This one will be quick. Take a look at this quote from Chris at ihobo.com:
This is the nub of the issue here: a story can make you cry by empathising [sic] with the protagonist (or another character), but a game (when viewed as a formal system) cannot do this. It follows that the only way that a videogame can make you cry is by using narrative tools that have nothing to do with games as formal systems whatsoever. So even though, for instance, many people report that they cried when they played Final Fantasy VII at the fateful scene [...] the moment that actually brought the player to tears was a non-interactive cut scene. It wasn’t the game (in the systems view) that made them cry – it was the story – and there never was a question as to whether stories could make you cry.
I agree and disagree. His examples are true, in so far as the part of the game that makes you cry isn’t an actual, functional part of the game at all. So in his examples it’s never really the game itself that makes you cry. However, this overarching statement is shortsighted in that it doesn’t account for the possibility that a game’s mechanics could themselves be the ones communicating the story. And this is an important distinction.
If it’s safe to say that a movie made you cry because of the way it tells you its story, then it’s also safe to say that if a game’s constituent parts (units and rules) convey a story, then a game can make you cry.
I was reading an analysis by Daniel Cook over at Gamasutra that at first made me nod in agreement. Games have repetitious themes and often implement them in disjunction with or with disregard for their game mechanics. It’s good to see yet another member of the games industry catch on to this endemic problem and suggest a solution. But then a curious thing happens, Cook goes from talking about literary themes to what I’d rather call genre, but he keeps on calling it “theme”. Piracy in a work isn’t, as Cook assumes, a literary theme like “redemption” or “estrangement”. It’s a theme in the same sense that you can have a costume party with a pirate theme… but that definition doesn’t do us any good here. A literary theme arises from the interplay of plot, setting, character, conflict, and tone. According to Cook:
The theme you select directly influences how you present your initial skills to the user. By saying “pirates,” I turn on a particular schema in the player’s brain and a network of possible behaviors and likely outcomes instantaneously lights up.
“Pirates” here is more of a genre, a mental model for what is expected of the structure and content of the work. It isn’t the same as a story about redemption, something much more intangible and difficult to communicate. But whatever you want to call it, mixing up this “theme” with literary themes only leads to a confused analysis of how themes and games interact. To implement a literary theme, let’s say redemption again, would require well thought out and coherent game mechanics that convey the essence of what it is to be a protagonist experiencing or delivering redemption. There isn’t a simple mental model for the representation of a literary theme, since these are generally aspects of the human condition that have confounded us since the dawn of recorded history.
I mean, okay, this kind of stuff is generally dismissed as quibbling. Getting into arguments about terms and definitions is usually the quickest way to say a whole lot of nothing while annoying the hell out of everyone. But, clearly defined terms are the only way we can have productive conversations. It seems everyone in this industry has their own definition of theme, story, plot and narrative; and we wonder why no one can agree on what it means to have a game that tells a story.
Rubes over at The Monk’s Brew has a few thoughts on the tricky problem of trying to have a realistic protagonist that fits into the story… who is also controlled by an unpredictable player. The problem is of course that all too often a game’s mechanics will allow the playful player to do something ridiculous, something the protagonist would never really do. Should we just make a game and, as Jimmy Maher once said, expect the player “to accept the premise and situation of the story she is in, and to behave in a reasonable manner”?
I don’t think we should ever expect anything of the sort. Let’s face it, there shouldn’t be a right and a wrong way to play a game. If it’s within the limits of the rules, then why shouldn’t the player be expected to do something that conflicts with the story? The answer isn’t, I don’t think, in having sophisticated enough AI to respond to a player’s inanity and keep the fiction going. The work required is just too astronomical.
It may some day be possible, but until then there is a solution that can be implemented in games today. The answer is to have game mechanics that are coherent with the story being told. Instead of having “all player actions [...] interpreted by the game within the context of the character performing the action (his or her personality and relationships) and the situation within the narrative”, the game mechanics can be designed to only allow player actions that are coherent with the story. If every game mechanic is coherent with the story, then any version of the dynamic plot generated when playing the game will be coherent with the story being told. That’s the key.
How do we do this? Well, I’ve mentioned character creation before. Instead of first coming up with the character’s history, personality, or even their name… craft the character based on the function you want them to have in the story. Once you’ve established that, create game mechanics that coherently express this function. It’s easier said than done, which is why you rarely see it. But it isn’t by any means impossible, it just requires some forethought.
Welcome to part III of The Flaws of Narrative, Manifested, a look at Michael Abbott’s Narrative manifesto. Check out part I and part II, to see what I think about the rest of the manifesto. Keeping the best (and most difficult) for last, part III is dedicated to Jonathan Blow.
