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Story Got Game
By Corvus | August 18, 2005
I’ve been letting three gems; plot, narrative, and story, take their sweet time in the rock tumbler for the last couple of weeks. I’ve posited before that we each need to come up with our own working definitions for these terms and stick to them in our development, in our discussions with the community, etc. Unfortunately, although I’ve been working towards a solid premise from which to argue my points, I haven’t formulated a concrete working theory that can be easily expressed. Until now. I hope.
I’ve argued that the truly important stories in games are the ones your player takes away from the experience with them. I have, in fact, even argued that all games are stories because, even when the design doesn’t suggest it, the player will be creating their own story for the game experience. They do so out of our primal urge to tell stories about ourselves.
In discussions with my business partner, I’ve gone even further and suggested that story only exits in the minds of the audience. Everything else is presentation skill and transfer of information. Even though that concept resonates all the way to the bottomless depths of my black heart, I wasn’t quite prepared to put it forth as my final position on the matter.
I wasn’t quite prepared, that is, until Keith, whom you may have seen or heard of in conjunction with Videotopia, stumbled across my latest Carnival Post and had a few things to say on the topic of story in games. Starting off like an Antipodal Reese’s advert (keep your stories out of my games!)*, he let slip this little nugget which I found to be quite telling:
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.
Oh Keith, you were worried that you’d offend, but you just gave my gems the final tumble they need! Er… that came across a little more… um… right then… *cough* How about them Bears?
So, after much rumination, and inspired by Keith’s final kicks to the back of my head, I’m ready with my definitions of Plot, Story, and Narration. At one point, and this is what was throwing me I think, I was creating these definitions just for games. I now think they’ll work for my storytelling, and my fiction and screenplay writing, as well as my game design.
Plot: The abstract summation of the driving events. Merriam Webster defines plot as “the plan or main story of a literary work.” Spot on, particularly that word “plan” which can be easily replaced with “blueprint” for the engineering types. The plot can be as simple as Two Kings War for Control of the Kingdom, or as complex as A man awakens, covered in blood, and begins a journey in which he learns that nothing in his life has been as it seemed. Along the way he is joined by a demon familiar, a sentient coffee grinder, and the ghost of his never-born son. Finally, face to face with the orchestrator of his madness, he learns that it’s really he who has never been as he seemed.
Story: The experiential and emotional progression of the audience while interacting with the media narration. It is important to note that I consider interaction to incude: having an emotional reaction, thinking about the media narration, and discussing the media narration with others during, or after, the experience. In other words, the media narration itself does not need to be interactive for the audience to interact with it.**
Narration: Everything else. Really, I mean it. All of it. The medium which communicates the details of the plot in an effort to convey story. If you’re writing a book, all the words you use are the narration. If you’re standing on a stage telling the story of Robin Hood and The Bean Stalk***, then the words you speak, the costume you wear, the motions you make, are all narration. If you’re filming a movie you can add to the mix the film stock you use, the sets, and the camera angles, as they are all part of the narration. If you’re designing a game, it’s also the levels, the models, the textures, the scripted events, the enemy AI, the physics engine, the clutter, all of it: narration.
In some follow up correspondence, Keith confided to me that he feels tethering games to “stories” will be their ruin and drive them into the crapulance that Hollywood motion pictures find themselves in today. He points out that “story” is a game design trap, a copyright-able element of design and the bug-a-boo of licensed games:
Why do movie licenses games almost universally suck? It’s because not only do half the development dollars go to just getting the license, but you can’t DO anything meaningful with the game. You can’t kill Darth Vader in a Star Wars game – that’s George Lucas’ job
Keith brings up an important point. All authors, all designers, all directors, all actors, all shaman, hell, even all physicists, have a story in mind when they present a plot via narration. Each and every one of them want to communicate a story that is particular to their lives, their experiences To present a story that thrilled them, scared them, elevated them, comforted them, or even defined them. If they are really good at what they do, the actual story that occurs, the one that is created in the minds and hearts of the audience, will be very close to the story they planned. But it won’t be exact. It can’t be.
As game designers, we are fortunate enough/cursed enough to be working with a medium that allows us/forces us to be extraordinarily flexible in the presentation of the stories we have in our heads. Chances are even greater than with other media that the audience is going to experience something quite unique, something we didn’t expect, something we couldn’t imagine. That fact alternately excites me, and keeps me up at night, wondering how I’ll pull it off.
*Please be aware that I’m playing fast and loose with the facts in order to use the phrase “Antipodal Reese’s Advert.” Keith in no way says that story shouldn’t be a component of games. You can see that by going back to the post and reading his comment for yourself.
