) is that those that are most likely to cause the shift in the narrative, and those that care about the narrative are two completely different groups.
In L5R, the TTRPG people have to deal with the decisions of the TCG players. In the L5R card game, Shadow Lands cards (demons and other evil things) are extremely powerful in combat, which helps offset the fact that they make you lose honor very quickly (Losing too much honor for your clan is a lose condition). Now, decks the revolve around combat and winning the game through combat, mechanically, will want Shadow Lands cards in their decks, causing one of the clans rises to power via Shadow Land influence each era. It's gotten extremely out of hand when the Spider Clan came to be, a minor clan that was blatantly evil, like, mustache twirling evil. Low and behold, a Spider Clan deck won a tournament because they are a clan specializing in using Shadowland cards, and Shadowlands OP. Having the minor clan win caused them to rise from being a minor clan into being a major clan, on par with the clans that were founded by the gods themselves, and now every person in the RPG must suddenly abide by the idea that not only are blatantly evil people rewarded with the formation of a clan at the behest of the emperor, but said clan is further rewarded by the emperor for doing more blatantly evil things.
This is more or less the problem with the idea of mechanics based story progression; the people who do anything to win will not be the people who make thematically appropriate decisions, and the people who will do anything to win will win.
[PATV] Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 6: Competitive Storytelling
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A little off topic, but still about something discussed in the video: I'd really like it if FPSs did more things like what was discussed with leaving the stages as-is. My problem is the same that's been discussed about almost all FPS games and games like Resident Evil.
Here's my rocket launcher. It can destroy Helicopters, but explodes harmlessly on that wooden door. I personally think maps should be 100% interactive (as far as destroying goes. Then you could replay maps (like most strategy/objective-based matches do) and flip sides.
Now you are on the side and all the stuff is still broken. Best case scenario would be that it would deter camping (especially if the area risks collapsing). It might also deter bottlenecking
Perhaps instead of over-arching narrative, you instead have multiple mini-narratives. To go back to that multiplayer arena analogy, instead of having an overarching story that unlocks with the new content patches, each playable character has their own backstory, subtle personality quirks and so on. When you fight a match and something in that match met a specific criteria - they fought a particular enemy champion, they used a specific combo to land a killing blow, they unlocked the beginning of a new special attack tree - the player gets a short cinematic based on it that informs them about the character they're playing.
A couple of example. Let's say you can level up a mage character to specialize in a particular element (water, fire, darnkess etc). This gets reflected in the narrative as you progress down the tech tree; perhaps after you've levelled up the basic water attack past a certain point, you get a cinematic where a mysterious hooded sage steps out of the shadows and says "you seem to have an aptitude for this... if you decide you want to pursue the mysteries of the aquatic arts to their fullest, come find me, I could teach you much..."
Alternatively, perhaps your ranking and stats get referenced in other cut scenes - if you're still in Bronze League, NPCs treat your character like an unimportant scrub, but then give you due deference and respect once you reach the higher tiers. Alternatively, if you finished off an enemy champion with a particularly brutal critical hit for a four-figure damage amount, perhaps NPCs say in hushed whispers as you pass "careful of that one, did you hear what he did in the arena 3 weeks ago? Turned that guy into paste."
And then there are little non-specific things you can add, like the item store owner taking note of the fact that you're having a losing streak and saying "having a bad time on the field eh? Don't worry, it happens sometimes, you'll be back in form before you know it."
Obviously this would take some tweaking as one side would almost certainly be at a disadvantage based on the limited champion pool to select from, but Riot already did something similar once and added in a couple champions to fight for that side to balance things out. I know I'd be very excited for something like this.
-narrative pushback
As one-side pushes the narrative more and more down one path of the narrative, the opposing narrative system itself increases the efficacy of the push back towards a central narrative. MMOs like this system.
-narrative sandbox
EVE Online/Dust 514. Problem is the systems in the sandbox have to be so fleshed out that the world could seem more like a second job than a fun pastime with narrative. It does allow for some of the more awesome stories in any competitive game.
-larger narrative window
You aren't the hero, but you dive in and out of the one narrative timeline witnessing key and not so key events. Your actions look like they contribute to the overall conflict, but whether they do or not is left up in the air. Not the best, but I'm unsure if I've seen a popular competitve game take this route (Titanfall might be the one, but its not out). The singleplayer games that go this route have to work extra hard on the narrative to make this work (White Knight Chronicles a rather so-so example of this failing).
-invisible hand narrative
What I want to see more of. Basically narrative sandbox, with an overseeing presence making sure things stay balanced or interesting. MMOs (MMO balancing and retconning, mainly) and L4D spring to mind, but there are lots more ways this can be explored.
