What’s this? Justin Marks says that artfully story-entwined gameplay is what major titles are missing? A man after my own heart.

Well, “entwined” is the editor’s word. In fact, what Justin was getting at was not that “story” ( some separate object from “game”) should be entwined with it. That’s pretty much what he says people should stop doing. Instead, what he wants game designers to do is to “start thinking about the gameplay as the narrative itself”. Instead of seeing the story as something to be added to the game, we should see that it is the act of playing that delivers the story to us.

Justin talks about how going on a date in GTA IV while packing a rocket launcher doesn’t affect the story whatsoever. This bit of inanity is an extreme example of a gameplay mechanic being incoherent with the story that the game is trying to tell. This incoherent mechanic has a function in the game’s generated plot, mainly to introduce inanity into the potential narrative (whether the developers intended it or not). To refer to Barthes (again, two posts in a row..), every function, “to varying degrees, signifies [...] even when a detail seems irreducibly insignificant, refractory to any function, it will nonetheless ultimately have the meaning of absurdity or uselessness” (The Semiotic Challenge). What this mechanic in GTA IV does to its story-tacked-onto-a-game is highlight that the story is in fact just tacked onto the game. Very post-modern, but not exactly praise worthy. I think this concept of coherence ought to be central to the act of designing a game if you want it to actually tell a story in an interesting way. You could make something incoherent, sure, but it has to be on purpose and for a reason.

Coherence can be simple, like making sure accurate WWII weapons are available in a WWII shooter. Games are already really good at this kind of coherence. Where they often lack is in having aspects of the game that are coherent in such a way that they enhance the way the game’s story is told. A good example of this second kind of coherence can be found in BioShock. The relationship between the Little Sisters and the Big Daddies is an important part of BioShock‘s story. That this relationship is made evident through one of BioShock‘s core mechanics, one that players can’t avoid if they want to become strong enough to progress in the game, is a visceral way to demonstrate this relationship. Having the Big Daddy initiate the Little Sister’s entrance into and exit from the level (the Big Daddy will bang on the Little Sister’s tunnel to wake her and get her to come out, and will eventually lead her back to a tunnel, offering his body as a stepping stool so that she can climb back in), that the Big Daddy follows her around the level, and that you must kill the Little Sister’s protective Big Daddy in order to get to her at all, all coherently reinforce this story element.

All three are just simple rules in the game:

But since these rules are coherent in just the right way, they also reinforce and shape the way the game tells its story. Coherence is a powerful storytelling tool.

Ian Bogost has a new column over at Gamasutra called Texture where he makes the case for a tactile appreciation of games. From Go‘s game pieces to bump mapping, to force feedback to games that “touch”. These touchy-feely, hard to quantify aspect of the games “are pleasures more subtle and confounding then the anonymous fun of solving a problem in a game”. But the concept of texture can be taken further than these simple tactile pleasures; a game’s texture can be used to relay plot.

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Yes, the “P” word. Allow me the benefit of the doubt.

Bogost briefly talks about how different meanings can be conveyed through force feedback: The tremor that accompanies gunshots in Call of Duty 4 alert the player to unseen dangers, the rumble of lose dirt beneath Link’s feet in Legend of Zelda: Orcania of Time signals buried treasure, and the pulse of your player character’s heartbeat in Silent Hill is an indicator of his current health. Interestingly, Bogost also adds to this last example that the heartbeat’s quickening pace as you get closer to death “instills fear”. This mechanic isn’t just an innovative, non-visual way to provide feedback to the player. It also adds something completely irrelevant to the game’s system of play, but quite remarkable to the game experience.

To take these kinds of textural effects even further, let’s take a look at Ico. For those unfamiliar with it, Ico is the story of a young warrior, Ico, who as part of his village’s tradition is taken to a mysterious castle. There, he finds a young woman named Yorda who he must save by helping her escape the castle without having her dragged away by shadow-like creatures. Ico also uses force feedback, but not for any game related reason. Ico can take Yorda by the hand to drag her along at a quicker pace. When they join hands a quick burst of force feedback reinforces this connection. The startling rumble of the controller mimics the startling physical sensation of a first touch, and the more you play, the more it comes to illustrate the tactile, sensual nature of their relationship, the trust and safety of holding hands. It can even come to signify the emotional connection of the two characters, reinforcing the emotional attachment the player starts to feel for Yorda.

This textural effect is pure plot. It comes to affect the way you feel, and is irrelevant to the game itself. But what if we wanted a textural effect that was more like the one in Silent Hill? Useful and evocative. Then let’s take the rumble effect in Ico a step further. Suppose that the controller also rumbled distinctly, sharply, when Yorda is attacked by shadow creatures, or if she is about to fall. The rumble would serve the useful purpose of giving the player feedback on Yorda’s well being, while the startling vibration would mimic the pang of fear and worry that Ico feels over her safety, emphasizing their relationship and again helping to reinforce the player’s emotional attachment.

What’s important to realize here is that all of these actual or suggested textural effects in Ico are basically irrelevant to the game’s system of play. Within the game’s rules, you have no choice but to care about Yorda’s well being since the player fails if she dies. Rumbling when Ico and Yorda join hands (or when she’s in danger) isn’t necessary to the player caring about Yorda, the player has no choice; but it nonetheless does add something remarkable to the game experience. These “added” textural effects are valuable because they enhance the way the game tells you its story. To borrow from Barthes, texture acts as a kind of indicial function, a part of the plot that establishes mood, atmosphere or gives character. Like a jump shot as opposed to a slow pan in a horror movie, the way you tell (show) the story adds to how the story is experienced. The jump cut will make the scene startling and ultimately more satisfying than the slow pan, although it doesn’t actually change the story in any way. Texture too is a way for games to establish mood, atmosphere or give character. These are tiny, aesthetic aspects of the way the story is told, yes, but ones that make the story richer for them.