I don’t think there’s any other single person in the games industry today that’s more in line with my feelings on story and games than Jonathan Blow. That being said, somehow I feel that if ever we got together to talk, we’d end up disagreeing more than agreeing.
Jonathan Blow - Conflicted games
Well, let’s start with what we’d agree on, because ultimately that’s what’s most important.
First of all, game mechanics that are “disharmonious” with the story being told create conflict in games, preventing the game from really resonating with players. This is exactly in line with what I’ve said before on coherence in games. He gives the examples of how in BioShock the story tries to establish a ideological conflict between radical individualism and altruism by having the player chose between killing the Little Sister for personal gain, or saving her for…well, here’s the problem: saving her gets you half the personal gain, and every third Little Sister you save you get a bonus. In the end, the difference between killing or saving the Little Sister is negligible. The story wanted to say one thing, and for obvious game balancing reasons, the mechanics subverted that meaning. BioShock’s game mechanics establish a “dynamical meaning” (I’d go with “procedural meaning”) that conflicts with the meaning the story is trying to tell. Jonathan argues that every game mechanic has a meaning, whether intended by the designer or not, due to our natural inclination to attribute meaning to everything we encounter. Since we can’t avoid it, we need to start looking for it and training ourselves to design games with it in mind.
All of that aside, I figure where Jonathan and I will disagree is with small things like the meaning of “story”. I see story as an abstract choronology outside of any medium that can be any possible narrative about any possible thing, whereas Jonathan sees stories as those narratives that are worth telling. But really this isn’t an impasse, we’re talking about the same thing. I chose not to narrow what should be considered a story because I don’t want to inadvertently limit the power of what we’re establishing here. I think that even games that don’t try to tell stories can still benefit from the notions of “harmony” and “dynamic meaning”. Take what I’ve said recently about Team Fortress 2 as a good indication of a mainstream game without a “story” worth telling that still benefits from these concepts.
I expect that this is just one of the small quibbles we’d have because of our different backgrounds. I mean, he agrees with Gaynor’s panic over the inherent chaos and unpredictability of the player, and I don’t. But I figure ultimately we’d agree more often than we disagree.
This is part two of the Flaws of Narrative, a look at Michael Abbott’s Narrative manifesto. Click here to read part I.
If I were to follow Michael’s order, I would next comment on Braid’s visionary designer Jonathan Blow, but since I basically agree with everything he says, that’s going to be a mountain I’ll climb in part III.
Steve Gaynor - The game designer’s role
Steve’s point of view is similar to Redding and Hocking’s (part I) in that he believes the designer should be largely “hands-off” and simply give players the tools they need to create their own stories.
I believe this is again an example of a viewpoint that sees the inherent chaos and unpredictability of the player, and without being able to see beyond traditional linear storytelling just gives up on story in games by pointing to the popularity of games like The Sims, or online worlds, where players create their own stories. My reply is basically the same in part I. Just because there is an infinite number of prime numbers, we shouldn’t avoid looking for the Riemann zeta function; and just because genetic mutation is inherently unpredictable and chaotic doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue the limits of the theory of evolution. Again, Gaynor’s point of view isn’t wrong, we should definitely endeavour to allow players to experience richer stories that they feel are unique to their actions. It’s just that this view keeps us from fully considering the larger picture of storytelling in games.
L.B. Jeffries - Non linear reactive stories
Jeffries is definitely a wild-card, but I like that. I think it’s definitely by getting away from our preconceived notions of games and stories that we’ll make progress in this field. The application of tarot card reading, an ancient “storytelling” art, to storytelling in games is really fascinating, but isn’t the answer to the overall problem.
Jeffries suggests that just like tarot cards take advantage of our mind’s natural inclination to create meaning, to take chaos and enforce order on it, so too could these principles take the chaos of player agency and allow the player to infer their own meanings:
A series of reactions like someone crying for help if you shoot them or a dog following you if you feed it could be created in response to the player. Rather than worry about how these relate to some grand linear story, simply leave them as short vignettes that connect and relate to one another through A.I.
This, I believe, is a fantastic approach to storytelling in games, but it doesn’t need to come at the expense of a grander story. With enough forethought, the vignettes could easily combine to form a larger dynamic plot, or else help reinforce a dynamic plot told through other game mechanics, art, environments, sounds and haptics (yes, I will hammer you with this string of potential storytelling vehicles every chance I get).
