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A Question about Timing
About two months ago, I wrote in this space three articles about the basic rules of timing when coming to design the story for a game, ending with a fourth about 10 Timing Don’ts.
One of the readers, Jacob Rummelhart, asked in the comments:
I've been thinking about the first few points recently.
When planning out a game, I feel inclined to leave spaces in between story events that give the player some time to "just play the game"; interact with the mechanics, explore the world, etc. In terms of furthering the story, it's a black hole, as you said. It creates a disconnect, when the player should be doing something important -- like rescuing a princess or something -- but ends up searching for treasure chests instead.
Do you have any advice on how to write for "down time"? Hopefully I can avoid the situation where nothing is happening, but sometimes I'm unsure of how to lower the tension without it feeling contrived. It may have been covered in an earlier post of yours, but I can't recall.
As usual, thanks for the great articles!
It was such a good question, I wanted to give it the full attention it deserved with a Story Design Tips column and not just a comment.
How to Design ‘Down Time’
First of all, as I said in the 10 Timing Don’ts rules, you must at all costs avoid in your mind the concept of ‘down time’. There’s no real ‘down time’ if you want to keep the plot moving, there’s only something that looks like ‘down time’. Here are the three Down Time Rules that allow you to let the player explore without having your story break down.
Down Time Rule #1: Have a clock ticking in the background
For example, the player can roam around, but if he doesn’t get to his spaceship soon, it will leave without him. Or another character has left the scene to warn the chief of police about what the character is doing. The character can do anything he wants, but in the back of his mind he knows he has only enough time until the chief returns with the police… unless he finds something to do that can stop him.
Down Time Rule #2: The Player Must Always Have a Motive
If the player is given a motive, a task, something he’s required to do, then the rules of designing a new timing element in the game has begun. He can take his time doing it or take time to discover how to do it, but he needs to have been given the task.
Down Time Rule #3: Other Characters Must Have Motives
If the player is having ‘apparent down time’, but the characters he meets all have their own issues, agendas and little stories, then they have timing elements and ticking clocks that may eventually lead to explosions. The player still feels part of a story.
In Conclusion
These are the three rules that allow you to give the player a rest while maintaining the tension of a well-designed story. Without any of these options, the tension of your story will fall apart and your story will literally stop, as will the player’s interest in it.
[If any of you have any questions for future Story Design Tips columns, please write them in the comments or send me an email to guyhasson at gmail dot com.]
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From a game/story perspective, downtime supports and accentuates the main story by providing a contrast to the tension and action of that story. Imposing a ticking clock undercuts that contrastive function by not giving the player an opportunity to put the primary story beats into any kind of perspective.
Instead, I'd think it would be more effective to think of downtime in terms of giving the player feedback on what they've just experienced, followed by some kind of simple and brief "palate cleanser" content. This would be something that provides a mild respite from the intense action just completed and leads -- whenever the player is ready to proceed -- to the start of the next action sequence.
Far from destroying useful tension, a little downtime (with no ticking clock) is crucial for helping the player experience all the intensity of the big set-pieces. You can do it with character exposition, or a quick minigame of Astro Chicken, but tension can't be constant or it stops being tense.
If I've misunderstood your suggestion for how to give players some downtime, I'd be interested in hearing more on this subject (which I agree was a very good question).
This may correlate with:
"you must at all costs avoid in your mind the concept of ‘down time’"
When you take a "down time" in real life, you can watch lifes of others passing by. When you take a down time in many video games the world stops for you. This may allow the player to see all the content, but the world also becomes a player-centric shallow playground.
In unpatched Fallout 1 there is a real ticking clock, which can be annoying when you just want to explore. I liked the implementation of the ticking clock in Fallout 2 where you get these emergency call dreams from the village shaman from time to time (watch http://www.gametrailers.com/user-movie/fallout-2-dream-2/10183 for an example). Random encounters also increase the feeling of ticking clocks all around you.
I certainly understand the need, as a writer, to have the players calm down a bit and have (supposedly) nothing happen to them. But if you really give them nothing, you destroy your own story. A story is built on tension.
When coming to solve this, think about the Citadel Station in Mass Effect 1, where you supposedly had endless free time to explore. You also always had a ticking clock in the form of: 'The Bad Guy is doing some really bad stuff out in the galaxy. The more you wait, the more he gets to do.' So what if it wasn't true and the game waited for you to finish? It felt true when you played it, and it added to your tension, and never broke the story. In addition, all characters you met had their own motives and stories (rule 3 above).
You need to find a way to keep the story while giving the player down time. Otherwise, your story will fall apart when players play it and you won't understand why.
Guy
I think where Mass Efffect works with tension is their is one all encompassing idea.
I am in fact part of the few that really loved the "downtime" in the elevators because it gave the game a sense of closeness and these "smoke breaks" if you will not only played well into the story to describe what was going on they gave a sense of build up by their laser light focus on the abstract ideas.
I can only explain the general disdainful reception of these intermissions as fairly narrow in the scope the whole experience. I think the reaction to them was at most a backlash of our current technological world catering to impatient children for way, way too long.
Take your original example. If the player is "supposed" to be rushing full-tilt to rescue the princess, but instead is taking his time poking around the dungeon to kill every last rat and pick up every last copper coin... well, that particular player is obviously finding more enjoyment in the rat-killing and coin-collecting than in advancing the storyline. And where's the harm in that?
If you don't want him to explore every odd corner, then the game shouldn't have odd corners to explore. Conversely, if the game allows for exploration, collecting, and side quests, the player shouldn't be punished for taking what's on offer.
And the clock mustn't be too obvious either. More like a constant yet subtle reminder, that, without really doing anything, will still stay in the player's mind. For example, let's make a comparison between Skyrim and Oblivion.
In Skyrim, the clock is the dragons destroying the world. How is it incorporated in the world ?
1) Through story, with the occasionnal NPC talking about it. But most of them keep going with their lives, their own goals (the civil war, the thieves' guild, the silver blood subquests etc) : the world does not revolve around dragons, and you feel like it existed before and will - hopefully - keep on existing after.
2) Through gameplay, with the occasional dragon fight as you wander through the world. The idea here is that the dragon fight does not FORCE you back into the main quest, it only reminds you that it exists. This is especially useful in a game like Skyrim, where you usually have 5 - 10 quests to do at the same time, and you suddenly realise after beating a dragon : "Oh crap ! Where was I in the main quest already ? Maybe I should resume it." It gives the player the will to get back into the main quest.
Of course, if you don't care about the main quest, nothing will really happen, except some more NPCs killed by dragons. But it actually fits in the story : dragons, since they are immortal, take all their time to invade the world, and will wait to be strong and numerous enough.
On the other hand, in Oblivion, the clock is the daedra invasion of Nirn. Here, it is way to present - going from one city to the other usually gets you to go next to 5 or more gates. This is actually an immersion breaker, since, if you want to really roleplay your character as the Champion of Cyrodiil, you should close every single one of these gates, which ends up being a chore since closing a gate takes up to one hour. And you should also stay away from sidequests, as every single part of the main quest is an emergency. Of course, if you wander around for three years without bringing the amulet to Martin, nothing will really happen, except that, except if you roleplay as a egocentric character, then it actually breaks the immersion.
p, being a great article and keeping in mind your concept of "down time", it becomes even more interesting.