**So please try not to muddy the waters with discussion about “interactive stories” just yet. We can hold forth at great length about that sticky wicket later, I promise.
***Some day when I’ve run out of things to write about, I’ll tell you all about it. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to see me perform it again some day at a Renaissance Festival near you.
Tagged:storytelling. | 10 Comments »
August 18th, 2005 at 11:51 am
Thanks to feedback from Chris Bateman, I updated the definitions of story and narration for the sake of clarity. I’m considering further updating the definition of story to include the storyteller’s intent in narrating the plot, but I’m looking for exactly the right phrasing.
August 18th, 2005 at 4:39 pm
You’re on the edge of something else, something McLuhanesque maybe, but I can’t quite figure out what.
Thought on Story: There’s a feedback loop as a developing story encourages the audience to interpret events in a way consistent with previous events. Someone who misses/”misinterprets” an early event can experience a very different story. Knowing how the story develops has a similar effect – Sixth Sense is a different movie the second time you watch it. (In cases with active storytellers – stage performance, MMORPGs come to mind – there’s a much more dramatic feedback loop, but I think that’s the interactive story business you wanted to avoid.)
Thought on Narration: Where does it stop? The costume you wear is a part of it… is the stage you stand on? the weather? the audience reaction?
August 18th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Response on Story: I’m going to mull on that. It’s a valid point, I’m trying to see if it shakes anything loose from my definitions.
Response on Narration: On the one hand, it could be argued that the stage/weather/reaction are not a part of the narration, as they are not always within the control of the narrator. However, choosing a venue for the narration is within the control of the narrator, so perhaps it should be included in narration. Audience reaction certainly is a part of the narration, as the mood of an audience can directly affect the narration.
Where the line would be crossed is a family member interrupting your gameplay to insist you take out the trash. That isn’t a choice the narrator made and it’s not a part of the experience of interacting with the medium. It’s an experience that removes the audience from interacting with the medium. The risk of having the audience play your game on a machine that doesn’t meet the specifications to run the game is a choice the narrator makes and the story can be impacted negatively because of such things.
There. To bring it back to the stage show for a moment. I performed my show in the mud on a rainy day and it was a drastically different show, but one still enjoyed by the audience willing to brave the rain, or huddled in nearby shops. That rain was a part of the narration. Had it been raining so badly that they all left and didn’t watch the show, it would not have been part of the narration.
So, it’s situational. At least that’s my answer for now.
The discussion I more didn’t want to get into is the definition of an “interactive narration” that can sometimes swamp discussions like this. Live audience feedback is a slightly different thing. I don’t think anyone would argue that a drunken audience member, wandering onto the stage, is interactive.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to pick up my wife from work and spend some time learning more about McLuhan.
August 18th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
I have a feeling the narration definition is perhaps too broad… but I do think this is very interesting… I was once asked to testify on videogame violence before a certain State Senate and during the testimony it occured to me to mangle McLuhan’s most famous quote “The Medium is the Message” into “It’s not the Medium or the Message but rather the Context”. Meaning that the medium and the message are different depending on the context through which they are interpreted.
In regard to videogame violence and culture – the context of the nutjobs of Columbine allowed them to interpret games like DOOM and other media as incitement to violence in response to their own stories of isolation and humiliation at the hands of peers.
But, thinking on this topic – the context syncs with your own definition of “story”, meaning that it is subjective according to the information you receive. I’m not sure that this definition of “story” matches the thoughts of most people on the word, but it does say something very interesting about story – both in videogames and outside of videogames.
Outside games – context/story is an interesting component of entertainment when considered in the light of what information the viewer receives. Star Wars (for all you young’ns – Episode 4), for example, was very interesting because you were made to feel as if you were entering the story in the middle. You felt as if all of these characters, and indeed the world, had tremendous history behind it. All of which was suggested, almost none of it explained. Lines like “We meet again, Obi-Wan.” filled our imaginations precisely because of the lack of information we received. It is this lack of information and suggestions of content that brought that universe alive.
By contrast, at least the first 2 prequel films were less interesting to most. I think a good bit of that could be attributed to the what was being told rather than being suggested to spark our imaginations.
For a game I think this “Begin in the Middle” effect may be even more important because it, unlike most plots, is almost by definition “out of the way”. It does not intrude on what a gamer can and cannot do within the game world. It is not author driven, it is player driven. It surrounds and supports the game world, it does not limit it.
My favorite game example comes into play – Comparing the single player aspects of Halo 1 vs. Halo 2. Halo 1 exemplifies the “Begin in the Middle” effect. The opening cinema is all about plunking you down in the middle. References to a recent battle and a long war, references to other Spartan Cyborgs and then the introduction of your Avatar – the Master Chief. Likewise the aliens supply you with mystery and the most information you get about them is by observing their behaviors or wondering about actions you never see them take (scrawling graffiti-like symbols on walls and doorways, etc.) and never does this application of story-like content substantially limit gameplay.