Still, this episode felt like a lot was left on the table because of the mentioned NDA. I even think the teaser of more subtracted from the video, as rather than providing an overview of the topic and saying you'll go more in-depth when you have the time (quite literally as you couldn't post until the NDA lifted that you could explain in that future episode), you instead tease that the depth is lacking because you are required to not talk about it. A matter of wording, but an important one in presentation.
So basically anything like Planetside 2 or Global Agenda where in there is a large map (whether graphically represented or simply nodes that represent a vague area) and factions compete. Narrative can come in from having given time periods of play between which the devs transition the story and state of the world to effect the game.
So say you have three factions: Traders, Zealots and the Navy. During the past month of play the Navy has being dominating the board due to significant fighting between the other two factions. At the end of the month the developers start up again with immediately creating an event for the zealots in which a religious figure (in the form of a strong NPC) has emerged and lead a new crusade against the Navy. Maybe instead you could simply declare certain zones between traders and zealots as under a DMZ agreement for the next given period to curb their aggression (and then maybe go on to have one of the two factions break that agreement).
In both situations the events not only shape the narrative in some way but also allow for the developers to balance out a currently dominate faction with in the game while providing new content (either trying to stop the NPC or dealing with the new map flow created by the DMZ).
But that doesn't really solve the issue put forth with more standard multiplayer games where persistence is ultimately undesirable.
I'd call the multiplayer and single player sides of those games completely separate games in their own right. This episode doesn't mention them because they're looking at telling the story through multiplayer play specifically, instead of through a handcrafted, directed, cutscene-filled experience.
Please don't do an ep if all you can do is this, its really unsatisfying.
Malcolm X
Now, the overall storyline with Desmond in the present was pretty lacking throughout, but the notion of rising through the ranks of Abstergo in the multiplayer (unlocking story and extras as you level up) made it more engaging for me to keep playing MP. I dunno how it all ended (like I said - I don't play a lot of MP and grinding to cap just for the story wasn't worth it eventually) but conceptually, it seemed to work better than I had expected it to going in.
Obviously it can't be used a s a "template" for integrating narrative into traditional match-based multiplayer, but it's still worth having a look at when we're on the subject :P
The issue is that narrative is made by putting events in an order to create a story, which goes entirely against standard MP set ups (you raising your Abstergo ranking doesn't change the story or events of the MP game at all).
Which is why I'm really curious what the NDA'd solution was.
If you really are talking about how the multiplayer ties into a real narrative, that makes more sense. I think Mass Effect did this pretty well, though that isn't competitive. AC: Brotherhood has an interesting tie-in. I think Hybrid did a good job of presenting a world where it makes sense to have perpetually reoccurring battles in the same spaces. Frankly, competitive multiplayer shouldn't be about story as much as creating setting.
Battlefield 1942 had zero story, it just utilized some of the history and settings of the war. One of my favorite games of all time was the original UT, and that had almost no story at all. It didn't need a story. The environments hinted at a larger fictional universe that was probably more interesting in my head than anything the developers might have tried to tack on. I don't think a good multiplayer game needs to spend time on narrative. All it needs is to put together a good space for stories to happen in.
The more players you have, the less each player has any influence on the narrative.
It would be more interesting to try to integrate the narrative into the core gameplay experience. In FPS's or any game where the player respawns after dying, it should start with finding a real justification to this respawning.
Does the game take place in a real war, where soldiers are cloned as soon as they die? Is the respawned character different from the one who died?
Or are characters playing a game themselves, in some sort of futuristic sports tournament?
This last options could easily lead to the adjunction of some basic narrative elements: this player killed me several times, my characters begins to hate him, he is now my rival and I get bonuses if I kill him, or if I win a game against his team.
I played several games in the same team as this other character, he is now my best friend and I will have to avenge him if another player kills him.
Ths sort of things.
But in a multiplayer game, do you actually die, or was that just a noncanon version of events? If Garen kills Poppy, it's fine for Poppy's story to say, "that didn't happen, try it again and win this time". But for Garen's story, he killed her and it's not fair to take away that victory. So you end up having to have a story where death is temporary, or simply not addressed, which can make the story increasingly shallow.
One game that, for all its flaws, did a pretty decent job of an overarching multiplayer story was Brink. Each map was a different part of a story, you could even play through the story in order. And there were two branches of that story, one where each side got to win. So even though your player actions didn't affect the story, you still got to experience a persistent narrative. That's more than you could say for a lot of singleplayer games, so I'd call it a win.
The issue at the core of a negative element from one player pursuing their rivalry is that everyone has a group goal which is tied to that player. If any player ever has an individual goal at conflict with the group goal, then in some percentage of games, the group will be dissatisfied.