Michael Abbott, catching on to this crazy confluence of ideas about games and narrative, has proposed a Narrative manifesto by quoting from some of “the most thoughtful and articulate members of the games community” on this very topic. I applaud the effort, and certainly feel strongly that our anti-status-quo way of looking at things needs a call to arms, but I can’t help but feel that the whole story and games thing is misunderstood. It’s not that the people that Michael chose to quote are wrong. What they say is true, but they miss the larger point, or muddle the concept of narrative in games. Rather than a manifesto for narrative in games, Michael has done a splendid job of collecting the kinds of viewpoints that serve to confuse the issue of narrative and games. Yes, I’m going to disagree with thoughtful and articulate members of the games community that are better known, better liked, better experienced, and hell, probably better dressed than me. I hope you don’t think me pompous.
Patrick Redding and Clint Hocking - Dynamic story architecture
Patrick and Clint are of the opinion that it’s all about the player and that the designer should just get out of the way and stop worrying about crafting a story: “the designer builds a system, but the player authors the story”.
There are hints of truth here, which is what make this viewpoint deceptively convincing. Designers definitely build the system, and players definitely act out their own story, but the key distinction is that the player’s story is constrained and controlled by the system. In that sense, what the player is actually doing is acting out their own plot to a pre-defined story.
The Sims is considered a powerful example of a game that lets players author their own stories. But really, what they create is a version of a specific kind of story: a story about suburban life, friends, love, marriage, getting a job, having a child, etc. The system of The Sims provides the building blocks necessary for a player to create their own version of this story, but they’re limited to the story the system provides. They can’t create a story about a Sim giving up their meaningless, commercialistic life, moving to India, joining an obscure religious sect and living out their dream of an ascetic life… until one day! Carla (from back home) finds you and begs you to please! please come home! … unless that’s an expansion pack I haven’t heard about yet? The reason players can’t write that story is because the building blocks that The Sims provides the player don’t include these potential story events. The “story” of The Sims is pre-defined by the game’s mechanics, by the system’s units and rules.
It’s in this sense that I believe designers have a whole heck of a lot of control over the story experiences of players. Absolutely, interaction and agency allow the player to affect the outcome of the game, and every player will experience a different “story” based on their actions, but all of this will happen within the confines of the system. They’re not really changing the actual story, that’s set by the system, what players do when playing the game is author the plot, or the way the game tells them the story. It’s like this: I can tell you the story of the Lord of the Rings over lunch, I can read it over the course of roughly 1500 pages, or I can watch it over the course of 11 hours and 23 minutes. Each telling omits, adds and even slightly changes the small details of events, but in the end it’s all the same story.
Just because there is an infinite number of prime numbers, we shouldn’t avoid looking for the Riemann zeta function; and just because genetic mutation is inherently unpredictable and chaotic doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue the limits of the theory of evolution.
Games make storytelling more complex since the potential variations on the telling are virtually endless, you might even have a branching story with multiple endings, and the player is inherently unpredictable, but in the end, no matter how you play it, you’re playing the story set up by the game’s mechanics, art, environment, sound and haptics. Once designers realize this distinction, they’ll be in a better place to realize how they can manipulate their game design to better relate a potential story.
Raph Koster lists what he thinks are the two hardest and most critical skills for a game designer.
- Be able to see the game with no hint of artwork, music, sound, anything
[...]- Be able to see the game without any mechanics, any rules, any knowledge of how it should play
If you’ve been following the site so far, you might have an idea of where I think this is lacking. Namely, I’d like to suggest that there is a third critical skill a game designer should have.
- Be able to take an abstract story, turn it into a series of coherent plot functions, and design game mechanics, art, environments, audio and haptics that reinforce those functions and combine to tell that story through play itself.
Of course, if the game doesn’t have a story, then don’t worry about it. But that’s becoming less and less the case as the gaming industry matures. The reality is that story needs to stop taking a back seat to mechanics if games hope to tell their stories to their fullest potential.
And a great designer? They should be able to see all three in their head at once.
Over at Gamasutra they have a detailed and well researched piece on crafting compelling characters in video games. But I think something’s missing. It’s not that what Tychsen is saying is wrong, technically he’s just reporting his observations as he sees them. His honest goal is give people the knowledge they need to design better characters in games, that you can see. Unfortunately, the way he approaches what a character is dooms him to repeat the same mistakes that have lead game after game to implement flat, boring characters.
From a systems’ point of view, a character is just a unit within the game, with attributes, relations, statistics, and behaviours. This is Tychsen’s viewpoint, and it’s fine when creating a game for gameplay’s sake. But as soon as you introduce story, you need to look at characters in a different way.
[…]if the character is not interesting to play, the gaming experience will not be of a sufficient quality to motivate the player to continue player.
