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The best thing about the old tabletop role-playing games is the Dungeon Master concept. The Dungeon Master is a person who creates and presents challenges to the other players. Since the DM can essentially do anything that a fictional world could do, he can spin, together with the players, emergent stories of incredible richness and variety. The breadth of experience creatable by a good DM is astronomically greater than in any other form of gaming.
The system works because it depends on the players making things up to entertain each other in real time. We don't even need to think of it as a game, really. One could easily imagine it as a structured mutual storytelling activity. This mutual storytelling concept is what I want to talk about.
In some sense, all multiplayer games use the mutual storytelling. Some people say that Chess is a series of puzzles that players pose to one another. Games like Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike essentially consist of two teams both trying to present the most interesting challenge possible to the other team. In Chess or TF2, the back-and-forth of challenges and solutions creates a story.
Still, we haven't seen computer games that really focused on mutual storytelling. Left 4 Dead pushed this a bit further than before (as I mentioned in my Design Technologies 2008 article) by placing two totally asymmetrical teams in a rich narrative framework. The Infected team isn't that far off from a Dungeon Master in D&D. The main difference is that their goal is still to kill the survivors as fast as possible, not to entertain them like a DM. But the idea of mutual storytelling has still never formed the core conceptual framework of a game.
I want to figure out if it's possible to create a digital game where mutual storytelling is the core idea that drives the entire design. Is it possible to design a game where:
Players construct dynamic experiences for each other in real time
Players get points for constructing better experiences. Victory by force isn't the goal, but victory by superior storytelling
The first mental model that comes to mind is to simply take Left 4 Dead and give points to the Infected team based not on how fast they kill the Survivors, but on how profound an experience they create for the survivor players. This reveals the core difficulty of this story trading game concept: how do we judge story effectiveness?
The first option is to create an AI story judge that will rate the storytellers on the effectiveness of their story. This is problematic. It starts to get into the hard AI problem of having an AI understand real-world human concepts. I think we could get an AI to rate action pacing, for example, but what about all of those more human storytelling elements? If the storytellers can place corpses or write things on the wall to imply history to an area, for example, how does an AI rate the effectiveness of this? Say that a message scratched in a wall foreshadows a challenge which the storyteller will present later. Computer can't read or decode language, so they couldn't judge the effectiveness of the foreshadowing device.
We could try to step around the problem by only including storytelling devices that the computer is capable of judging. This is a pretty narrow range of tools, though. And under this system, it's not even clear that an AI judge judging a human storyteller wouldn't be better than just using an advanced AI Director like Left 4 Dead. I think the AI story judge idea is dead; we'd be better off just investing more resources in a more advanced AI Director.
The second option is to allow the players who experience the story to rate how cool they thought it was. This can only work if they don't have any other incentives to rate the storytellers low or high. For example, it won't work if they are in direct or implied competition with the storytellers. This is difficult to pull off because multiplayer gamers tend to be so competitive. I think it might be doable, though.
Here are a couple possible models:
MMO Framework: The first way is to have players compete not just with the people in the current game, but within a larger framework. Imagine an MMO in which you gain experience in two ways: first, through the traditional method of playing with your character, except that now the challenges are presented to you by other players. Second, you gain experience by creating great story experiences for others, who will then judge you highly, thus giving you experience points. This doesn't necessarily need to be tied to character advancement either. Players could simply be assigned a permanent, persistent storyteller score which is very visible to everyone, like an eBay seller's rating. Nobody will want to play with someone who has a poor storyteller rating.
Forced Points-Giving:The second way is to force players to give a fixed amount of points to dole out. Imagine a game with six players. At any time, four are storyplayers and two storytellers. The game will proceed in three rounds. Each player is a storyteller for one round and a storyplayer for two. At the end of the game, players are forced to vote on which of the two stories they played was more enjoyable. This clear choice between two experiences may be workable for most players. The "voting up your enemy" problem still exists, though. You might be afraid that the better story will be voted better than yours and thus vote for the worse one. In order for this system to work, the culture and presentation of the game would have to be very non-competitive.
Eliminate Storyteller vs Storyplayer Competition:The third way is to only have storytellers in competition with storytellers, and storyplayers in competition with other storyplayers. Imagine a game with one set of storyplayers, who are always storyplayers and who, within this game, only play stories and rate them. There are also a set of storytellers who are in competition with each other, and who get to take turns telling stories to the storyplayers. Whoever pleases the storyplayers the most wins. Since the storytellers and storyplayers aren't in competition with each other at all, storyplayers are more likely to rate their enjoyment of the stories honestly.