Since we cannot allow the group to be dissatisfied:
An individual should not be given the ability to retain both group identity and individual identity. They must be given a very clear choice in combat situations, a direct question asking them whether or not they want to pursue that story element or cleave to their compatriots. We only give them points for committing acts of vengeance if they choose that path beforehand. Otherwise, we just consider it to be incidental.
If they "go off half-cocked", we then start creating games where each side has some number of "rogue elements", and we balance with these rogue elements in mind.
We don't put players in a 4v5 situation, because we know that one side is going to have 4 players from the start.
Or if we do put one side into a 4v5, we offer benefits commensurate with the increased challenge of the game. Basically we try to balance around asymmetric gameplay.
I don't play them for the same reason I play my singleplayer or co-op titles.
As much as I enjoy the ongoing lore of League of Legends, and consider it a part of the LoL culture, when I hit the rift myself that all flies out the window. The champions are no longer their lore-filled selves but avatars for other human players, and all I care about is playing the game. A victory or loss isn't about Damacia and Noxus, it's about me and my personal rank.
I could care less if there was some story going on that was the result of each match because I would be too busy wanting to get into the next game to raise my rank even more.
The only way I could see myself being vaguely interested is if there was a cool cutscene with my summoner being congratulated when I reached a new plateau in the ranked system, and becoming more of a hero to his country. But that's exactly the thing, it has to take place in a vacuum related to my personal "single player" achievements.
Because ultimately, competitive multiplayer games aren't ABOUT the game. They're about the people. We didn't fill the Staples Center because of anything regarding story, we filled it because we wanted to know who the best real people in the real world were at a game.
It's much like "real" sports in this regard. Soccer/Football has no plot. Basketball has no plot. Boxing has no plot. Professional Poker has no plot. Because the stories are about the real people and their ability to play a game.
Professional multiplayer games aren't videogames in a traditional sense, they are sports.
This would work best in a first-person shooter. When your killed, you get the video of what you did and you choose whether to record the video or just keep playing without wanting to record the video. If you chose to record the video, the game would do a basic analysis of your play through: Did you use a tank? what weapon did you use? what opponents did you kill? what type of opponent? what kind of opponent? kill death ratio in that sequence? whenever I am finished playing, I go back to the video. I choose one category that I was most proud of in that video. The game would then load art assets to choose from and then you get to place a badge on your character or make an aesthetic change to a weapon based on the category chosen in the video. The number of badges and changes to the character would be limited based on leveling systems already in the game. If your level 10, you get to keep one badge or aesthetic modification. At level 20, you get an extra badge placement or weapon modification. This is also interesting because players are self identifying something they enjoy about their play. if you are a sniper class, does a nice shot matter or was controlling a part of the map more important? When a player answers that question, people will now know what kind of teammate they have.
I'm really basing all of this on creating an internal storytelling within the player's mind. It doesn't matter if the whole world resets after every match. I did this interesting sequence of events and my character shows that interesting sequence of events through a symbol. I don't need the world to change around me to tell a story.
In general, I'm not sure this really works as a concept. Quality narrative takes time to develop, usually in an isolated environment. Interactivity and constant dependence on player input would likely hamper the writers and result in rushed, poorly thought-out fanservice of some kind.
The only way I could see this happening is if player choice of Team A and Team B were locked after character creation. You would always be playing with your same allies, and your opponents would only ever be fought once.
Such a game would end up creating a story akin to a season of a sports game, but played out online, and I can't see the narrative being all that deep either.
Even in MMO's, as they were mentioned in the video, aren't able to integrate narrative with competitive multiplayer. World of Warcraft's story isn't played out by one faction or another being victorious in the carefully (or not so) scripted events, and the game's competitive arenas had absolutely no bearing on the narrative of the game.
From what I recall, Dark Age of Camelot was an MMO that was all about faction v. faction v. faction combat and there was no real narrative to be found in the game. I didn't actually play it, so it's possible I am wrong. Anyone who has played it, feel free to correct me.
Overall, I think a majority of gamers would agree with @CSDragon. Either they play a single player game for the narrative, or they play a multiplayer game for the thrill of competition.
Each player in game, then sees the other player as some sort of enemy force/monsters and their own team as human/army guys.
Once a player completes enough achievements from a map, the story unlocks and moves forward in a out of game, single player capacity of some sort. Solo missions, cutscenes, et cetera.
The overarching narrative of the game would be to revisit each story/memory and tell/complete it again until the player manages to get the 'correct' telling of it. Thus, banishing the rogue AI/spirit/psychosis and freeing the player.
I'm sure there's some way you could work up a narrative that fit around the idea of a perpetually resetting battle. I know Demigod had the plot of, well, demigods fighting for the right to become a full god, if I recall right. I almost wonder what would happen if you combined status in ranked modes with narrative consequences....no, ranked mode is uptight enough as is, hah.
