     |
 |
 |
 | | | | |
 |
|||
 |
||||||
          |
 |
 |
||||
|
Book Excerpt and Review - Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames
For a film or novel character, this can work well. But think about what it means for a game player. In a very real sense, what this structure does is stop the player’s advance, penalize the player for reaching a certain point in the game, punish the player for succeeding, and most likely frustrate the player, who having previously taken joy in all of their achievements has now found that these have suddenly been stripped away. How would you feel, after all, if it were your hard-earned magic sword that someone removed from your inventory during a cut scene? This is an example of a forced failure. Forced failures are a technique for channeling the narrative down a certain path regardless, and sometimes in spite of, player action. This type of outcome can be handled much more gracefully in prose than in games. The novelist can describe the escape of the villain, for example, as happening amidst a hail of bullets, but videogame players instead see multiple rounds bouncing off a suddenly invincible target that will doubtless reemerge later to torment them. Forced failures are perfect examples of instances when narrative trumps game-play, diminishing the player experience. As such, it’s generally best to construct a narrative free from such cases, to prevent the player from growing frustrated. The best narrative twist will fall flat in a game if it causes the players to throw down their controllers in disgust. Furthermore, gameplay generally includes its own cycle of failure and success as the players make their own mistakes and pay the attached price—losing “lives” or having to start again back at a checkpoint or previously saved position in the game. Writers should not forget this aspect of the success/failure experience for the players of many games and should avoid compounding any frustrations inherent to the gameplay with frustrations that originate in the narrative. Conversely, the writer’s arsenal contains numerous weapons for assisting the player within the bounds of the narrative. Consider the opening sequence of Halo: Combat Evolved (Bungee, 2001). Within the fiction that the ship’s crew is testing out the Master Chief’s reactions and kit, the game cleverly instructs the player in how to perform all the basic game functions and thus, advance through the story-line. More heavy-handed examples can include everything from having an NPC shout out an enemy weakness to subtle suggestions from teammates that, just maybe, left is the way to go in this instance. As the narrative is directed toward the player experience, it only makes sense that elements within the narrative guide the player toward the optimum experience as well. |
|||||||||||||||
Features
Previous
|
|
|