I'm really not sure exactly how to do this. There are still many questions to be resolved. I want to discuss this concept with anyone and everyone. So consider this an open call for discussion. Please, if you're reading this and you have an opinion or idea, write it in the comments or email me!
Questions:
Is there any precendent for multiplayer games that are scored based on players judging each other instead of objective criteria?
Is there any significant proportion of players capable of or interested in creating an interesting storyline or accurately judging one presented to them?
Is it possible to do this non-competitively while maintaining player interest? Could this fit into a larger noncompetitive framework, a la The Sims or Second Life?
How much power can we give storytellers? If we give them unlimited power will they simply abuse it? How many tools can they handle?
Can normal people really fathom the concept of constructing an experience for someone else? Is it possible to train them to do it using various tutorials and tooltips or an AI advisor?
Do we need more time than a normal game session to create a really compelling story? Does this mean we need a broader framework which can spread games out over several days?
1. EvE online? ) Players not directly makes "storylines", but they build some type of "virtual events". I mean different type of actions that influence on whole world situation.
2. I think a lot of them, but... not capable.
3. It`s hard )
4. If too much, they just break world`s integrity.
5. Why not? If the UI will be frendly in this section :)
6. If we need really epic stories, I think that take more time.
Hm... It`s really interesting theme. I think, that main problem of multiplayer games (mmo games), that they have hard rules and they guide players like trains on rails. It`s suck :( And if we build even amazing players framework to create storyline it will be another synthetic guide in hard-ruled whorld. Maybe we need to get experience of real life? We don`t have game masters, but we have fantastic freedom in actions. Every man make little action but in a whole we build world story, we influence on future, we make this world, at last. Maybe, we need to focus on building a system that give players more
ways to interact with other player, not with AI. A world where players can judge who "good" and who "bad", not the global game rule.
Hi there! I am an old school gamer still playing a MUD which is facing this problem every day. As a quick overview, the game has "players" who play the game, and wizards who code the different areas and support players when they find problems or are stuck. Players can obtain three kind of experience, combat (obtained after winning a fight), general (obtained through forging, stealing, finding herbs, etc) and quest (obtained through quests and special events). Quest experience is unique because it is not lost when dying (compared to a ~20% loss for the others).
Some years ago, someone suggested a new system for the quest experience, where wizards would take the place of different task masters, request help from players, and reward based not on the effectiveness of the player but in the actions taken by him. As an example, a wizard would send a pigeon to a few random players requesting a meeting in front of a castle, where they would be tasked with finding determined items for the king. The players would then try to gather them, but near each item another wizard would be there to challenge them in different ways, advising and misleading them. The quest, though, was about rescuing the king's daughter, however the characters would never be told that much. Their actions and decisions indirectly put the princess in danger or safety. This is similar to your "MMO Framework" approach (although not the same).
It is never that easy, though. Only a human can judge another human behaviour, which (ironically) shrinks the opportunities instead of expanding them.
Here is the deal: contrary to D&D, make the DMs part of the game. In a D&D setting, the DM will only create the environment for the players. Why can't create the settings within the game? Why can't they be the taskmasters and players at the same time?
Let's imagine a city full of zombies in a sandbox game. Multiple buildings, multiple areas, multiple zombies, multiple common NPCs that try to survive on their own following similar patterns (a girl locks herself in his bedroom, a couple tries to fight zombies off their house, several policemen try to reach the house of one of theirs whose wife is under attack, etc). Before starting the game (in lobby area, for example), each player determines his or her goal for the game. Goals are completely free: someone wants to rescue the girl locked in her bedroom, someone else may want to kill her before the zombies do that, someone may want to reach a determined house before all other players die, etc. Goals may include others as well: lead a team to kill the policemen, stay alive with someone of the opposite gender to ensure a future generation, make sure another player is able to reach his goal, etc. Since every player will have his own goal (even if that one is just surviving or killing all zombies), players need to become storytellers, creating a fiction others can believe.
Who would judge the results? That is always the issue: the game itself cannot do it, other players may not objectively rate others for fulfilling their goals, and having people dedicated to that is just going back to DMs. However, big changes in playability require big changes in player behaviour too. Just like games at first were about player against machine, then player against player, and then cooperative players against the machine, we can expect them to embrace a new way of playing, one where every match is the same as the previous one, or completely different.
Just like your 6th point, we don't need more than the game as it exists, plus some imagination. Players are used at getting told what to do nowadays, leaving all the storytelling to the game developers.
