Notgames Forum

If one has a specific story, what is the best way to tell it without resorting to the standard (and quite boring) gameplay->cutscene->gameplay structure that so many games have?

I have collected some thoughts here:
http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/03/storytelling-through-fragments-and.html

How does everyone else feel toward storytelling in games?

It is also worth noting that I am firm believer of "meaning first", where one does not see a story as a chain of events, but as a combination of mood, theme, concepts and message that is to be brought forward.

Interesting article, as usual!

As mentioned in the comments, at Tale of Tales, we're believers in the "situations" approach to a rather extreme extent. It's basically all we do. We create a situation for the player. And whatever the player does in this situation, that is the game. There may be a few "events" to be experienced. But these are usually entirely optional.
For instance, we consider playing The Path by only roaming the forest and never meeting the wolf, a perfectly valid way of playing. We designed with this possibility in mind. We wanted it to be a choice for players who might be to scared to have the confrontation.

It'll be interesting to work on a game with a real backstory, though. Next month, we're starting on a prototype for a new game based on our first -failed- project 8. For this project, we have developed quite an elaborate backstory. The original design was of the "fragmented" kind that you describe in your article, since the player basically retraces the steps of 8 characters who lived (and died) in the enchanted palace. These characters had left behind certain contraptions that lent themselves to puzzling. But since we're trying to avoid typical gameplay in the new version, we will probably be dealing with story in a different way. Interestingly, the framework for the new design is a book (it's called "The Book of 8"). And the linearity of a book implies a story. I'm hoping that we can use this to our advantage by simply relying on the player's familiarity with the format of the book, which might allow us to take more liberties with the interaction design.

I have this "reversed Michelangelo" feeling about stories, though. Much like Michelangelo thinks of the work of sculpting as a sort of liberation of the figure that was already present in the block of marble, I like to think of the story as already present in the mind of the player. And "all" the game needs to do is to carve that story out.

Unlike Michelangelo, we have postmodernism to assure us that it is quite all right if every player has a different story in their head. So we need to create the circumstances for this story, whatever it may be, to come to the surface. And to do this, we need to trigger the player's thoughts, emotions, imagination, memories, etc. Which means we need to get fairly concrete in terms of representation. As a result, we will lose part of the audience: the part that simply doesn't have a story like this in their heads. But that's an acceptable deal, since no-one can ever please everyone, anyway.

Care to eleborate on this? I am very interesting in analyzing the way books are built up. It might be because I really enjoy books, but I draw a lot inspiration when designing from how books are read. For example: footnotes -> extra content that can be skipped. Chapters -> scenes.
Also, a reader often chose to read certain things more or less detailed. For example, when reading a book by Neil Stephenson, his world descriptions can be very hard to get at times and sometimes needs to be reread extra carefully to be fully grasped. However it is okay to skip and focus on other things instead. The same can be done with world detail and the player can choose to explore certain things at varying extent.
Also reading requires an effort and the reader has to do a lot more then when watching a movie (read the text, parse it, conjure up mental images, etc) and has a very simple input-output feedback that I think is worth exploring.

(Of course games have a lot more stuff that books do not have and books do not provide all answers. But there still may be a lot of valuable stuff to pull out by exploring)

I'm afraid we haven't explored the book format as much as you apparently have. Very interesting things you say there. I'm not sure if we will touch on any of them in our project, though, as we treat the book more as an object. We're hoping to literally make a virtual book that you turn pages of. But we haven't even started prototyping yet. So I shouldn't talk about it too much. Everything can still change.

Some very interesting notes that have occupied my thinking over the past days. I think predominantly that I still very much think in a linear fashion and I would like to make a small defence on that - keeping in mind that you are proposing a method of thinking, even if a little bit militant.

First of all, I very much like some solutions you have to problems such as introducing new enemies, linking story fragments, and such. This is excellent for certain types of games. I would very much enjoy reading a paper on the subject of narrative synthesis in terms of these events. We can make an extensive list.

However... stories are more than setting and a series of events. I enjoy carefully crafted stories which go from event to event in an artistically well-developed way. The sequence and speed at which events are brought to me can be as pleasing as the events themselves. I am not saying that your method cannot incorporate this - it has some resemblance to Valve's director AI, making 'waves' of enemies at the player's level, taking in account battle fatigue, randomness... but with plot elements. That is very interesting. But it also means the story being told has that element of 'fudginess'. And that is something I as a writer nor as a viewer enjoy - as unpostmodern of me as that may be. I enjoy knowing the story the writer is telling me - ambiguousness as a tool, but never in the main medium. And this is where I have some problems with what you propose.