Fascinating characters can make a game and create lasting relationships with the player that keep them coming back for more – as is evidenced in the game series featuring characters such as Lara Croft, April Ryan, Max Payne, Crash Bandicoot and Sonic the Hedgehog.
First off, you could have the most interesting character in the world and it won’t save you from plain old bad gameplay. Consider the wildly popular and completely unsuccessful Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. I love that little guy, and I have fond memories playing Sonic games on my Sega Genesis, but I really haven’t enjoyed the 3D versions that have been coming out over the years. Sonic the Hedgehog is a character, yes, but moreso, he’s the embodiment of a specific kind of gameplay that I really enjoy. Take away the gameplay, and I don’t enjoy Sonic anymore.
And this leads me to my point: If experiencing gameplay is to experience a game’s procedural plot, and Sonic is the embodiment of that gameplay, then Sonic isn’t just a character but an actantial component of the plot.
Actants aren’t units in a story; they don’t exist and affect the fiction as agents, “causing” things to happen. Instead, actants only exist because you want a certain action in your plot to occur. It’s a subtle change of perspective that has you constantly acknowledging the fictionality of the plot, the fact that the story is a construction. Uncle Ben doesn’t die at the hands of some burglar because one rolled lawful good and the other chaotic evil, or because the burglar had a higher agility score, or because the burglar had a bad day, really needed the money and got careless. The reason Uncle Ben dies at the hands of some burglar is to provide the realistic motivation needed by the plot to fulfill Peter Parker’s transformation into the friendly neighbourhood Spiderman we all know. As far as Spiderman’s origin story goes, that’s the only reason why the actants of Ben and the burglar exist in the plot.
That’s interesting, you might think, but what does that have to do with game design? Well, like I said, Tychsen’s systematic approach isn’t wrong, it’s just lacking the depth needed to implement characters that are well rounded and feel like they belong in the game’s procedural plot. For that, you need to consider what that character’s actantial role in the plot will be. And this is where the two meet: once you know exactly what an actant’s purpose is in the plot, then you can start thinking about what game mechanics, attributes, statistics and behaviours best serve to coherently fulfill that purpose. The end result is a character that’s both structurally and actantially sound, the kind of character that really emphasizes the plot and brings your game to life.
I think it’s fitting that the first post made on this site coincides with one made by Jesper Juul titled, Why Make Games that Make Stories?, since answering that question is exactly what this site is all about.
In a ripost to James Willis’ article “Making Games That Make Stories” for Second Person, Juuls asks the “ludological” quesiton: Why?
Why make games that tell stories? Well, in this tiny corner of cyberspace—where ludology and narratology make sweet, sweet love: a Venn diagram whose sets are related at a point, immeasurable, like lovers kissing with just the tiniest lick of tongue—we will try to answer it, or at least explore the possibilities.
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There will always be a place in our consoles, on our computers, (in my heart) for games that aspire to be great games and nothing more, games where “story” is just another word for context. Games for gaming’s sake don’t need a story, and so Juul has every right to beg the question: Why?
The answer’s simple. Because games have revealed themselves to be powerful storytelling systems. With each generation the stories and the storytelling get better. Why do it? Because games tell stories in a novel and engaging way. Why progress instead of standing still? Because we can.
I think the current situation of “game” vs. “story” is a non-issue. Unfortunately, the bad rap around “story” seems to be kept alive by the fact that a great game can have a horrible story and still be fun, whereas a horrible game with a great story is irritating and just plain not fun. So why put so much effort into the story at all? But this assumption isn’t completely accurate. A horrible game could never tell a great story, because the telling would be as horrible as the game. The story itself may have the potential to be great, but a terrible game will do a terrible job telling it to you. So it’s never the case that terrible game has a great story. In reality, only a well designed game call tell a great story well.
To touch another point in Juul’s riposte, let me agree and say that games aren’t stories. A game by any definition will never be a story; they are two distinct kinds of things (they share some characteristics only because they can both be considered systems and are both experienced linearly in time—like everything else). Stories in games are experiential, they are produced by the game through the act of play. To say that “no silver bullet will appear that allows any arbitrary story to be made into a satisfying game” is to miss this distinction, or miss the point of storytelling in games.
Stories can’t be made into games, but games can be made to tell stories.
The art of telling stories with games is one that many game designers flirt with without truly knowing it. It is a formalistic, system-centric (read: ludological) approach to the act of storytelling (read: narratology) that, ultimately, has yet to be defined.
And that’s what this site’s all about. It’s that metaphorical space where ludology steals a kiss from narratology.. when no one’s looking.