So, in closing:
1. I don't remember any game where players can judge each other (other than reporting conduct or requesting expulsions).
2. Games like LittleBigPlanet show there is a certain interest in user generated content, although it is still very small. Creating storylines is much harder than creating a simple level, though, so we could say "storyline creation" is a niche style still, which may turn mainstream someday and fade later.
3. Don't players of The Sims and Second Life already live their own storytelling? Don't they become what they want, and lead others to believe they are what they think they are?
For the last three questions, I believe it is possible for everyone to be storyteller and storyplayer at the same time. One of the bases of the homebrew community is unlocking the full power of the console beyond what the developers designed. The mod community works in similar fashion. Why can't we have modders that work without modifying the game itself?
Anyways, sorry for the long post. I am one of those who still think a D&D session is more interesting and rewarding than any game developed until today.
An excellent piece of pondering that reminds me all too much of my own thoughts. I have long felt that the transition from paper RPG to computer RPG involved increasing ease of use (you don't have to add up modifiers anymore), which increased popularity, but decreasing interactivity. Sure, you can do a lot of things in some RPG's, but in a pen and paper you can do absolutely anything.
The trend I've seen is an emphasis that is moving away from story - most of the players nowadays perfectly fit what old-school RPGers used to term "min-maxers" (those who create a character and play in such a way that emphasizes taking advantage of the game mechanics, and not for making an interesting story). It's not really their fault; computer based RPGs reward this kind of behavior. You get more XP quicker if you stack all of your abilities into one monotonous, but effective, attack - even if it makes the game much more boring.
Finding a way to shift this reward schedule from effectiveness to entertainingness (?) is a welcome idea, but it will be a difficult one.
1. Judging story quality is riddled with problems. How is a player to tell if a storyteller has good ratings because he gives away a lot of treasure, and not because he has surprising plot twists and interesting dialogue?
I highly recommend you check out: http://www.faerytaleonline.com/
2. Yes, there is a player base out there to tap into, but it's a market we rarely hear about, and so may be difficult reaching. Look perhaps in those primarily interested in interactive fiction?
3. I do think it's possible to do this without competitiveness. Cooperative modes of all sorts are popular (L4D, Gears of War, etc) - the challenge will be in finding players interested in creating a better story, than merely in having their individual character succeed.
On that note, it may involve players controlling characters in turn (either at "chapter points", or as one dies, etc).
4. How much power can we give storytellers? The kind of game/story I think you're describing puts way more control in the hands of the player than usual. Some will simply abuse it, just as some will simply enter cheat codes to play games in God Mode. Those who have a lot of power and use it best should be rewarded most.
5. Can normal people really fathom the concept of constructing an experience for someone else? No, not most people, and not most gamers. This is the biggest hurdle I've come across on this topic. The majority of today's gamers don't want to create for someone else, they want to have something created for them. Nonetheless, there are plenty of storytellers out there - they just don't represent a majority.
6. I think it would be a big burden on the storyteller to expect them to create a compelling story _on the fly_ in a short time period. Provided they have preparation, the length of the game session itself is less relevant (sure, you can create a good story over days, weeks, or seasons (like tv shows do), but you can also get a nice little story in a little bit of time (like an individual episode of most shows).
Hope some of that is what you were looking for - this is a topic I'm always up to discuss.
Hey guys! Thanks for commenting. Sorry if took a few days to get back to you (I was on a trip to DC).
Roberto Alfonso: "Here is the deal: contrary to D&D, make the DMs part of the game. In a D&D setting, the DM will only create the environment for the players. Why can't create the settings within the game? Why can't they be the taskmasters and players at the same time?"
This could be one of those mini-breakthrough ideas that gets a game concept from "academically interesting" to "possibly workable".
I think you also pointed out an important part of this topic. That is, the importance of player culture and expectation. A mutual storytelling game would need to be marketed a very specific way in order not to be rejected out of hand by players who try to play it as a traditional shooter.
Also, your arbitrary goal assignment idea might be able to remove the requirement to have player judges. Imagine a game in which players are arbitrarily assigned widely varying goals, as you described - rescue some person, escape the city, kill people, collect stuff, prevent someone from being rescued, find a car. The game could then simply rate you on whether you achieve your goal - no player-driven judgment and technically no "storytellers". But we might still get interesting stories as all of these "characters" interact in many different ways. Traditional storytelling requires all characters to have motivations, and interesting stories arise at the intersection of these motivations.
We've always placed all players' motivations either directly aligned with each other (cooperative) or directly in symmetrical opposition to each other (competitive). Maybe it doesn't need to be this way.
