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Not Now Kid, I’m Playing My Stories
By Corvus | July 28, 2005
Bear with me as I arrange all the pieces on the board. I am going somewhere with this and I need you to at least catch a glimpse of part of the journey I took to get to my point.
There’s an excellent piece on Gamasutra about story in games. Well worth a read. As a primary point, it reminds us that “conflict is story.” This, of course, isn’t a new concept in the least. Implied in that premise is “resolution of conflict” is story, but I think it’s an important enough concept to be stated out right. “Conflict is story” is a false assumption. The Viet Nam conflict, for example, isn’t a story in and of itself. It contained many stories, and the *cough*resolution*cough* of the conflict is a part of our history, which is merely the story we tell about our past.
There are, of course, many methods of getting a story across. Some games, DRPGs in particular, rely heavily on dialogue to tell their story. Doug Church relates to Kieron Gillen how, at Looking Glass, they removed dialogue because poor implementation actually got in the way of telling the story.
PeterB dug up some four year old notes on designing RPGs. In inimitable PeterB style, the posts sub title appears to be “Why Do Most RPGs Suck?” Where Peter’s post gets really interesting, honestly, is in the hands (on the keyboard?) of Chris Bateman, who posted a hefty response which includes the following statement:
When I think of the many tabletop RPG campaigns I’ve ran or been involved in, the best have been marked out not by great plots, but by great character interactions.
I think that’s an excellent point and one often overlooked when the importance of story in games is discussed.
Hm… This is what I get for taking my time with these posts: I just noticed that Chris Bateman has also responded to the “story is conflict” claim in the Gamasutra article as well. He disagrees with the premise, stating:
Story is conflict, John Sutherland announces in his excellent but somewhat misleading article “What Every Game Developer Needs to Know about Story”. He is completely wrong. I had to think about it for a second, and of all the things that initially came into my head, my first thought was “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”. I challenge anyone to find the conflict in this story (but I also challenge them not to tell me about it!) Okay, so this is a children’s story. But the one thing I can say in total confidence about stories is that all stories are stories.
Well, first off… I think it could be argued that The Very Hungry Caterpillar isn’t a story. It’s a picture book with a simplistic and, if I recall correctly, not terribly accurate nature lesson. Alternately, the caterpillar’s constant eating in order to metamorphose into a buttterfly is filled with inherent conflict. As I child, I knew that the caterpillar needed to eat in order to fuel a transformation and that if he didn’t, he’d probably die. I knew that as he ate, he was in jeopardy of being eaten by birds, falling afoul of a gardener’s poisons or the idle whims of a curious child. I’ll admit that the latter argument is a stretch, but let’s move on…
Chris then points to some excellent commentary on the subject by Orson Scott Card. As wonderful as I think OSC is, I have to disagree with him on some level. Character development, whether it’s a woman facing her role in her family, or an alcoholic trying to spend the day sober, is best portrayed by showing how that character resolves conflict.
I, for example, feel that there’s a conflict between the roles I’m asked to play as a male in modern society. On the one hand, I’m supposed to be the strong provider, capable of protecting my family, no matter the cost, and supporting my wife (who’s supposed to be the “week and emotional” one), even to the point of sublimating my own needs for the good of the family unit. On the other hand, I’m supposed to be sensitive, express my emotions easily, etc. Not diametrically opposed concepts, you claim? Universally, no they aren’t. Situationally, often they are. How I resolve that conflict says more about me than the existence of the conflict itself. I’m not sure, but it sounds like OSC is claiming that I’m stretching the definition of conflict to include this sort of situation, but I feel this, more than anything, is true conflict.
Finally, there was a debate on the RPGDot forums a couple of weeks ago. The most salient point from that thread (that remains in my awareness, anyway), is one person’s insistence that:
A game is an RPG to the extent that it is focused on developing the power of your character(s).
That definition strikes me as a bit simplistic. First off, that definition could fit any number of games that aren’t RPGs, and secondly, the RPGs I enjoy don’t focus on developing the power of my character, they focus on presenting a narration, or an interesting world to explore, or compelling NPCs to interact with, or great environmental challenges (i.e. conflicts) to overcome. The “developing power of my character” is a game mechanic, not the focus. In fact, now that I think on it, that’s all the term RPG (whether it be digital or not) really means. It’s the means by which a gameplay experience is delivered. In that context, my Nine Rules of the DRPG makes a bit more sense.
But what, then, is that experience that’s being delivered? What is the focus?
Story? Narration? Resolution of conflict? Exploration? The Hero’s journey? Puzzles?
Well, I’d argue that the delivery of most DRPGs, as well as many other game genres, is story, as portrayed via the resolution of conflict. I’m not even talking about the over arching plot line as writ by the devleoper: I’m talking about the moment to moment character/environment interaction. Overcoming each individual hurdle within a game is what makes an impression on the player. Steven Johnson talks a bit about brain chemistry in Everything Bad is Good For You, and points out the elating effect of successfully overcoming obstacles in games (thanks to dopamine neurons in the brain). If you haven’t read this book yet, do so. It’s far more interesting than I was expecting, and I was expecting it to be pretty interesting.