Of course this likely only worked because you were only competing within your team while cooperating with them and it was a horde gameplay rather than PVP.
Chromehounds?
...in freaking Minecraft....
...Yeah..
You pick one of 3 factions and cant change. The MP had a world map with each faction controlling territories and the borders would define where people can have battles. Then they used aggregate data for battles to see who claimed or defended the territory, and moved the battle line about once a day. This also led to battles over special territories every once in a while which gave special abilities to the side holding it.
- Customize player's home base: Not just with furniture they buy or trophies from past victories, but with other assorted little mementos. Newspaper clippings about that absolute rout last week or screenshots of your character's big crowning moment that you didn't even know the game was taking until you saw it splashed across a magazine in your bunker.
- Have a narrative that correlates to the game-state: You notice how in Borderlands 2, everyone on Pandora seems to have access to the same Respawn technology the players use? They haven't put too fine a point on it in any of the signle-player dialogue I've encountered so far, but when you can farm Captain Flynt 20 times per day, it's not hard to imagine that Handsome Jack was just re-assigned by Hyperion when he respawned on that Satellite after his death, not truly killed. Take that concept, and apply it to Team-based Deathmatch or Capture The Flag. Hell, Unreal Torunament already DID this throughout most of the 90's, right up until it stopped being a game franchise and started being an engine.
- Weave the narrative into the gameplay: Replace the decision "do I defend the choke point or try and gain ground here" with "do I abide by the Geneva Convention or insult my enemy's honour to try and lure them into a duel?" You're making basically the same tactical judgement call, it's just gussied up with the window-dressing of story. Hardcore players will ignore the story and just make the judgement call that suits their gameplay style, but let's face it, this will NEVER not be the case.
- Ambiance. Mood. Implications: All that world-building that goes into crafting a good single-player level can work just as well in multiplayer. Just because multiplayer levels need to be functional, recognizable, and easy to traverse doesn't mean they can't also have tone, personality, and scars of past events. It's just that these events happened before the players got here. They tell the WORLD'S story, not the players'. Maybe that's not the type of storytelling this episode was trying to talk about, but it bears mentioning. We HAVE some pretty effective tools to convey story through gameplay without player choice or persistence ever entering into it. Just keep using those.
- Sheer fucking pagentry: When the game state changes, make a big deal out of it. Trumpets, air-raid sirens, explosions in the sky. It started with the gas chambers in Team Fortress and it went all the way to Aistrikes in Modern Warfare, but these events need not effect gameplay. If they're triggered by gameplay, and they're highly visible, if they give everyone a moment in which to stop fighting and realize that they just won or lost a point, if they cause the players to fall back and regroup because they know they're not going to see another target for at least 20 seconds, that's a moment of sea change in the midst of multiplayer carnage. It can be surprisingly cathartic if you let it. Contrast with Natural Selection or Saturday Night Combat, where every nanosecond of gameplay feels vitally important right up until the bitter end, unless you or your teammates checked out long ago because you've decided it's a lost cause. These are all examples of emergent narrative, and smart game designers build for them. Again, this is an old solution that was in circulation back before we defined the problem, and as such it may not be germane to the conversation EC is trying to have.
I hope you'll revisit this once those NDAs expire, because I would love to hear what you came up with. Hopefully with examples because those same companies are now PROMOTING the projects in question, not furtively developing them in secret, hoping nobody scoops them during the vital 30 seconds after launch when the game is allowed to make any money.
In L5R, the TTRPG people have to deal with the decisions of the TCG players. In the L5R card game, Shadow Lands cards (demons and other evil things) are extremely powerful in combat, which helps offset the fact that they make you lose honor very quickly (Losing too much honor for your clan is a lose condition). Now, decks the revolve around combat and winning the game through combat, mechanically, will want Shadow Lands cards in their decks, causing one of the clans rises to power via Shadow Land influence each era. It's gotten extremely out of hand when the Spider Clan came to be, a minor clan that was blatantly evil, like, mustache twirling evil. Low and behold, a Spider Clan deck won a tournament because they are a clan specializing in using Shadowland cards, and Shadowlands OP. Having the minor clan win caused them to rise from being a minor clan into being a major clan, on par with the clans that were founded by the gods themselves, and now every person in the RPG must suddenly abide by the idea that not only are blatantly evil people rewarded with the formation of a clan at the behest of the emperor, but said clan is further rewarded by the emperor for doing more blatantly evil things.
This is more or less the problem with the idea of mechanics based story progression; the people who do anything to win will not be the people who make thematically appropriate decisions, and the people who will do anything to win will win.