This does remove the whole "storyteller" player and weakens the concept considerably. But if it might work where storytelllers won't (and I have my doubts here) it's worth looking into.
Garrett Jackson: "How is a player to tell if a storyteller has good ratings because he gives away a lot of treasure, and not because he has surprising plot twists and interesting dialogue?"
That's really the core of our biggest problem, which is, essentially, griefing and exploiting. If we knew this game would only be played by close friends sitting next to each other, like D&D, I think it would be totally workable. The problem is the public servers full of mutually mistrustful people who have no rapport with each other.
This is a very nice topic indeed and great ideas. I will be able to comment on them in a few months. :)
But, i think there is also some other way to do something similar to this. It is a design i am working on and i will be talking about it a bit on my blog which i started specifically for that. This is not for any specific client it's an old idea of mine that matured over the years and technology is there to make it happen.
I thought eventually even if i don't manage to do this someone else might find it interesting and pick it up.
Bioware with DA only scraped the surface but convinced me it is very much possible.
2. I think a lot of them, but... not capable.
3. It`s hard )
4. If too much, they just break world`s integrity.
5. Why not? If the UI will be frendly in this section :)
6. If we need really epic stories, I think that take more time.
Hm... It`s really interesting theme. I think, that main problem of multiplayer games (mmo games), that they have hard rules and they guide players like trains on rails. It`s suck :( And if we build even amazing players framework to create storyline it will be another synthetic guide in hard-ruled whorld. Maybe we need to get experience of real life? We don`t have game masters, but we have fantastic freedom in actions. Every man make little action but in a whole we build world story, we influence on future, we make this world, at last. Maybe, we need to focus on building a system that give players more
ways to interact with other player, not with AI. A world where players can judge who "good" and who "bad", not the global game rule.
Some years ago, someone suggested a new system for the quest experience, where wizards would take the place of different task masters, request help from players, and reward based not on the effectiveness of the player but in the actions taken by him. As an example, a wizard would send a pigeon to a few random players requesting a meeting in front of a castle, where they would be tasked with finding determined items for the king. The players would then try to gather them, but near each item another wizard would be there to challenge them in different ways, advising and misleading them. The quest, though, was about rescuing the king's daughter, however the characters would never be told that much. Their actions and decisions indirectly put the princess in danger or safety. This is similar to your "MMO Framework" approach (although not the same).
It is never that easy, though. Only a human can judge another human behaviour, which (ironically) shrinks the opportunities instead of expanding them.
Here is the deal: contrary to D&D, make the DMs part of the game. In a D&D setting, the DM will only create the environment for the players. Why can't create the settings within the game? Why can't they be the taskmasters and players at the same time?
Let's imagine a city full of zombies in a sandbox game. Multiple buildings, multiple areas, multiple zombies, multiple common NPCs that try to survive on their own following similar patterns (a girl locks herself in his bedroom, a couple tries to fight zombies off their house, several policemen try to reach the house of one of theirs whose wife is under attack, etc). Before starting the game (in lobby area, for example), each player determines his or her goal for the game. Goals are completely free: someone wants to rescue the girl locked in her bedroom, someone else may want to kill her before the zombies do that, someone may want to reach a determined house before all other players die, etc. Goals may include others as well: lead a team to kill the policemen, stay alive with someone of the opposite gender to ensure a future generation, make sure another player is able to reach his goal, etc. Since every player will have his own goal (even if that one is just surviving or killing all zombies), players need to become storytellers, creating a fiction others can believe.
Who would judge the results? That is always the issue: the game itself cannot do it, other players may not objectively rate others for fulfilling their goals, and having people dedicated to that is just going back to DMs. However, big changes in playability require big changes in player behaviour too. Just like games at first were about player against machine, then player against player, and then cooperative players against the machine, we can expect them to embrace a new way of playing, one where every match is the same as the previous one, or completely different.
Just like your 6th point, we don't need more than the game as it exists, plus some imagination. Players are used at getting told what to do nowadays, leaving all the storytelling to the game developers.
So, in closing:
1. I don't remember any game where players can judge each other (other than reporting conduct or requesting expulsions).
2. Games like LittleBigPlanet show there is a certain interest in user generated content, although it is still very small. Creating storylines is much harder than creating a simple level, though, so we could say "storyline creation" is a niche style still, which may turn mainstream someday and fade later.
3. Don't players of The Sims and Second Life already live their own storytelling? Don't they become what they want, and lead others to believe they are what they think they are?