This feeds into my theory that the stories games tell aren’t the narrative ones presented by the designer, but the personal ones that the audience tells. Our brains reward us for overcoming conflict and challenges within a game, so those are the parts we remember most fondly. It’s those moments that we feel good about. Now, I don’t mean to say that the overarching plot isn’t important. It certainly can be. If nothing else, is provides a context in which the story takes place. But the issue we face, trying to translate linear narration into game story is that once you hand a player the controls of your game, they ought to be in control. They ought to become the storyteller.
Hm… I think I circled back on myself somewhere. We’ll call this Part One and see what’s floating at the top when the silt clears. I haven’t shook up my mental fish bowl like this in over a month, so I’m a little out of practice. At least, that’s what I’d tell you if we didn’t have a strict “No apologies” rule in our house, which we do. So, shutting up now…
July 28th, 2005 at 11:03 am
I can’t believe you don’t think that ‘The Very Hungry Caterpiller’ is a story. My whole argument rested upon that assumption!
Truly language is a slippery beast.
July 28th, 2005 at 11:17 am
*eltrohc* “Could be argued,” I said!
I can’t believe you don’t think trying to feed an insatiable hunger isn’t conflict. *nirg*
July 28th, 2005 at 11:57 am
I just realized that I didn’t manage to chime in with my take on Chris’s first point that memorable RPGs are defined by great character moments, not great plots, but I suspect you probably figured out that I whole heartedly agree without me needing to expressly say so…
Still, I’ve added a little something to help the flow a little.
July 28th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
Character interaction is distinctly the most intrusive part of story telling in an RPG format. I spent a whole day once forming a campaign, only to waste the following next game session because none of the players would nibble on any of the hooks and spent the entire time trying to assassinate each other instead.
What can you do?
Not to harp on this one again, but I think Half-Life 2 illustrates a great crisis of story-telling. How do you allow the player to feel immersive by presenting the main character as tabula rasa while at the same time trying make the character a vital portion of an epic story?
I still feel that, well Valve didn’t. That they simply cobbled some backstory and some very loose plot elements and then let the player wander in between. Comparatively, you have San Andreas … where you were allowed a decent reign over what your character was like and some control over the story being told, even if it had cutscenes to solve the problem in my first paragraph.
But I’m still waiting for the game which gives you the city and the characters and just lets you figure out how it ends.
July 29th, 2005 at 12:54 am
I would argue that the best RPG published in recent years would be Kingdom of Loathing.
Think of how much of the RPG experience is obsessive-compulsive. The “treadmill” isn’t just something we see in online RPGs like EverQuest, it’s an _essential element_ of every RPG I’ve ever played. You start with a longsword. Then you find a longsword +1. Later, a Murasama blade.
The funny thing, of course, is that this is the polar opposite of how combat and conflict works in real life, where generally you get the nice weaponry BEFORE you engage in combat, if you want to survive.
What I am trying to get at in my notes is that the “spreadsheet model” of RPGs works BECAUSE it provides a framework on which to hang the plot. The player is content to some extent because as long as the numbers in the spreadsheet keep getting bigger, he thinks he’s making progress.
The larger point I’m trying to make is that this is a “worse is better” style solution: it’s an 80% solution. It kinda works, but it also forecloses an entire class of narrative possibility that might — just might — make for more interesting role playing. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m halfway through my life and I don’t notice myself getting stronger or more dextrous or any better at, say, tennis. Yet somehow things are still interesting.
On another note, I agree 100% with Chris’s observation about where the Western RPG falls on its face, which is in giving the player so much rope they just get bored and aimlessly wander away. I didn’t really discuss that in my article directly, but I should have.
-peterb
July 29th, 2005 at 9:27 am
Getting bored and aimlessly wandering away describes perfectly my experience with the Baldur’s Gate series on the PC.
August 3rd, 2005 at 4:54 am
Heyo Carnival visitors! If you enjoyed this post, you may be interested in reading the follow up post, unimaginatively titled More RPG-Story-Conflict Ruminations. Thanks for stopping by!
August 4th, 2005 at 10:46 am
Josh: “But I’m still waiting for the game which gives you the city and the characters and just lets you figure out how it ends. ”
Try Sid Meier’s “Pirates!”
You may find it less appealing than you think. Then again, you may not.
August 14th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
All of this discussion of games and story, I think, ignores experience. And games as strict ‘experience’, i.e. allowing you to do something you have always wanted to do in a convincing way, are a tremendous component of the videogame world.
Story is very important (but not primary) for many videogames but I don’t want any story in some games. For the most part, I don’t want story in a racing game, or a snowboarding game, or a sports game. It gets in the way. Let me bring my story, all you “authors” keep out of my championship season.
August 14th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
I think that’s actually an excellent point, Keith. One of the arguments you’ll see me repeat throughout this discussion is that the real stories being told in games are being told by the audience. In fact, in one of the posts I’m working on, I define story strictly as the audience’s experience of the game, whether it be a game structured around a narrative or not.