You take the act of discovery as the 'main' act. Which is not odd, considering games are so connected to giving choice. But I would argue that is not a necessity. In my current game I have taken a fixed story and given the player things to do within the story - just small things, unconscious actions. But it provides for an interesting experience. As I develop this theory further I will create more sophisticated forms of non-choice interaction.

I think this focus on action is worthwhile in a game such as which you are working on - and in games such as The Path, in which exploration is key. But as much as I enjoy these games, they to me always keep that 'floaty' feeling - walking around old houses, collecting diaries. Even when the actions are acute, such as in The Path, the experience becomes slightly less 'rigid'; enhancing that it is 'my story' but to me decreasing the experience of a well-crafted story. If the actions are non-acute I feel I am discovering that something was interesting (a critique from Robert Yang in a blog post, I think) and if they are I feel slightly disjointed because the story is not as quick and snappy. Exploring an old house is very much an event-based thing, but is sitting with a pretty girl on a picnic cloth? You can divide that narrative up into segments that can be reshuffled into different orders but... I would be comfortable accepting that the story is fixed, to be frank, rather than expect the designer to out of his way to provide for me to look at the miniature bottle of wine earlier than expected.

I am thinking of a small personal project (oh if ever) about small happy personal memories and I think the method in which I find something for the player to do, rather than let the player free and run after him to get my tale through, fits better the tightness and self-containedness of these memories.

In short, I am wondering how you can apply this theory to far more interconnected events, such as picnicking with miniature bottles of wine

Since I've read this, I have been feeling a lot more comfortable with the idea of plot-less stories, or even non-stories and only situations. So please excuse me if I sound a bit radical. 

Jeroen, what you are saying sounds to me like a film director feeling sorry that he can't have live actors in his work, or photographer who wants brush strokes, etc. It feels like you're holding on to the certain joys of old media and perhaps neglecting the potential of the new. I see the procedural/interactive media as a way to finally escape the Iron Grip Of The Plot, to finally create artistic universes where we can simply be.

Videogames are software. I know it's an extreme way of putting things, but not every picture you create with Photoshop is great. That doesn't make Photoshop a bad application. Of course, our videogames don't need to be as neutral as Photoshop, and we can do our best to make sure that the pictures that the player paints are almost always pretty and meaningful, etc. But we should resist the urge to give them a picture that is already finished, just because we think it's beautiful. That's ignoring the power of the medium, the power of the feeling of doing something yourself in a game, of discovering something on your own strength as a player.

I believe we can experience a poem as deeply beautiful because we can "inhabit" it, because, as we play with it in our mind, we can make it ours, bit by bit, until it finally becomes part of who we are. That means, part of me and not of somebody else, not of anybody else. To create such an intimate, personal experience, is one of the great strengths of the medium of videogames. And every time you fix a plot point, you reduce this potential.

I'm not saying that I think everything should be completely open. Please slap me if I ever seem like a purist!  I believe in combining the best things from all media, new or old. If only to increase the accessibility of our work (while realtime technology may be poetic, in general prose is more appealing to the audience these days). But the interactive experience can be so strong sometimes. I want to explore this a bit more. Maybe we will find a way to control this power as authors. Instead of restraining it already by means of plot.

Jeroen:
I agree that when you just set up playground and let the player run around you loose a lot of control. The player misses a gaze from character, a shadow moving across the floor, etc. When you have very scripted experience, like books, movies and many games you force the reader/viewer/player into seeing this and getting it across as directly as possible. This is why the structure we see in games is so used, because many tricks from other media stop working otherwise. I also feel this way too at times, but I think it is a sort of bias in that we have experienced these wonderful moments in other media, and then realize they do not work in the game we are creating, we might think that we have some huge flaws in our media.

I think part of the problem is because so few have really tried to not copy other media and because of this it is very hard to judge what can be done. Like we have talked about earlier, I think a way to go is for the game to react to the player and not just force the player to go on a certain path (or just let them free roam without any motivations). I like how Left 4 Dead has done it (although it is simple and inside a very linear game) and I think your idea with doing this to plot is very workable and something I would like to explore!

And Michael, I like that you always push that we should not be stuck at stories. It gives me a lot to think about!

There is more I want to write, but the I am tired and need to sleep! Might add more tomorrow!

Goodnight, Thomas.