In fact, Halo 1′s story enhances gameplay while at the same time never limiting it almost in the same way that the storyline of a classic game like Robotron:2084 does.
Now, Halo 2 is all about explaining everything, you have more information than you ever had in the first game – especially about the Convenant and their religion and as a result, not only are they less interesting – but the gameplay is now limited. There are things you cannot do, even though you should be capable, because they would conflict with the plot. A priest character confined to a floating wheelchair should logically be easier to kill than a soldier – yet he’s tougher than a gaggle of elite warriors. The game has been slaved to the story, rather than vice-versa, and is consequently less interesting, less convincing.
Taking into account your definitions – I think games need story as context, rather than plots which tend to artificially dictate what a player can and cannot do.
If I am not completey right here, I’m not completely wrong either. There is something to this.
August 18th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
All right! Not to put words in Keith/Starseer’s brain (or pluck unspoken ones out), but the Keith Consensus seems to be that the definition of narration is too broad. I’m not opposed to that idea in the least, but it does lead me to ask, “Why?” I’m also curious to know how each of you (and anyone else with $.02 to toss into the hat) would modify the definition, so that its intent doesn’t change, but its scope does.
August 19th, 2005 at 12:50 pm
Hmm. Taking the ideas above, with the assumption the Story happens client-side, how about this:
Narration is the intentional context of the story. Narration is the Field under the storyteller’s influence, Story is the Form under the audience’s influence.
Or to put it another way, Narration is the mold into which the audience pours Story. I like that analogy because I know a number of people who tend to pour a lot more story than most narrative molds were designed to hold, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Most licensed games/prequels fail as mentioned above because the mold is too small.
A hypnotic induction designed to put someone “under” is a Narration; the trance experience is the Story. It’s interesting to note that a very effective technique for induction is to supplement the preplanned Narration (“You’re walking down a flight of stairs…”) with references to local events that might otherwise be distracting (“…and with every tick of the clock you relax a little more…”) thus broadening the Narration in a way that’s consistent with the internal trance Story.
In a similar way, for a stage show, the weather isn’t a part of the Narration unless you acknowledge it – but if you do, you’ve added something to the show, you’ve changed a potential distraction into an element of the presentation.
Conspiracy theory is a Story where “unrelated” events are brought into a Narration of politics.
Ha! That’s the connection I was looking for earlier. NLP. Narration is Framing. One of the interesting things about NLP is that you can generate a Story in a client based on Narration techniques that are primarily indirect references, the upshot of which is that the narrator never actually tells the story, but gets the client to tell a story to theirself.
There might be an extended thought here that a “good” narration matches the appropriate amount of context to the amount of story that the audience is willing to provide. Comparing Elite II: Frontier to Diablo II comes to mind.
August 19th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
I like the use of the word “intentional” in your definition of narration, as well as the definition of the boundary between distraction and unplanned addition being the acknowledgment of the event, by the narration. So, if a game were capable of realizing that a family member were asking you to perform a chore and the central character looked at you and rolled their eyes, the game would suddenly have added the distraction into the narration, which would certainly become a part of the audience’s story!
It’s also a good point that an audience will frequently bring far more story to a narration than it can hold. I’d mention a major series of motion pictures here, but I don’t think I have to.
August 23rd, 2005 at 9:54 am
As a couple of you know, I’m familiar with NLP. I like the idea of using that as a reference or baseline from which to “intentionally” build the storyline – at least in some types of games.
Your example is particularly interesting, Keith, in that referencing a ticking clock could potentially be incongruous with the “reality” the person is constructing while in trance. Yeah, I know it almost invariably works, but Corvus is the perfect example of someone who would probably be jarred out of his context since he tends to fill in so much of it on his own.
As an added thought: I believe there is a fine balance to be achieved in making sure to provide enough context for those who want to be carried along by the stories we put into games versus those who want to steer the boat themselves (or even build it from scratch). In fact, I wonder if the river metaphor might not be useful in general for a good number of the story-based games that have been released. Some of them have narrow rivers with eddies and other channels you can explore, and in some you can try to go upstream, but ultimately you have to go downriver.
August 23rd, 2005 at 2:03 pm
I just wish I could figure out which Keith was which.
August 23rd, 2005 at 4:53 pm
Our other Keith is now going by just ‘Undercrypt’, so we should be somewhat free of confusion for a while.
Expect a follow up to this post in a day or two!