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CR: Do you think that
this kind of thing is... guys like Ernest Adams have been talking about this
for years. This modular kind of procedurally-generated narrative, and games
should be doing this. They really haven't been. And a lot of people have been
talking about it. And it seems like the natural way games should be going, but
it doesn't seem like people try it very often. Do you think this is actually
where things are going to go? Do you feel like you're on the cusp of actually
driving something?
PR: Yeah. I guess even I, when we went to GDC, and Clint was
there, and John was talking about the repetitious stuff on his side. I did my
talk about narrative design. We were kind of shocked, honestly, that... personally, I would have expected
that by now, at this stage that we're at, in this generation, that there would
be a whole schwack of other people all solving the same problem, kind of at the
same time.
And I fully - given the number of talks on narrative that were
happening - I fully expected to have somebody show up and go, "Hey, look
what we did." And totally just render moot everything we've been working
on. And it never really happened.
GR: There was Façade...
PR: Well, maybe Façade
is even a good example, because it's like... I know Michael Mateas showed up at
my talk, and followed it, and was there. I only found out he was there
afterward. Otherwise I would have been probably a little nervous. Because I had
attended the Façade talk before, and
I was just like, "Ow, my head hurts."
But yeah, I walk out of there, and Michael's sitting down
with Clint, and they're having this super-in-depth conversation. And Michael's,
like, super excited, and blah blah blah. And I'm, "Huh, I wonder what
that's about." And Clint tells me afterward, "Well, Michael saw your
talk, and he was going on and on about some of the potential of this approach."
And I was like, "Yeah, but didn't he solve all these problems? Him and
Stern solved this years ago." We're just kind of emulating it.
But I think that in fact, a lot of people have just kind of
been gun shy about trying to tackle some of this stuff. And who knows, maybe
when our game comes out, it'll be proven why they should be gun shy. Maybe
it'll be like, "Yeah, you guys totally went down in flames on this."
But I think that what's potentially - to get back to your original point about "Are
things moving in this direction, or should they be moving these directions?"
I think that they absolutely should be.
Chris Hecker did his talk about the sort of decoupling of
structure and content. And his point about AI, like the fact that we currently
lack a kind of Photoshop of AI, a way of intuitively authoring the behaviors
that will ultimately make for a more robust and life-like in-game agent. And I
think that that is at the heart of this issue. Right? We really need to be able
to handle our story systemically. And that means we need characters that can
behave systemically when we give them things to talk about, when we give them
situations to react to.
The micro-narrative solution, which I think is a very good
solution, at the end of the day still needs to be... it still boils down to the
smallest indivisible piece of content. And right now, that's still - as I said
in my talk - a piece of animation, a piece of recorded dialog, all of these
kinds of things. Or even a state change in a state machine somewhere.
And the thing is, we need to get to a stage where we can
make that smallest, indivisible piece of content as small as possible. So that
ultimately we can build AI-driven engines that generate narrative.
But I mean,
we're way off, I think, frankly, from that interactive fiction/fantasy, and
being able to build... with all due respect to Chris Crawford, I think we're a
ways away from being able to have that in a form that is readily applicable to
games. And maybe he doesn't care, because he doesn't think games are valid
anymore. But I think that we still are trying to develop this in the context of
making games.
And I think it's going to be an easier sell to people if we
start with something that they're somewhat familiar with, in terms of the form,
and they're able to pick the controller up and run around and shoot, and drive,
and all that and then start introducing these other more systemic narrative
pieces, so that it starts to become an expectation. We want to raise the bar.
We want it to be... we want to set the standard by which other games have to
try to follow us.
And even if we screw it up, I think we want people to say, "Yeah,
these guys were pointed in the right direction. That's the direction we should
be going in." And who knows? It remains to be seen. Like I said, we're
totally willing to live with the possibility that we'll only get a piece of
that delivered. But I believe very strongly in this approach.
CR: How much more
recorded dialog will this mean, really, versus a traditional script?
PR: That's a very good question. As a shooter, we have quite
a bit. We're running in at about 100,000 words of dialog at this stage, which
is kind of more what you would associate with an action/adventure title, or a
small RPG. It's certainly a lot for a shooter. I'd have to sit down and look at
the specific allocation of that.