August 14th, 2005 at 2:56 pm
I’m sorry, I’ve gotta come back at this and babble insanely. I am sure I will offend or aggravate some. But please be clear that I am not saying that story doesn’t matter, rather I am arguing that story must not, under any circumstance, be given primary control of the reigns –
To quote from Gamasutra article – “Now, the notion that story doesn’t matter is worst with the industry old-timers. “Just repeat that 30 seconds of gameplay, and you’ve got it,” I’ve heard. Or worse: “We’ve never had to worry about of that story stuff before.”
“Maybe that’s okay for a small audience of addicted gamers, but the new charter for platforms like Xbox 360 is to appeal to a mass audience, not necessarily people who have even played games before. That means that if games are ever to rise to the level of universal cultural experiences, the way movies have, we have to figure out the same story problems movies did in the last century.”
Sorry, but this is the road to allowing this art form to transmogrify into the equivalent of the worst of what Hollywood stands for. Games are already a universal cultural experience, and will become even more “universal” as the older folks – who will never play games the way they watch TV – die off and are replaced with a population who has never known a day without videogames.
If the argument is to change the basic structure of games so that a “mass audience” can love them… well, what do we want here? To what extent are we going to slave the game experience to the story instead of the other way around – as it should be? For what? To attract these people who don’t already want to play videogames? How much more money does the industry need to make? Do you want a major component of the design process of the next ‘God of War’ to be “How do we get 40 something soccer moms to want to play this game?”
Is it time to inject into Madden 2008 mandatory reversals, where your star quarterback is taken from you near the end of the season and given to a rival team because it fits the needs of the STORY? (read: the needs of the author to tell HIS story rather than for you to tell YOURS.)
Yes, story matters in (some but not all) videogames, but it’s not the story THEY want to tell, rather it’s the story you create as you play.
I hate to beat up on any product in particular (but this example is so successful it doesn’t matter) – the perfect example of “going Hollywood” is the comparison between Halo and Halo 2.
Halo 1 was a radiant piece of art, it put you into the experience and let you do what you’d always wanted to do. It wasn’t the story that made the game special, the story was well done and served to enhance the experience almost perfectly – but it was “Robocop and the Space Marines from Aliens vs. Predators and Zombies on Larry Niven’s Ringworld”.
What made Halo 1 great was that the game placed you into an internally consistent world where you are given the freedom to solve the game’s problems, within the construct of the game, in your own way and only according to your abilities. The game world would respond as you might expect it to were you actually in that situation. When you faced the end of a level – there was no Boss character, rather you had a slew of enemies in fortified positions with tank and air cover. When you faced a ‘race’ situation – saving Marines in level 2 or the race against time before the reactor of your ship exploded – you had a real race, you could lose, it mattered.
In Halo 2, what do we have? Well, aside from its saving grace of being the current best online multiplayer shooter from a technical standpoint, you had a game that went Hollywood. It slaved the game to the story.
Halo 2 gives us Bosses a’la Wolfenstein3D’s Mecha Hitler. Characters that should, were the world consistent, been weaklings and yet they are tougher than the toughest Elite or Hunter – or GROUPS of Elites. When you chase after the Prophet, you can’t lose him. You can wander around lost for 15 minutes and then suddenly – bam – you are right on his tail again. You can’t lose that race. Why? Heck, you’ve even got doors that won’t open until all the enemies in the room are dead. Do you remember that in the original title? Me neither. The first game give us mysterious aliens that serve as the perfect backdrop for our experience. The second destroys the mystery and tells us ( we don’t discover – we are told) all about these now english-fluent creatures.
Why were all of these things done that were not done in the first game? These design issues were perpetrated in service to the story. With Halo 1 the designers felt if they created a kickass videogame that players would love it. For Halo 2 they felt they needed to continue the story, protect the story. Their story – not yours.
And I think gamers intuitively understand this, I think that when it comes time for Halo 3′s release, unless it’s more Halo 1 than Halo 2 is, that Microsoft is going to find the title much less of a weapon against PS3 than they expected.
If this is where we are headed, I’ll put my faith in the hands of those old-timers whose games are still fun 20 years later, let alone 2 weeks later. Authors don’t often think about getting out of the way of the fun of the experience. The “Old Timers” and those inspired by them are not concerned with directing the evolution of something millions of people love in service of the goal of making millions of other people who don’t love that thing more likely to buy it.
But hey, that’s just me.
August 14th, 2005 at 3:04 pm
Trust me, Keith. My audience tends to be hard to offend. I’ve tested that theory relatively thoroughly, believe me. *nirg*
I find some points of your argument contradictory, but that’s because I think your definition of story changes throughout your comment. I’d reply here, but then who would really read it? Not very many people. Expect to be heavily quoted in a post early this week!
August 14th, 2005 at 3:13 pm
Perhaps I should break up my references to story, make some distinction like story and narrative. as I said, I’m not anti-story, but there is story and then there is intrusive structure. But anyway I think I make my passionate points. I love this blog.
February 21st, 2006 at 10:15 pm
[...] Over at Man Bytes Blog, Corvus never fails to bring an unconventional and fresh outlook on video game design with his submission “Not Now Kid, I’m Playing My Stories”. Yes, I really did have to use his exact title. [...]