You're welcome.
I'm not entirely clear on all this stuff either, you know. After all, my company is called "Tale of Tales"! We do have a thing with stories!... But I'm far more interested in the story we can read in a painting or the immersion I feel when reading a novel than I am in any linear sequence of events. I really love the idea that computer technology allows us to create environments filled with meaning that are not linear. This is so unique! Experiencing art for me has always been a thing that happens in a single moment: suddenly you feel at peace, suddenly you feel in harmony with the universe, suddenly you understand something. And to have a medium that we can actually use to create such moments as an artist is amazing. Painters and sculptures got pretty close to that in the past. But I believe we can take this one step further/deeper/closer.

The trick, of course -and this is a big part of the reason why we're here- is to make these creations in a way that appeals to a wider range of people than the hardcore devotees. It's problematic because, as Miss Alduy points out, we, as a culture, are completely addicted to beginning-middle-end narratives when it comes to understanding meaning. We've almost gone blind for anything that cannot be represented as a story. Or at least we don't value moments that are not part of a story. So we'll need to ease the public into this new stuff...
(which is kind of fun: I like mixing things up )

Michael:
Some of my favorite books and movies are not about the plot (as in sequence of events), but of the concepts and/or atmosphere. For example, take the movie "Lost Highway", which is tells an extremely disjointed plot, yet I enjoyed it immensely because of the atmosphere, themes and those sort of things. It was more the experience than the narrative that captured me. Also, I was able to enjoy the movie Anti-Christ (well at least the first 2/3) becuase of the excellent photo and sound that really sucked me in. Narrative wise that movie did nothing for me.
Some movies and books can grab me because of the issue they raise and the concept that they show me. This is very common with fantasy and sci-fi where many stories feels engaging because of the worlds that they build and not as much the actual stories (The Diamond Age is an example of this).
Games seem very suited for these kinds of experiences.

Jeroen:
I am not sure what you are after here, but I guess you mean using situation and fragment based story telling on more limited "sets"? The type of story telling I rant about works pretty well in large scale stories like "lost in the woods" or "trapped in house" and I kind of see a problem to smaller scenarios. Perhaps it is just a matter of designing the mechanics correctly, but when the player needs to do fine tuned actions things get problematic. For example, a scene where the protagonist is eating is much harder to do than wandering about in at a party. When at the party the player can chose to interact with many different people, take a snack, etc. It is easy to fill the world with interaction. But when sitting at a table the protagonist needs to be stuck and cannot do much except eat and drink. Of course one could talk to various characters as well, but this would be done in a much more constrained and static matter (since all are at their seats unless something "major" happens).
I have not given this that much thought though, so sorry for the rantish structure

So are you trying to use narrative in the same way as in those books and movies (in your experience)? As a sort of scaffolding to guide people to the atmosphere and concepts? A plot that is meant to be thrown away by the player after use?


This reminded me of the things I really liked in Heavy Rain. I'll make a blog post about this soon. The fights and the """meaningful choices""" are not interesting to me at all. But to be able to kiss your son on the forehead interactively, or rock a baby to sleep. Now that's impressive!

Hmm, that is a hard question, but in a way: yes. When I get to it, the events is not what is important to me in a story. It is what these events means, what they try to convey. I think the narrative is only useful during the experience and afterwards it is not as important anymore. I see it as a vessel for deeper things. Of course, this does not mean that a narrative with little meaning cannot be a nice experience, but it is not something that I feel is a worthwhile memory, as the memory of concepts and the actual experiences. I am not sure if I am over-analyzing your question here, but I think certain things are only interesting as long as they last and then become obsolete. I do not like the idea of only living in the past though and present experiences are just as important as memories, but I think some things do not go beyond a momentary experience. When I ride a roller coaster, I do not remember how the slopes and so on where designed, but I remember my feelings and these are way more important to me. I think that a plot (events in a story) is similar to this.

This is exactly what makes me want to try the game out! Something that is really lacking from games is these more tender and "precise" interactions. As I said, I think they are very hard to do in the medium, but that it might just be a matter of finding the right kind of interaction. Looking forward to the blog post! I am interesting in hearing how your connection was different when giving input for these types of events compared to just being a passive observer (as in books n films)

Actually, technically these things are not hard to do. What does interaction consist of, really? You press a button and your avatar plays an animation. Whether this animation is strangling or hugging is irrelevant on a technical level. One is not harder to implement than the other.

Where it gets difficult is
a) to have the courage as a designer to focus on these things knowing full well that many gamers will not appreciate it one bit, will scold you in public all over the internet, and that it will seriously cut into your profit margin if you don't have the budget for a massive marketing campaign, and
b) how to design these moments in a way that is sincere and moving and engaging.

So it's more a matter of finding/creating context. Both in terms of the fiction as in terms of audience.