The thing that makes us really different isn't so much the
quantity of dialog. It's the fact that so much of it - like fully 80% of it - is
handled through AI dialog systems, as opposed to through scripted events. So
when I'm encountering guys in the world who just happen to be there, and they're
able to serve up relevant content to me, they're drawing on a large pool of
content.
The actual content that's kind of like scripted, in the
sense of, you walk into a room, and the door shuts, and certain things happen -
that represents maybe 120 pages' worth
of script dialog, in the kind of classical screenwriting sense. So I don't know
that it's necessarily a lot more content. I just think it's content that's
delivered differently. It's chopped into smaller and smaller pieces, and it's
put together more like Lego blocks, than it is like a typical scene.
CR: Do you think that
normal players will notice that there is something unique going on narratively
if they don't play it twice? Or will they just think all the consequences that
occur are intended?
PR: It's a valid question. I think they're going to start to
notice it when they realize that events are happening to them involving
characters that seem like they have a lot more direct connection with the
events of the game, than maybe a bunch of other characters that they've also
met that don't seem to show up in those situations. It's a tough call.
Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
It may turn out to be one of those things that's a lot more
clear to people on hindsight, or by conferring with friends who are playing the
game. Or by playing again. And I'm okay with that. I think at this stage, it's
less about being really flashy than it is about trying to create an experience
that is at least fun, and understandable, and meaningful.
And if it's not 100%
clear... I mean, honestly, I think if they're not able to differentiate between
our highly systemic building block approach, and something that's a lot more
scripted, then that's actually the least of our problems. That's actually a
good problem to have.
Honestly, I don't think anybody's going to mistake these
highly systemic moments for, for example, a scene from Call of Duty 4. You know what I mean? I think we're not at that
stage yet. People are going to look at it and go, "Okay, that feels a little...
a little mechanical. That's probably something that's been put there because of
something that I did." And I think that's still probably going to be a
factor.
CR: I remember a few
years ago, I was talking to Michael Land, who was one of the LucasArts
composers during their heyday in the nineties, and he did - his soundtrack to Monkey Island 2 was amazing. It was really procedural. It was very interactive and
very cool. I was a music major and I was so impressed by that.
LucasArts' Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
And I
complimented him on it, and he said it was a very rewarding thing to do, but
the problem was, it was done well enough that players didn't notice. And then
it became hard to justify that expense in a game, if people were like, "Oh,
it just had a great soundtrack." Is that something that you worry about?
PR: Probably I'm just about the worst person to try to judge
this because I've been so close to it for so many years, but I kind of, at this
stage, I tend to view this sort of dynamically-assembled narrative as kind
of... it's a little bit like if you're looking at editing in film. It's almost
better if they don't notice it.
It's not a hundred percent true. I still want them to go, "Wow!
The story's really good in this game." Obviously. I think, at the very
least, especially if you differentiate between story and writing, if you think
of writing as the data that's generated in order to support the story, I think Susan
did a great job. The other writers that we brought in - Armand Constantine did
a great job. Kevin Short did a great job.
But the thing is, people will react, I think, potentially,
to the writing, to some of the characters, in terms of the dialogue and the
voice acting. They're going to either like it or not like it. Some of them they
won't like, some of them they'll like. And I think that some people will tend
to conflate that part of it with the story.
People, when you say, "Yeah, but that's not what our
story is. Our story is all of these systems that allow you to do this and this
and this, and certain things to happen," they'll go, "Well, yeah, but
that's just your game." Right? And that's okay. I don't have a problem
with them not being able to disentangle those. But I think that is a... that's
a tough call.
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And I fully - given the number of talks on narrative that were happening - I fully expected to have somebody show up and go, "Hey, look what we did." And totally just render moot everything we've been working on. And it never really happened."
I didn't attend that talk, but I've been working on modular and systemic storytelling since 1995. I taught it for six years at one-day tutorials at GDC beginning in 1997, and continue to present it at conferences today. My book, Character Development and Storytelling in Games, published in 2004, goes into detail on how to create stories in the way Mr. Redding describes.
In the beginning I was told by people who thought stories must be linear and strictly authorial that games and stories didn't mix. Then when I started talking about modular storytelling, I was told it wouldn't work. Then I was told okay, maybe it would work, but it was too hard. Now that I've moved my systemic storytelling to virtual worlds, I'm told that narrative-driven virtual worlds won't work, especially worlds with on-going stories. We're building one now.
And for the past two years at Indiana University I have been teaching the techniques Mr. Redding describes, and other skills, to the next generation of videogame and virtual world storytellers. They get it.