For the last three questions, I believe it is possible for everyone to be storyteller and storyplayer at the same time. One of the bases of the homebrew community is unlocking the full power of the console beyond what the developers designed. The mod community works in similar fashion. Why can't we have modders that work without modifying the game itself?
Anyways, sorry for the long post. I am one of those who still think a D&D session is more interesting and rewarding than any game developed until today.
The trend I've seen is an emphasis that is moving away from story - most of the players nowadays perfectly fit what old-school RPGers used to term "min-maxers" (those who create a character and play in such a way that emphasizes taking advantage of the game mechanics, and not for making an interesting story). It's not really their fault; computer based RPGs reward this kind of behavior. You get more XP quicker if you stack all of your abilities into one monotonous, but effective, attack - even if it makes the game much more boring.
Finding a way to shift this reward schedule from effectiveness to entertainingness (?) is a welcome idea, but it will be a difficult one.
1. Judging story quality is riddled with problems. How is a player to tell if a storyteller has good ratings because he gives away a lot of treasure, and not because he has surprising plot twists and interesting dialogue?
I highly recommend you check out: http://www.faerytaleonline.com/
2. Yes, there is a player base out there to tap into, but it's a market we rarely hear about, and so may be difficult reaching. Look perhaps in those primarily interested in interactive fiction?
3. I do think it's possible to do this without competitiveness. Cooperative modes of all sorts are popular (L4D, Gears of War, etc) - the challenge will be in finding players interested in creating a better story, than merely in having their individual character succeed.
On that note, it may involve players controlling characters in turn (either at "chapter points", or as one dies, etc).
4. How much power can we give storytellers? The kind of game/story I think you're describing puts way more control in the hands of the player than usual. Some will simply abuse it, just as some will simply enter cheat codes to play games in God Mode. Those who have a lot of power and use it best should be rewarded most.
5. Can normal people really fathom the concept of constructing an experience for someone else? No, not most people, and not most gamers. This is the biggest hurdle I've come across on this topic. The majority of today's gamers don't want to create for someone else, they want to have something created for them. Nonetheless, there are plenty of storytellers out there - they just don't represent a majority.
6. I think it would be a big burden on the storyteller to expect them to create a compelling story _on the fly_ in a short time period. Provided they have preparation, the length of the game session itself is less relevant (sure, you can create a good story over days, weeks, or seasons (like tv shows do), but you can also get a nice little story in a little bit of time (like an individual episode of most shows).
Hope some of that is what you were looking for - this is a topic I'm always up to discuss.
gbjacksoncreations@gmail.com
Roberto Alfonso: "Here is the deal: contrary to D&D, make the DMs part of the game. In a D&D setting, the DM will only create the environment for the players. Why can't create the settings within the game? Why can't they be the taskmasters and players at the same time?"
This could be one of those mini-breakthrough ideas that gets a game concept from "academically interesting" to "possibly workable".
I think you also pointed out an important part of this topic. That is, the importance of player culture and expectation. A mutual storytelling game would need to be marketed a very specific way in order not to be rejected out of hand by players who try to play it as a traditional shooter.
Also, your arbitrary goal assignment idea might be able to remove the requirement to have player judges. Imagine a game in which players are arbitrarily assigned widely varying goals, as you described - rescue some person, escape the city, kill people, collect stuff, prevent someone from being rescued, find a car. The game could then simply rate you on whether you achieve your goal - no player-driven judgment and technically no "storytellers". But we might still get interesting stories as all of these "characters" interact in many different ways. Traditional storytelling requires all characters to have motivations, and interesting stories arise at the intersection of these motivations.
We've always placed all players' motivations either directly aligned with each other (cooperative) or directly in symmetrical opposition to each other (competitive). Maybe it doesn't need to be this way.
This does remove the whole "storyteller" player and weakens the concept considerably. But if it might work where storytelllers won't (and I have my doubts here) it's worth looking into.
Garrett Jackson: "How is a player to tell if a storyteller has good ratings because he gives away a lot of treasure, and not because he has surprising plot twists and interesting dialogue?"
That's really the core of our biggest problem, which is, essentially, griefing and exploiting. If we knew this game would only be played by close friends sitting next to each other, like D&D, I think it would be totally workable. The problem is the public servers full of mutually mistrustful people who have no rapport with each other.
But, i think there is also some other way to do something similar to this. It is a design i am working on and i will be talking about it a bit on my blog which i started specifically for that. This is not for any specific client it's an old idea of mine that matured over the years and technology is there to make it happen.
I thought eventually even if i don't manage to do this someone else might find it interesting and pick it up.
Bioware with DA only scraped the surface but convinced me it is very much possible.