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The Complexity of Simple Game Narratives
By Corvus | May 8, 2008
“All video games are crap,” a student asserted at an IGDA Chapter meeting some time ago, “they can’t tell a story worth a damn.” I, of course, disagreed… mostly.
The problem, I’ve come to realize, is not that video games are inherently bad at providing a linear story experience, but that it is extraordinarily difficult to meaningfully attach a static plot to the dynamic behaviors afforded the audience. And it’s even more difficult to try and match those dynamic behaviors by generating a dynamic plot. Some time ago, in reaction to watching Aronofsky’s The Fountain, I rambled on for a few posts about layered narratives. I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting at, or whether it was a useful discussion, and I pretty quickly dropped it. I only mention it here to point out that when I start dropping “layered narrative” in this post, it is in no way connected to those earlier musings.
So what makes storytelling such a difficult task in video games? The problem as I see it is that video games are a layered narrative. In his recent podcast, Michael asked Kirk Battle whether the player should be considered an actor and Kirk replied that they needed to be an actor, but that at some point it was important for them to become audience as well. I’d go a step further and say that in many games they also serve as director, cinematographer, and even screenwriter. A video game designer must seamlessly integrate all of these potential roles into a single play experience, all the while dealing with issues of game balance, technology, art, etc. In comparison, a novelist has it pretty easy. They chose a voice (first, second, or third person) and write. Even a director only needs provide a limited perspective based upon a single point of view.
But consider the video game. The player is often asked to view the storyword from a first-person perspective (often literally). In other words, they witness events through the eyes or their avatar and are limited, during gameplay, to seeing only what that character can see. But layered on top of that is the game’s HUD, which is clearly providing the player with a third person perspective. Maps, health meters, mana levels, damage indicators, textual display of goals and item descriptions–all these serve to inform the player of things either outside their avatar’s perception or inform the player of the internal workings of their avatar. Additionally, many games have a narrative level that speaks directly to the player, adding a layer of second person perspective. Add cut scenes that show events taking place elsewhere and you’ve got another layer of third person omniscient narrative.
It is typically held in novel writing that the author should pick a point of view and stick with it. To do otherwise would confuse the reader unduly. In video games, it’s exactly the opposite–leave out layer, or integrate them poorly, and the player is in for a confusing, or even frustrating, time. It seems to me that this makes successfully compiling all the narrative components of a video game exponentially more difficult than other media and that’s even before you start adding branching plot lines, sandbox mechanics, etc.
So my next self-appointed task is to explore these narrative layers and distill what I find into some semblance of “rules” and integrate it with the aforementioned narrative component theory. You’ll see evidence of this direction in my upcoming Round Table post, the NotM posts on X-COM and likely many other posts as well. Hopefully that sounds like as much fun to you as it does to me!
Tagged:layered narratives, storytelling, videogames. | 4 Comments »
May 8th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I start smiling every time I think about the player’s involvement, since there’s so much innovation there waiting to happen.
Player behavior, choices taken, main story, GUI, camera view, all this elements have never been thought of as a whole. I mean, there’s always some abstraction somewhere, there’s no justification for the green rectangle above a characters health that represents his health.
I’m currently designing a platforming game with some interesting concepts about the fourth wall, and the involvement of the player, but I digress.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
ooops, bad semantics are bad
May 9th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I look forward to you applying some expertise to these “narrative layers” you mention. I’ve never taken the time to properly explore how this complex system operates in games, and I agree that the multiple points of view at work in games presents a whole different set of challenges than more traditional forms of writing.
I anxiously await the application of MBB brainpower to this one!
July 15th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
[...] about games and classics. Michael Abbott writes about games and film. Corvus Elrod writes about games and storytelling. Iroquois Pliskin writes about games and philosophy. (And here at Cruise Elroy, of course, I write [...]