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Shut Up About Yer Damn Backstory!
By Corvus | March 3, 2008
I made it to very few sessions at GDC. One that I did go to was Katherine Isbister and Corey Nolan’s The Real Story on Characters and Emotion: Taking it ‘to the Streets’! I’ve been a fan of Katherine’s work for some time (which was accentuated by the fact that after her session this year, she told me I reminded her of a character from the 1948 award winning kid’s book, 21 Balloons). Corey was a CA with me this year and after spending some time talking with her, I’m eager to see what she’ll be doing over the next several years as well. To shorthand the session–it reported on the conclusions drawn from a survey on videogame characters. You can follow their work on their blog and view the results of their latest survey online as well.
Anyway, this post isn’t about the survey results, per se, but about a storytelling topic that came up during the session. Katherine mentioned that the players surveyed clearly empathized with characters that had a rich back story. This brought me to my feet with a screech. “Noooooooooo!” I screamed, disrupting her entire session. Except, of course, that only happened internally. Externally, I filed it away for the Q&A and a post about it later…
When I would watch new performers build characters for the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, I noticed that several of the less experienced folk would fall victim to the same error. Improvisational performers are often encouraged to come up with a backstory for their characters. They’re told that it’s good to know who their parents are, where they grew up, who their first love was, what the character eats for breakfast, etc. This is a perfectly good tool for an improvisational actor to use. In fact, it’s an awesome tool. I even go so far as to set up entire environments in my mind for the character to inhabit and watch them grow up, terrorizing the neighbors, freaking out their co-workers with their insane rhetoric… not that I’m typecast into a particular sort of character myself, of course…
The error comes into play when the actor decides that the audience actually gives a rat’s poop about the specific contents of the backstory itself. Trust me, they don’t. Nothing is worse than bouncing up to your audience and declaring, “Hi! I’m Suky the plucky peasant! I was orphaned at a young age and I’ve been making my own way in the world, ever since! Wouldn’t you like to help me find my father’s missing pocketwatch so I can reclaim my rightful inheritance?!”
Boooooring, no? But I’ve watched numerous rookies do exactly that. They’re all lucky not to have sustained ego crippling slaps and outright laughs of derision. As it is, the audience member was usually polite to them, scanned the horizon for an escape route and made their awkward apologies, “There’s my wife with the coffee,” and walked away. The young actor might be left with a slight sense that something went horribly wrong, but they didn’t receive any clear signals that they just dropped a penny in the “let’s go to the state fair next year instead” jar.
Many videogames are a lot like these improvisational hopefuls. They spell out their characters’ elaborate backstories… and then proceed through the rest of the game without allowing that backstory to seriously impact the unfolding of the narrative. Worse, the impact is does have is only the most obvious and heavy handed of ways, “help me find A), help me save B), won’t you kill C)?”
A far better approach to storytelling would be to overtly share very little about the concrete events of the characters’ past. Not in the “boy they sure are a sexy enigma” way so common to the handful of JRPGs I’ve forced myself to endure, but by allowing the backstory to inform every single thing a character does over the course of the game. It should impact the way they dress, how they move, how they react to in-game events, when they act brave and when they cower in terror. The backstory should also impact what choices they make, even when you’re giving the player control over that decision.
The short of it is that backstory is a great tool for character development, but a weak tool for storytelling–particularly the sort of dynamic storytelling made possible with an interactive medium.
Tagged:backstory, character design, gdc, storytelling, videogames. | 9 Comments »
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
…and yes–I do plan, at some point, to dig through the data from the survey to find where backstory is mentioned and see whether it supports or disproves my premise.
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Sooo…what’s your backstory?
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I ain’t got a backstory, bub! Just a loooong central narrative which you’re free to enter at any point you please. *kniw*
Nice to see you’re reading, Russ. Let’s see if I can hold your interest all the way though to next year.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Agreed.
»particularly the sort of dynamic storytelling made possible with an interactive medium«
It’s still a good metric to consider what older media would do… Generally you can lump novels into piles based upon “most characters have detailed dialog with other character about own backstory” and “most characters unfold backstory through actions/narrative” and you’ll see a pattern of merit arise… The best books have great character back stories that you only ever see indirectly in the narrative itself.
If dialog would sound absurd in the context of a book, it certainly sounds just as absurd in the context of a game, if not more so.
March 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Awesome post, but I do think that if requested, characters might (depending on their character and backstory!) reveal stuff that went on in the past. Despite it being a cliché, it works somewhat well for amnesia RPG’s where your PC doesn’t know what happened before they started the game, but should know these people (See: KotOR, The Witcher and others).
I prefer a good character myself – something fleshed out based on traits (and thier past) but you don’t need to know that past! FPS’s need this more – COD4, I found, was engaging and the characters well written – and of their “back stories”, only one was a little explained, since they were all military people it was pretty obvious what some were like.
Sadly, not many RPG’s or other things really characterise characters – even primary ones – your statement on JRPG’s is totally on the ball
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I kind of think backstory should be a lot like a life story. I don’t go into a job and unload my personal history on my co-workers day one. It takes a few weeks before I make even the slightest back-handed comment about being abandoned by my mother at age 2.
I kind of enjoy the reveal. I enjoy getting to know a character. I feel like a lot of games do one of two things. They either bludgeon you over the head about a characer’s history or they keep them an enigma through most of the game and then get story diaharea and dump the backstory on you half to two-thirds way through.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:54 am
I very much agree with this post
Backstories are important, but in games their implementation is generally just uncreative. I think you captured most of it in the show not tell rule and less blatant motives. Waaay too many games have characters basically named “Generic Plot Advancement #2″…
Our research showed very heavy favor to balance. No one wants to read an autobiography of every character they meet. On the flipside, you don’t want to think all the characters spent all their life waiting for you to come up and click on them
March 4th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Max, while I frequently rail against following in Hollywood’s linear footsteps, I do think we stand to learn a lot from the way they handle their craft. Communicating back story through well wrought dialog and short visual flashes can be very effective.
Andrew, Of course, characters will let slip events from their past. My concern is that many inexperienced storytellers feel that bypassing the difficult bits (i.e. defining relationships (see today’s post)) is all right if you subject the audience to an in depth back story.
Jason, you’re absolutely right. Many videogames give it all to you at once, which is exactly the sort of thing that makes for bad storytelling. But I think Wednesday or Thursday’s post will be about when back-story works in videogames (hint… it’s when they aren’t backstory, but part of the experienced narrative).
Corey, thanks for stopping by my black winged friend! Ah, I fondly remember good ol’ G-PAT from back in the day. Yeah, those were good times with everyone standing around waiting on me hand and foot…
March 4th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I think when it comes to back story, your characters should always feel like they have them, but only rarely should the details trickle out (and under the appropriate context). I enjoy trying to figure out a character’s back story based on how they dress, how they act, what they know, etc. I abhor being for forced to sit there while fact after boring fact is dumped on me.