The next step is to convince the majority of game companies that hiring 70% programmers , 30% artists, and 0% writers may not be the best way to build games that transcend, challenge, and inspire.
"The sense that we must push the medium toward a form of interactive narrative that is as strong and vital as the innovations in other areas of gameplay and technology has taken hold with many creators."
I guess my reaction is: "It's about time."
Even with modular storytelling you'll probably get a better experience by letting a group of people drive the creative process, and just acting as a guiding force to this group (creative director?). You might be pleasantly surprised to find that many of the programmers and artists have very good insight into what makes a great game play experience, what constitutes a great story, and in general, what interesting characters are all about.
By the way, I should mention, I'm one of those 70% programmers you mentioned, and yes, I often feel like my creativity is not being put to its full use. :-)
"You might be pleasantly surprised to find that many of the programmers and artists have very good insight into what makes a great game play experience, what constitutes a great story, and in general, what interesting characters are all about."
They'd better be able to do more than have insight. They'd better be able to write, too.
My point was that the practice of creating a game development team composed of 70% programmers and 30% artists guarantees you aren't going to have any dedicated writers around.
I have several friends who are equally good at programming and writing, but it takes more than insight. I have insight into the jobs programmers and artists do on my games, but nobody in their right mind would hire me to code or draw.
I guarantee the actors at the Globe Theatre had insight in all of those things. Only one of them was Shakespeare.
And those aren't my percentages. Those were given publicly at a conference I attended in June by a senior HR person who works for a huge game publisher.
I look forward to playing Far Cry 2 and witnessing the degree to which it drives me to emote. While working on "COH Opposing Fronts" I was able to do some user testing in relation to narrative and it proved very helpful, though in post. I imagine more robust narrative related user-testing during production would be tremendously valuable, to understand just what a particular narrative element, narreme, is conveying to the VUP and how that narreme might be improved to encourage concinnity with the intended metanarrative.
Speaking just as a lowly critic, the way I think of these kinds of games is that they are a series of inter-operating vignettes. Moments or scenes that are created by a writer are activated based on the actions allowed by the game design and given meaning by the art and speech.
In other words, the writer doesn't create events. He creates reactions.
I too echo Stephen Dinehart's remarks that it's nice to hear from a narrative designer in the trenches. It's always a good thing to hear about the work of game writers who "get" games.
As freelancers, Anne Toole and I are lucky that Writers Cabal does get the chance to work with developers at the earliest stages of game development.
If you have a bad day, there are any number of events that could make it a bad day.
You can go through these even in any order and still have a bad day.
You could even have the same dramatic "This is the last straw -- worst day ever" moment regardless of which event happened last.
The theories behind it have essentially already been in a lot of games, but those games have described them in a far more abstract way... Civilization, Total War and X-Com (as mentioned), feel more like emergent, player owned sets of events than guided narrative. Those games have never represented themselves as if they're *trying* to tell a story, and so they aren't landed with the criticisms that most conventional literary figures point at game narrative.
Instead, they create something *new* - a medium unto itself. A player's generated story is not necessarily going to be Dickens every time, sure, but the important fact is, it belongs and responds to them. That creates a completely different relationship with the audience. They're not an unpaid actor in a scripted world anymore. They're being listened to, responded to. While designers still have the "hands off" control through systemic design, the players forge their own path through possibility. I think that that, alone makes it a unique medium worth pursuing. We're growing up as a medium, and realizing that this whole interactive storytelling thing is NOT about self consciously, cow-towingly trying to make a perfect generative Dickens with every play-through, or trying to ape narrative conventions of fixed storytelling in order to justify the endeavor. We're discovering that we're making something brand new - something different from what the movement set out to create.
FPS game productions have typically had to be more focussed on their own core gameplay - the moving and the shooting. So much focus is required just to get those fundamentals right that higher level things suffer. Focus on the higher level things instead, and you get pretty clunky core gameplay (I'm a deus ex fan, obviously, but seriously... its combat is not what you'd call "fun").
Because of this deep focus required, the scope for adding this extra layer of *deep*, granular narrative interactivity on top of an FPS is rare, to say the least. It requires a lot of guts to back, from the money men all the way down to the devs in the trenches. I salute you!
I'm so glad we're over the notion of Branching Plot structures being the be-all and end all of interactive narrative, by the way.